Lucille

Lucille Lobel

Arnold Lobel 1964

A silly early reader by Mr. Lobel about a horse and the farmer's wife who decides to dress her as a lady. Disaster and comedy ensue.

Blueberries for Sal

Goodbye to summer and all its tall-grass, ripe berries, hazy days goodness.

Blueberries for Sal

Robert McCloskey 1969

For anyone who doesn't know the story- Sal and her mother go blueberry picking on one side of the hill while a mother bear and her cub are on the other.  McCloskey's drawings are classic.

Amos and Boris

 

Amos & Boris   [AMOS & BORIS] [Hardcover] 

William Steig 1971

William Steig is so fantastic.  We love all of his books with their simple, honest drawings.  This one is about an unlikely friendship between a mouse and a whale.  Amos is saved from drowning by Boris and on their way back to land a comfortable friendship develops between them.  Later Amos is able to repay his friend by saving him when he is accidentally beached.

For a History lesson

Spent a wonderful weekend at the Goschenhoppen Folk Festival.  Madeleine was dressed in 18th century and demonstrated how to make corn husk dolls and tow dolls.  The grounds were filled with hearth cooking and woodstove fires, all kinds of 18th and 19th century crafts and demonstrations, animals, wagon rides, and even a small Revoluntionary militia.  We love this festival every year.

Tools and Gadgets (Historic Communities)

Bobbie Kalman 1992

I've had this book for a little while and we already knew quite a few of the tools and gadgets just from our touring of historic sites (I'm always dragging my kids to some historic spot). 

Kitchen (Historic Communities)

Bobbie Kalman 1990

I picked up the kitchen book at one of the book booths at the festival this weekend.  I'm fascinated by 18th century cooking and kitchens- one of these days I will take an open-hearth cooking workshop. 

Roxaboxen

Roxaboxen

Alice McLerran 1991

illustrated by Barbara Cooney

Oh Roxaboxen. I can not read you without a tremor in my voice. ‘Grey haired Charles…” Based on the true stories of former Roxaboxenites, the imagination of children comes alive in this desert town where they make roads and houses of stones and glass. I have read it so many times, and yet without a doubt that familiar lump forms in my throat at the very first page. Margaux will know what I mean.

Of course all of Marian's sisters came:

Anna May and Frances and little Jean.

Charles from next door, even though he was twelve.

Oh, and Eleanor, naturally,

and Jamie with his brother Paul.

Later on there were others, but these were the first.

Well, not really the first.

Roxaboxen had always been there

and must have belonged to others, long before.

A town of Roxaboxen began to grow, traced in lines of stone:

Main Street first, edged with the whitest ones,

and then the houses.

Charles made his of the biggest stones.

After all, he was the oldest.

At first the houses were very plain, but soon they all began to add more rooms.

The old wooden boxes could be shelves or tables or anything you wanted.

You could find pieces of pottery for dishes.

Round pieces were the best.

Everybody had a car.

All you needed was something round for a steering wheel.

Of course, if you broke the speed limit you had to go to jail.

The jail had cactus on the floor to make it uncomfortable,

and Jamie was the policeman.

Anna May, quiet little Anna May, was always speeding-

you'd think she liked to go to jail.

The Bad Child's Book of Beasts

We have entered the “terrible two’s” here, which haven’t actually been all that terrible. There’s just been a slight increase in mischief and tantrums which, though short-lived, try my patience. I love these verses first published in 1897 by Hilaire Belloc (we have a second copy somewhere but with illustrations inferior to the ones by Wallace Tripp). He starts the book off with a warning to children:

Child! do not throw this book about;
     Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
     Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Child, have you never heard it said
     That you are heir to all the ages?
Why, then, your hands were never made
     To tear these beautiful thick pages!

Your little hands were made to take
     The better things and leave the worse ones:
They also may be used to shake
     The Massive Paws of Elder Persons.

And when your prayers complete the day,
     Darling, your little tiny hands
Were also made, I think, to pray
     For men that lose their fairylands.

The Bad Child's Book of Beasts

Hilaire Belloc

illustrated by Wallace Tripp 1982

I particularly like the Tiger rhyme. When I first read it to Madeleine and Henry they exclaimed, “That’s awful!”. Of course I would never let a Tiger devour my children no matter how naughty they were being. (Though I have on occasion threatened to sell them to the gypsies.)