John Tabor's Ride

 I found this recently at a flea and was quite smitten!  Sea stories and accompanying folklore always draw me in.  Blair Lent's illustrations (woodcuts?  linocuts?) feel old fashioned but mesmerizing.  

John Tabor's Ride

Blair Lent 1966

John Tabor has been shipwrecked when along comes the most curious character, a man who looks a hundred years old wearing a "greasy wool sweater and a pair of tarred and tattered trousers."  No sooner does he catch a whale than he takes John Tabor on a ride around the world back to his home in Nantucket.  This is just the sort of old magical sea chanty kind of book that we would spend Summer afternoons reading.

Terry and the Caterpillars

Terry and the Caterpillars

Millicent E. Selsam

pictures by Arnold Lobel 1962

Since this is the time of year for caterpillar hunting and butterflies, here's an early reader combining a story and nature facts illustrated by one of our favorites, Arnold Lobel.

Terry is my kind of girl, curious and loving insects!  Even better are her parents who encourage her to keep her caterpillars, finding out how to care for them from the library, calling the museum with a question, and even waking Terry up in the middle of the night so she can watch one emerge from its cocoon.

"I wonder," she said.  "I really wonder how this can happen."  

"Things can change when they grow," said her mother.  "You change when you grow, too."

Days of the Blackbird

Beloved illustrator Tomie dePaola retells and embellishes this northern Italian tale.  Per the author's note the story stems from a real Italian mountain village (which dePaola depicts on the title page) where the last three days of January are the coldest of the year.  As the story goes, the doves would roost in the chimneys to keep warm and this turned them black.  DePaola's retelling also takes some inspiration from The Emperor and the Nightingale. 

Days of the Blackbird

Tomie dePaola 2005

Laughing Time

 These kinds of books are always nice to have on hand because the silly little poems make great notes to put in lunches or pockets.  And when you're a kid, the sillier the better!

Laughing Time

William Jay Smith 

pictures by Fernando Krahn 1980

Paul Galdone's The Owl and the Pussycat

Here's another version of one of our favorite poems.  Illustrated by Paul Galdone, it has a loose, bright comical flair.   

Here are some other versions we have:

Hilary Knight's The Owl and the Pussy-cat

Jan Brett's The Owl and the Pussycat

Gertrude Elliot's The Owl and the Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussycat

Edward Lear

illustrated by Paul Galdone 1987

I kinda love this shark and rainbow picture!

Miracles on Maple Hill

Miracles on. Maple Hill

Virginia Sorensen

illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1956

        This was such a heartwarming book with surprising gravitas.  Written in the 1950's, the father in this endearing story is implied to be suffering from PTSD from the war.  He's always tired and moody and isn't able to hold down a job.  So the family decides to have a change of scene and leaves the city for a rural house in the mountains that belonged to their grandmother.  Told through the adventures of the daughter Marley, the book follows the family through the year as they adapt and make a new life for themselves.  The children start a new school, meet a woodworking recluse and learn about country ways (especially tapping trees and making maple syrup) from their wonderful neighbors.  Meanwhile their father finds purpose and solace in the hard work of gardening on their land.  I absolutely love accidentally finding books like this, such forgotten gems!  

Some wonderful ways to read about this season of Springtime...  

    "Now the trees were growing up again, but there were tangled old limbs in piles and ancient stumps overgrown with lichens and moss and little green leaves and ferns.  If she stopped in the middle of all the thousands of things growing in every direction, she got what she called the 'push-feeling'.  Everything was pushing up into the sun, trying to grow taller and bigger.  She had never thought about it before in all her life, but all the miracles every week made her think about it."

    "So many things to begin again!  She knew how the leaves would come green on the trees, how their flowers would turn the soft maples red along the brook.  She knew where water would go tumbling as the snow melted, making waterfalls that were there only in the spring.  She lifted her face to the sun and laughed.  Spring sparkled already in the sharp air."

Album of Dogs

Album of Dogs

Marguerite Henry

illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1970

 I never knew I was a dog person until we got our golden-doodle Molly!  I have always loved Rosie and our past cats, S'more, Gingersnap and Marshmallow (he was the greatest of cats!) and of course Benji our bunny, but there is just something about a dog!  This album of dogs has the best pictures and Marguerite Henry (of all those classic horse stories) provides the text.  There's history about each breed told in a fun storybook way.