But I do take the Things to the library regularly, and we take out great piles of books. (Mostly ones I choose, while Thing 1 is reading Yu-Gi-Oh collections and Nintendo Power magazine; and Thing 2 is hiding under gigantic stuffed animals, trying to get other kids to play with him, and playing computer games.) I've also thought about writing about kid's books here for some time; I read four books a night to the kids, and we've got an immense number of books in the house. So I've read lots of 'em, and I'm certainly opinionated. I have no idea if there's anyone reading this who will care, but, then again, that's not why I'm doing this to begin with.
So: we went to the library on Saturday, and this is what we got:
- Felix Feels Better by Rosemary Wells
In the great Kids' Book Schism, Wells is definitely on the Girl side, so my very boyish boys shouldn't like her all that much. But she's done so many great picture books (especially the three "Voyage to the Bunny Planet" books and the many "Max & Ruby" titles -- Max's Chocolate Chicken is, to my mind, the great Easter book), and is so funny, that they love her nearly as much as I do. This is one of the few we don't own, which is odd, since we have the other Felix book (Felix and the Worrier), which isn't quite as good. - Dump Trucks by Jean Eick
One of a series of books with pictures of large machinery and informative text about said pictures (lots of arrows pointing to parts of the machines, too). I mostly got this for Thing 2, who just turned five and thus is quite fond of trucks. - More Parts by Tedd Arnold
Second of three books (after Parts, before Even More Parts) that my boys adore, about a boy who keeps taking rhetorical phrases like "losing your head" and "stretch your legs" literally. Nice cartoony art, too. I haven't seen anything else by this guy, but I keep looking; he has a sensibility the Things like a lot (and I do, too). - I Am A Droid by "C-3P0"
We found a copy of I Am A Jedi at a garage sale a year or two ago, and we've read it a lot. (It was a tie-in to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.) It got pulled back out the last few months, after we started playing Lego Star Wars (quite possibly the most fun game ever) on the GameCube together. This is another book from the same batch; its picture is on the back of I Am A Jedi. Now the boys think it'll be no problem for me to find the other two books... - Once Upon a Time, The End by Geoffrey Kloske
The library check-out slip didn't list the illustrator, who I recall was a New Yorker guy. (See! I can't get away from them!) Aha, Amazon tells me it's Barry Blitt. This wasn't quite as laugh-out-loud as I had hoped, but the art is fun and nicely detailed, and the story (about a father reading increasingly shorter stories to his won't-fall-asleep kid) is familiar. We've only read it once so far, though, and it looks like the kind of book that might get better with familiarity. - The Dot by Peter Reynolds
A book about art, which I got because we own his similar Ish. Both are books with nice lessons that manage not to bang you over the head with them, and the boys like both books quite a bit. I can only hope they become internationally famous artists and support me in palatial majesty in my old age. - Peanut Butter and Jelly by somebody
If Amazon and my memory are to be trusted, this is by Nadine Bernard Westcott (who did another book called something like Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep that the boys like a lot; very zippy, energetic art). It illustrates a rhyme I didn't previously know myself, with lots of things little boys will like, such as elephants rolling on giant sandwiches to smoosh out the jelly. - There's Something in My Attic by Mercer Mayer
I'm a huge Mercer Mayer fan, so one of the things having kids has meant to me has been a chance to revisit great books of my youth, and to buy a lot of Mercer Mayer books along the way. This is another take on the idea from one of his first books, There's A Nightmare in My Closet (and which he also remade again, just last year, in There Are Monsters Everywhere) -- a kid is scared of a monster, and comes not to be afraid of it, in various ways. I like this one best of the three -- the art is the most lavish and detailed, and the story is the cutest -- so it's weird that I think we have the other two but not this one. Or do I have Nightmare at all? I'm not sure. (Oh, and the "Little Critter" books are the best 4x4 series ever. Everyone with boys should own at least a dozen of them.) - How Much Is a Million? by David M. Schwartz and Steven Kellogg
We've gotten this one out a couple of times, and it's a favorite. A magician shows kids how big a million, billion, and trillion really are, in visual terms kids can understand. Kellogg has a really luminous art style that's a pleasure to look at, though it seems like many of his best books can only be found as dusty thirty-year-old library books. Somebody reprint him! - I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago by Steven Kellogg
I think this one's more recent; Thing 1 picked it. It's sort of a tall-tale contest (Kellogg has done a number of books based on legends and tall tales; we haven't read any of the others that I recall), and I'm not sure if the boys got the point of it all. (Not being all that up on bible stories and history.) Still, I think this is the second time we've gotten it, so Thing 1 must like something about it. - I Am Papa Snap And These Are My No Such Stories by Toni Ungerer
I took this out once a few months back and only got to read it once. I wanted to do it again, since it seemed like fun, so I got it again. I'm the Daddy, I can do things like that. - The Book That Jack Wrote by Jon Scieszka and Daniel Adel
Scieszka is one of the two Boy Book Gods that I know of (the other is Dav Pilkey), and the Things and I love all of his stuff that we've found. (We went to the Pixar exhibit at MoMA last weekend, and they enjoyed it even more from having read Seen Art? a thousand times.) - Kitten Red, Yellow, Blue by Peter Catalanotto
Haven't read this one yet, but it looked cute. - My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss
Minor Seuss, but we've already read pretty much everything else of his at this point. (And, reading them out loud, I find the earliest books are in prose -- and way too much of it -- and so not as much fun as the good middle-period books.) - Perfectly Martha by Susan Meddaugh
Fourth or fifth in a series about a talking dog, which the boys like a lot. One of the things I think they particularly enjoy in picture books is density, especially of words -- if there's a lot of little comments going on around the sides of everything, they'll love it to death. If the comments are funny and sarcastic, even better. (Probably the best example of this is Arnie the Doughnut by Laurie Keller, which is probably their favorite book of all time but which I try not to read too often, simply because it takes about half an hour to run through it all. It's a great book, but some nights I want bedtime to be now.) - The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg
This is an alphabet book, as you might guess. Thing 1 is really too old for books like this, but he loves little kid stuff a lot of the time, and this book is mostly the letters of the alphabet getting mangled in interesting ways. Again, prime boy book territory. We've only just discovered this one, though we have tried a couple of Van Allsburg's other books before.
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