What we're reading, watching, listening to: September, 2016 edition

Things we've enjoyed—and would highly recommend—as we move out of summer and into fall:

Kid books

• Beautiful Birds by Jean Roussen and Emmanuelle Walker—An ABC book with birds, the illustrations are spectacularly cool. Also like how inside the front cover are eggs and on the back cover they've all hatched...
• Nadia: The Girl Who Couldn't Sit Still by Karlin Gray and Christine Davenier—The kids are excited about gymnastics lessons and this book is inspiring them. I get teary each time I read it and 14-year-old Nadia scores the first perfect 10 but they don't have the scoreboard programmed to show it. Such a sweet book...
• Silly Wonderful You by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Patrick McDonnell—A mama talking to her toddler about how her life is so noisy and messy now that she has a child but also so incredibly filled with love...
• Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson—Another ABC book, this one photographs of things in the city that look like letters...so cool...

Grownup books

• The Art of the Photograph by Art Wolfe and Rob Sheppard—It's been a really long time since I bought a book and I talked myself out of this one I found in a bookstore on a weekend vacation with my mom and then went back and got it. I'm so glad I did. I'm learning a lot...
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky—You know, this book is interesting and engaging so far (first 50 pages or so), but I'm having a little trouble getting into it, much as I'm liking it. Jury's out on how far I'll get. Not sure Russian novels and 4-year-olds mix...feel like I need some long, leisurely reading hours on the porch...a luxury I currently do not have...
• The House by the Sea by May Sarton—I borrowed this from my mom and have read it very slowly...it just seemed like a book to digest in small chunks...it's the daily happenings of a writer who moved to costal Maine and is for the most part relishing the solitude. I like the small pleasures she finds. I love that this is one of my mom's favorite books...I can see her in it...

Music

• You Are my Little Bird by Elizabeth Mitchell—This has been a constant in our car lately, it's kids songs but the singers are amazing and the songs are done in a very sophisticated way...it hasn't gotten old after what feels like a million plays either...

Movies and TV

• Stranger Things—Oh, how I love Stranger Things. I just finished Season 1 last night. It's scary. The story's cool. The acting is great. It's its own thing, which I love. A number of nights I watched this right before bed and then couldn't sleep after. I love that twin brothers have created it. And that they tried and tried to sell it...showing that even very good ideas need some nurturing and love and persistence sometimes. I can't wait for Season 2. I actually think I'm going to watch Season 1 again...
• Last Week Tonight With John Oliver—This is the one show I make an effort to consistently watch. Honestly it's been a little uneven this season, but when it's funny, it's so very funny...
• Kubo and the Two Strings—A kids movie that played like and indie film and was so good, so original and so complex, I feel like adults could watch it multiple times and get something new out of it each time. This is definitely one for our video library...
• Mad Tiger—Seen at our local monthly foreign film night, it's the story of a Japanese band in New York and how things kind of fall apart. Loved watching the strangeness of this, and also had so much empathy for the main character who was trying to find his way...

Anything you've found fabulous lately??

Happy reading/watching/listening!

XOXO

Picture books we love (July 2016 edition)

A short list this month (we're outside more, reading less right now). Here are the library books we loved:

There is a tribe of kids, by Lane Smith

There are a number of great things about this book, from the sweet illustrations to the adventurous story to the unique idea of building a book around what groups of things are named. I love language things like this and learned so many odd things here...like do you know a group of jellyfish is called a smack of jellyfish? Or a group of ravens is called an unkindness of ravens? In another life I think I would have studied linguistics...love this sort of thing. The kids each time we return books get to re-check out one and this is one Zo picked...

Room on the broom, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

We first got introduced to this story via a Sprout TV special and honestly I like the cartoon (out of Britain, and with an indie feel) a little more, mostly because the cat who first belongs to the witch has much more of an attitude in the cartoon when other animals (dog, bird, frog) are invited onto the broom. Other than that the stories are very similar and so charming. I think we'll be re-checking this out come Halloween.

Iggy Peck, Architect, by Andrea Beaty and David Roderts

Another book by the author/illustrator of Rosie Revere, Engineer, which we loved last month. This book has Rosie in it (in the pictures, at least) and is similarly positive and inspiring (although I do like Rosie better). 

The only child, by Gouging

I'm not always a fan of wordless books but this is one of the best books I've seen in a long, long time. It's from a Chinese author and also has a very indie feel to it and the drawings are superb and the whole story is so fantastical and yet you can imagine how a real child would react in the way this fictional girl reacts. Essentially what happens is a young girl's mom and dad go off to work and she (the girl) leaves the house deciding to visit her grandma and gets lost and ends up on this big adventure with a stag to take care of her. The pictures of the girl and the stag at the end are amazing...Zo also re-checked this book this month...the kids are as enthralled with it as I am...

How about you? What are you and your kids reading and loving?

XOXO

Teach your kids about manners with these books

My kids take the written word as gospel...and I've been working with them on manners this summer...which explains why this particular stack of books has made its way into our house:

How to behave and why, by Munro Leaf

This is an old fashioned book I first saw at Anthropologie...it's back in print after being found by the right passionate person in a used book store. It talks about how to live right and my kids were absorbed by it first reading, but haven't been as interested since (they say it's too long). Still, I really like it, and it's enabled me to talk about some thing to the kids (eg it's fair for us to ask you to pick up your toys, as everyone needs to help out around the house) that I will continue to bring up.

Rude cakes, by Rowboat Watkins

This is the flip side of "How to behave..."—super short, super modern, super funny. Recently published, downright hilarious, this has been a staple in our house for months. It features a rude pink cake and a bunch of VERY well-mannered giant cyclopses. I love books like this that are so quirky and funny and get a good message across without being preachy. 

Do unto otters, by Laurie Keller

Some otters move in next to a rabbit and the rabbit thinks about how he'd like the otters to treat him, realizing that that's how he should treat the otters too. Cute and engaging. Teaches words like please and thank you in 5 languages.

Dude, that's rude, by Pamela Espeland and Elizabeth Verdick

This is written a little above the kids' age level but Luke especially loves the title and I've been reading them little snippets out of here at their request...

The Bernstain Bears forget their manners, by Stan and Jan Berenstain

These bears are always good for a lesson...this is a current favorite and I like it because Mama Bear makes a list of manners and the kids decide they will go overboard on using manners...which the kids don't realize 's something every mother would love...

Please say please, by Margery Cuyler and Will Hillenbrand

This is a book about dinner table manners taught in the setting of an animal dinner party, and I love it because it presents the wrong scenario and then asks, "Is that right?" For example: "If a lion is served cauliflower, he should say, 'Ew! Yuck!' Is that right?" And the kids laugh and giggle and say no. And the next page: "A lion should say, 'I'll try some. Mmmm...not bad...'" The kids love laughing about the bad examples. Another book that has been in rotation a lot lately.

Any other good books about manners I should know about? Please share! :)

Picture books we love, June 2016

A few of our favorite library books from the past month:

• Lottie's New Friend
• A Cake for Herbie
• Dodo Gets Married
• When Aunt Mattie Got Her Wings
• Lottie's New Beach Towel

All of the above are by author Petra Mathers. We had a little Petra Mathers moment this month. Her books are spectacular, bird friends on the Oregon coast, sweet and smart and funny...the next time we buy books it's going to be the books above...

• Songs of the Fog Maiden by Tomie dePaola — Zo picked this book out and rechecked it this morning. (The kids each get to recheck one book when we do the library return.) Sweet nature poems, and lots of sheep in the pictures which I suspect is why Sis likes it so much...
• Dem Bones by Bob Barner — "Mommy!" Luke said the other day. "Sit down and let me read you 'Dem Bones!'" And he did read it...the page titles at least. Love this fun way for kids to learn about anatomy...
• Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts — My husband's an engineer so it was fun to have this book to help them understand what Daddy does...but it's also got such an empowering message in terms of not giving up on your dreams but instead to keep trying until you succeed...and there's also some WWII Rosie the Riveter history woven in. Luke's rechecked this out he likes it so much...
• Madeline in America by Ludwig Bemelmans and John Bemelmans Marciano — Who doesn't love Madeline? I didn't know she and all the other little girls had come to America. As fun and charming as the original.

Any suggestions for picture books that should be on my radar?

XOXO