Reading My Library

Incarnations of Beauty and the Beast

May 4, 2011 2 Comments by bekahcubed

By a strange flight of fancy, certain children’s picture books are categorized in my no-longer-so-local library by something other than the author’s last name.

Beauty and the Beast tales fall into that category.

Which means I read two renditions of Beauty and the Beast while reading the BEAs (instead of the BREs or the EILs, based on who was retelling the classic tale.)

I didn’t mind in the least.

Sometimes it’s nice to see a couple different retellings of a story side-by-side.

In Jan Brett’s retelling (also illustrated by herself), Beauty is waited on by a collection of exotic animals in the Beast’s house–monkeys, peacocks, and the more tame dogs. The Beast has a man’s legs and a boar’s upper body. He only appears at dinner, where he engages Beauty in thoughtful conversation before closing the evening with a question: “Beauty, will you marry me?”

Jan Brett's Beauty and the Beast

Brett’s illustrations are a delightful treat, especially since they foreshadow the exciting denouement. We see statues and friezes of the prince’s former life in the garden as the merchant contends with the furious beast. Once Beauty is ensconced within the castle, scene after scene includes decorative tapestries which display the scene playing out in “real time”–except with the animals as the people they once were and will again become. Often, these tapestries include little messages–“Do not trust to appearance” or “Courage, Beauty-Your Happiness is not far away.”

Brett’s retelling is relatively simple and follows the classic storyline quite closely (although the classic storyline might come as somewhat of a surprise to those whose only acquaintance with “Beauty” is through Disney!) All in all, I greatly enjoyed this particular retelling.

Max Eilenberg’s retelling, illustrated by Angela Barrett, takes on a different tone.

For one thing, both the writing and the illustrations draw to mind the Victorian age, with delicious gowns for the girls and tails and top hats for the men.

Max Eilenberg and Angela Barrett's Beauty and the Beast

For another, unlike in Brett’s retelling, where the characters retain their types, being merely “Beauty” or “the merchant” or “the Beast” or “Beauty’s sisters”, Eilenberg’s retelling gives each character character beyond type. The merchant becomes “Ernest Jeremiah Augustus Fortune, Esquire, Merchant”. The sisters become “Gertrude” and “Hermione”, who are crazy about jewels and fashion respectively. Beauty and the Beast, on the other hand, maintain their typical names–although they’re given some roundness of character.

Beauty becomes a romantic, a dreamer who longs to marry for love–and who thinks nothing would be better than to marry a prince for love. Nevertheless, she keeps her romantic dreams to herself, choosing to seek her family’s best rather than her own. When her father’s fortunes appear to have taken a turn for the better and Mr. Fortune asks his daughters what they’d like him to bring back for them from his trip to the sea to recover his lost ship, Beauty wants to ask for a Prince–her true heart’s desire. But since she knows it isn’t within her father’s power to bring her back such a thing, she asks instead for something she believes will cost him little–just a rose.

Of course, she doesn’t know how costly the rose will be to her father–and to herself. And she doesn’t know that, in asking for the rose, she will be acquiring for herself a prince. But such is the charm of this story. For in being selfless, Beauty indeed obtained her heart’s desire.

The Beast, too, takes on a human quality. He is terrible in his hairy, fanged, and clawed beastliness; but even more so in his fury at what has become of him.

“Do not call me ‘lord’!” roared the creature. “Do not try to flatter me with pretty words. I do not like it. We should say what we mean and be what we are. I am a beast. My name is Beast. You will call me Beast. Beast by nature, Beast by name. Beast! Beast! Beast!.”

He is terrible and beautiful when he acquiesces to Beauty’s request that he no longer ask her to marry him again.

The Beast was silent for a time, his head bowed. “I would not hurt you for any price,” he said at last. “Forgive me.” He raised his eyes to Beauty, and for a moment she feared that she had wounded him beyond repair, so broken and hopeless did he seem. But then he seemed to find courage and somehow she knew what he would say even before he spoke. “I will not ask you again–I promise…I ask only one thing: if you are happy to be my friend, please promise that you will never leave me alone.”

And he is just plain beautiful once Beauty’s love has turned him into a prince again.

“Now you see me as I really am,” he said. “Your love has saved me from a terrible spell. I was turned into a beast, and only a heart who loved me for my self could set me free.”

I enjoyed this retelling immensely–partly for the beauty of the retelling, partly for the loveliness of the illustrations, and partly for my own identification with Beauty’s dreams and with the Beast’s dreadful pain.

I highly recommend either tale.

For more comments on children’s books, see the rest of my Reading My Library posts or check out Carrie’s blog Reading My Library, which chronicles her and her children’s trip through the children’s section of their local library.

Reading My Library

Best Books, BAR-None

February 16, 2011 1 Comment by bekahcubed

I’m flying (er, floating) through the children’s picture book section of my library–and most recently I’ve been in the “BAR”s. There, I’ve found a few winners.

The Brambly Hedge Stories by Jill Barklem

Families of mice live their lives in Brambly Hedge, happily enjoying the busy work of the seasons.

Brambly Hedge Books

While preparing a recitation for the Midwinter’s celebration at Old Oak Palace, Primrose and Wilfred find a secret passage that leads to an incredible hidey-hole and marvelous costumes that they unveil during their recitation.

Dusty and Poppy get married, Poppy in the fancy dress she’s been preparing for months, Dusty in his fancy duds, unfortunately dusted with a fine (or heavy) coat of flour. As the wedding guests dance, the ropes holding the wedding raft fast break, sending the raft and wedding party floating down the stream until they gently bump into a leafy clump.

All of Brambly hedge is busy making preparations for the day’s picnic–and they don’t even seem to remember that it’s Wilfred’s birthday. Wilfred, being a polite little mouse, doesn’t want to make a big deal of himself, but he is a bit disappointed. So he’s more than a little surprised when, after carting a heavy picnic basket to the picnic, he opens it to discover a cake and presents! Turns out, the picnic was a surprise birthday party for HIM!

Primrose goes off wandering and stumbles into a dark, cold tunnel. She explores it excitedly until she’s absolutely lost–and then she starts to get scared. The menacing figures with lights coming down the hall don’t help at all. She hides in fear until she notices a limp that gives the figure away–it’s her Grandpa out looking for her!

But my favorite Brambly Hedge story is The High Hills where Wilfred dreams of being an adventurous explorer in the High Hills. He gets his big chance when Mr. Apple schedules a trip to the High Hills to deliver some blankets to the needy Voles. Wilfred packs his adventurer’s bag and starts off. When he and Mr. Apple get lost, Wilfred has his adventure. He’s called upon to save the day–and safely deliver he and Mr. Apple back to Brambly Hedge. Wilfred is scared, but his preparations pay off.

Brambly Hedge Illustrations

The Brambly Hedge stories (I read Spring Story, Summer Story, Autumn Story, The Secret Staircase, and of course The High Hills) is a delightful collection of idyllic tales somewhat reminiscent of The Hobbit (although much shorter and less menacing). Illustrated in a manner directly reminiscent of Beatrix Potter, I absolutely adore these books!

Mr. Katapat’s Incredible Adventures by Barroux

Mr. Katapat, the hero, looks like an ordinary man–but really, he’s quite extraordinary. He experiences great adventures through the pages of books he’s found at the library.

He’s a fortune hunter, a time traveler, a sheriff in the Wild West, a detective, and much more.

Mr Katapat's Incredible Adventures

He does all of his adventuring through the pages of books, which he reads as he does almost everything (including unicycling).

But one day, he stumbled onto a new adventure–an adventure he hadn’t read yet. A love story in real life.

That is how Mr. Katapat met Mrs. Katapat.

And that is a story I love to read.

Because by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Vladimir Radunsky

The narrator, who is known only as “me”, introduces us to his house, his friend, the neighbors in his apartment building, and his grandmother.

His grandmother, known as Mrs. Duncan, is an eternal embarrassment.

Because

On Monday, she leapfrogs over Mrs. Q. On Tuesday, she rolls around on the ground. On Wednesday, she acts as if she were skating, only without the skates. On Thursday, she’s tap-dancing and doing cart-wheels. On Friday, she’s flapping her arms like a butterfly. On Saturday, she’s galloping. On Sunday, she’s leaping.

I aspire to be just like Mrs. Duncan.

Why?

Because she’s a dancer

B3RD, Reading My Library

Food Guide Fight

February 8, 2011 3 Comments by bekahcubed

In 2005, the USDA laid to rest the Food Guide Pyramid famously found on the backs of cereal boxes. With breads, grains, and pasta on the big bottom layer, the 1993 Food Guide Pyramid was a favorite of cereal and bread makers everywhere.

“See, that’s us! We’re the base of a good diet,” they said-trying to reclaim ground lost in the low-carb craze of the late 90s and early 2000s.

Food Guide Pyramid Then the government decided to update the Pyramid–introducing the snazzy (and, in my humble opinion, less intuitive) MyPyramid.

It took a while for the Food Guide Pyramid to disappear, but it’s been a while since I’d last seen it–until this last month, when I was making my way through the B children’s picture books at my library and ran across Rex Barron’s Showdown at the Food Pyramid.

Now, I’m a dietitian–and I’m pretty sold on the Food Guide Pyramid. While it had some faults, it was a good educational tool. It did a good job of showing the approximate proportions of different food groups that make up a healthy diet. It was easily understandable and quite intuitive. It was a good tool.

So maybe you’d think I’d be excited about a children’s picture book that uses the Food Pyramid to teach kids about nutrition.

And maybe I might be–but I’m less than excited about this book.

Showdown at the Food Pyramid tells of the happy pyramid that lived in peace until some new foods–Hot Dog, Candy Bar, and Donut–came along and upset the peaceful world. Soon there was an all-out war between the junk food (led by King Candy Bar) on the top floor of the Pyramid, and the Fruits and Vegetables on the second floor.

The two groups duked it out until at last the poor fruits and veggies collapsed under the weight of the evil junk food.

The collapsed food items decide to rebuild the pyramid, only this time they’re going to do it right–according to the Food Guide Pyramid.

Yeah.

Nice story.

Or not.

Apart from being ridiculously pedantic, this story makes the error of fostering an unhealthy attitude towards food.

By framing the pyramid as a fight between good foods and bad foods, this book fosters the idea that food is a moral issue.

It isn’t.

Let me repeat that.

Food is NOT a moral issue.

There is no such thing as “good” food and “bad” food.

Does that mean that mean that we should be unrestrained in our eating? Of course not. But we should be cautious against calling unclean what God has made pure.

About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.

~Acts 10:9-16, NIV

Vegetables are not godly while chocolate is sinful.

That idea is not only false, it’s dangerous.

It keeps people from enjoying food, it encourages them to binging and purging, it promotes false guilt over food.

Choose NOT to teach your children this book’s message. Choose instead to teach them that food (all food) is a gift from God and that we should strive to use it (as everything) to glorify Him.

“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
~I Corinthians 10:31

Reading My Library

A Country Schoolhouse

January 13, 2011 4 Comments by bekahcubed

My grandparents attended a one room schoolhouse in northeastern Nebraska. My mother attended the same country school for her elementary schooling. My brother’s mother-in-law met her husband while she was teaching in a one room country schoolhouse in western Nebraska. A dear friend of the family who I’ve known for all my life sat on the school board for a country schoolhouse just outside of Lincoln–the school he’d attended as a child, the school he’d sent his own children too, the school that now served some of the children in my church congregation.

I attended one of their school programs held in one of the three rooms within the little schoolhouse. Desks, tables, shelves, and learning materials were pushed aside to make room for guests and for a makeshift stage. It was an ordinary sort of program, with each of the thirty or so students performing multiple parts.

I was reminded of this school, of these schools, as I read Lynne Barasch’s A Country Schoolhouse.

A Country Schoolhouse book A little girl asks her Grandpa, the professor, to tell her the story of how he became so smart. The grandpa narrates the rest of the story, telling of the three room country school house he attended. He tells how their school was a working class school–how all the kids had to help their parents with the family work after they got done with school. He tells how they had spelling bees and geography bees and history bees. He tells of the games that they played in an open field. He tells of how they used an outhouse and had to be taught how to flush a toilet when the school got indoor plumbing.

And he talks about how they learned. How they memorized and recited all sorts of facts. How they learned new information from what the other grades ahead of you in the room were learning–or reviewed what you’d already learned while the younger grades were learning it for the first time.

Then he describes how his family moved to the city and he started going to a city school with only one grade in each room. The school was huge and overwhelming–“But the biggest surprise of all was what those kids didn’t know.”

The grandpa in the story was the smartest kid in the new city school. As we learned at the beginning of the story, he went on to be professor–a professor who attributed his smarts to the learning he received in a country school.

Less than a year after I’d attended the Christmas program at the country school outside of Lincoln, the state board of education removed the school boards of all the “Class I” schools in Nebraska–all the small public country schools–forcing the schools to close.

They did it because they figured it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Nebraska’s primarily-white rural students should receive an education so superior to the rest of the state’s students. It wasn’t fair that some schools could be run by boards from their immediate community–by average Joes who care about kids–when the rest of the state had to have schools run by board members most of the students and parents had never met. It wasn’t fair that some of Nebraska–the part with the country schools–was spending less money to give their children an elementary education.

It clearly had to be stopped.

Despite petitions to the contrary and the best efforts of small school advocates, the forced closure of Class I schools proceeded.

Today the empty country schoolhouses dot Nebraska’s landscape, boarded up reminders of a closed chapter in Nebraska history.

Books like Barasch’s A Country Schoolhouse remind Nebraska’s readers of just what they’ve lost.

Reading My Library

BANG!

November 2, 2010 1 Comment by bekahcubed

It had been sitting on my nightstand for quite some time. I knew I’d have to read it eventually. It should be good, I told myself. It’s a Caldecott Honor book, a children’s book, an innocent story.

But my mind wasn’t innocent as I glanced at my nightstand to see the spine staring at me: “BANG THE GREY LADY AND THE STRAWBERRY SNATCHER”.

Now, I don’t think I have a dirty mind–but I’m not entirely clueless about the slang of the day–so “Bang the grey lady” was just a bit much for my mind to take.

I’d look at it and start laughing–and then sternly reprimand myself for doing so. “Get a grip, Rebekah. That’s the lady’s name. She can’t help it that her last name means something naughty nowadays. Stop laughing.”

I read Molly Bang’s other picture books: One Fall Day, Ten, Nine, Eight, The Paper Crane, When Molly Gets Angry–Really, Really Angry…, In My Heart, and My Light I liked them. I liked the colorful illustrations–some painted or drawn, others photographs of three dimensional murals. I liked the way Bang used language. I liked the gentle, everyday yet not quite everyday nature of her stories. I liked them.

So I opened Bang the gray lady—

Except that’s not the title. So “Bang” and “The Grey Lady” run together on the spine. That doesn’t mean they’re both the title.

I opened The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher, still chuckling over the spine and berating myself for my sophomoric sense that just WOULDN’T give up.

And I absolutely hated it.

How did this thing win a Caldecott?

It’s a wordless book about a bright blue Strawberry Snatcher who wears a Red and Green cape and a purple hat. He chases after the gray lady, trying to snatch her strawberries. The problem is, the Gray Lady (since she IS gray) keeps disappearing into the dusk.

Then the Strawberry Snatcher is diverted by a bramble of raspberries. The Grey Lady returns home to her family and enjoys the strawberries with them. The end.

I wasn’t impressed. Not with the story, not with the illustrations, not with the way “BANG” ran together with “The Grey Lady” on the spine. This is a book I’m not picking up again.

Reading My Library

Read-Aloud Favorites

August 23, 2010 1 Comment by bekahcubed

I don’t often get a chance to read my library selections aloud to youngsters. Instead, I read most of my picture books silently, by myself.

As a result, most of my reviews of children’s picture books are based on, well, my own opinion of the books and how I think youngsters might respond.

But this last week, I had an opportunity to babysit for a couple of my favorite little ones–avid readers at age 4 and 2.

I brought along a selection of library books and we started reading them one by one. We’d gotten about halfway through my stack when they started asking for repeats (instead of continuing through.)

These three titles by Jim Aylesworth were the ones they wanted to hear again:

Children's books by Jim Aylesworth

Country Crossing tells the simple story of a railroad crossing in the nighttime country. All is quiet except for crickets chirping and an owl hooting. But the a car drives up and is stopped at the tracks. The train approaches and departs. The car starts up again and drives away. And the country returns to its quiet activity.

What makes this story unique and repeat read-aloud-able is its use of onomatopoeia and rhythmic language to give the listener a feel for the activity occurring as the car and then the train approach and recede. The illustrations by Ted Rand are old-timey and fairly realistic. I enjoyed reading this one out loud–and the children enjoyed listening and perusing its pages.

Little Bitty Mouse is an understated alphabet book that describes how a little mouse snuck into a house and explored a variety of the house’s contents. Every few pages, the story repeats the refrain

Tip-tip tippy tippy
Went her little mousie toes.
Sniff-sniff sniffy sniffy
Went her little mousie nose

The story is enjoyable, with a nice rhyme scheme and an unobtrusive alphabet element.

But the part that probably endeared it to the kids was the very end when the little bitty mousie hears a “ZZZZ” and goes to investigate. What she finds–a cat sleeping–frightens her, and she lets out a “Squeak!” (The four year old jumped every time I turned the page to see the cat and let out my own shrill pitched “Squeak!”)

Sweet Little Bitty Mousie,
Just as scared as scared can be,
Went run run run run running!
That was all she cared to see!

Jim Aylesworth’s Book of Bedtime Stories is a compilation of four stories. We started to read these a second time, but didn’t get all the way through due to the kids’ Mommy arriving home. So I’m not sure exactly what appealed; but, like the other two stories, these stories featured a pleasant rhythm and rhyme structure, fun onomatopoeia, and simple but engaging story lines.

These stories were a hit with a couple of kids–and this reader wasn’t complaining about the repeats!

Reading My Library

Bird Books

August 16, 2010 1 Comment by bekahcubed

As I continue my path through Eiseley library’s children’s picture book section, I become pickier and pickier about children’s books. So much is monotonous pages of empty words accompanied by bright splashes of illustrations that are equally empty. The rhythms start to grow old, the archetypes tedious. I get worn out.

So when I discover a book that is sweet without being saccharine, educational without being pedantic, and illustrated artistically without trying to be avant-garde, I get excited.

Dianna Hutts Aston wrote two such books that I thoroughly enjoyed coming across this month.

Mama Outside, Mama Inside tells the story of two mamas preparing for their coming children. The mama outside is a bird, preparing a nest, sitting on the eggs, bringing her hatchlings food, and teaching them to fly. Mama inside is a woman, preparing a nursery for her baby, knitting a blanket, feeding her baby, and taking her new baby to the window to see the baby birds learn how to fly.

The illustrations by Susan Graber are soft and realistic. I was excited to see that Gaber chose to portray Mama inside breastfeeding her child (discretely) while Papa brings a pillow. The image of an infant being fed a bottle has become iconographic–but I’d much rather have the normative image portray breastfeeding! Artists like Gaber deserve kudos for subtly working towards re-establishing breastfeeding as a normative practice.

An Egg is Quiet

The Second Dianna Aston book I was impressed with was An Egg is Quiet, illustrated by Sylvia Long. The book starts with the simple words “An egg is quiet. It sits there, under its mother’s feathers…on top of its father’s feet…buried beneath the sand. Warm. Cozy.” And on it goes, telling about the features of different eggs–their colors and shapes and sizes and patterns and textures. The main text is in large script, with only a short sentence or phrase per page. The bulk of the page is composed of naturalistic illustrations of different eggs, labeled for easy identification, and more detailed descriptions of whatever principle the main script is discussing in smaller (but still not small) print.

This is a delightful book that is sure to have children pouring for hours over its illustrations and dreaming about seeing all the different birds (and a few reptiles) and eggs. Parents could easily read just the large script to their youngest children, while exploring the smaller print in more detail with their slightly older children. I can see this title holding the attention of preschoolers all the way through middle-elementary school children. (It held my attention pretty well too–and I had to go back to check out Sylvia Long’s illustrations in better detail.) This is the nature book I wish I had in my home growing up.

Reading My Library

Moonbear by Frank Asch

July 30, 2010 1 Comment by bekahcubed

Moonbear is an imaginative little bear who loves the moon more than anything else in this world.

In Moondance by Frank Asch, Moonbear dances with the clouds (fog), with the rain, and with the moon (via its reflection in a puddle). In Mooncake, Moonbear wants to take a bite out of the moon and tries a variety of means to capture the moon so he cake take a bite. In Happy Birthday, Moon, Moonbear climbs a mountain to get close enough to the moon to have a conversation. In the conversation (held via echoes), he discovers that the moon has exactly the same birthday as him! On their birthday, Moonbear and the moon exchange gifts via an odd fate.

Moonbear books

In other Moonbear books, Moonbear puts out a sky-fire (a rainbow), raises a pet fish (who turns out to actually be a tadpole), and “dreams” that a kangaroo jumped through his yard.

While my descriptions might make it sound like the moon is animate in this little series, it is not. Rather, a variety of coincidences lead Moonbear to think that he actually is talking to, eating, dancing with, or exchanging gifts with the moon. Moonbear’s misinterpretation of natural phenomena such as reflections, echoes, rainbows, and tadpoles turning into frogs can make these books a great way to start a conversation with your preschooler about some of these scientific facts.

Besides their potential as a teaching tool, these little books are worth reading because they’re just plain fun!

Other books by Frank Asch that you and your child might find enjoyable include Baby Bird’s First Nest, Baby Duck’s New Friend, and Good Night, Baby Bear. I do not recommend The Earth and I, which is rife with earth-worshiping animism. Thankfully, none of Asch’s other works (that I’ve read) exhibit this characteristic.

Reading My Library

Books without words

July 22, 2010 Leave a comment by bekahcubed

I think I’m going to have to stop saying I’m not a fan of things–’cause it seems the moment I do, I find something to disprove whatever I just said.

Take my dislike for picture books with little to no text.

I’m not a picture person. The written word is my heart language. Illustrations are nice but I rarely do more than glance over them. I’m not a fan of picture books that don’t include text.

And then I read these two titles from Jose Aruego.

Children's books

Look What I Can Do contains five words, repeated twice (incidentally, they are the same words that comprise the title.) Nevertheless, the illustrations manage to successfully tell the story of two young water buffalo who take turns showing off and copying one another–only to find themselves in a predicament they definitely hadn’t bargain with.

The water buffalo learn their lesson, and so will your kids, in this cute pictorial representation of the age-old question: “If everybody was jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?”

The Last Laugh has even fewer words–and no sentences. Hiss. Quack. Hee-hee. A snake takes great pleasure in hissing at every animal he encounters, enjoying seeing them quake in fright. But when one little duck’s fright sends him straight into the snake’s mouth, he discovers something that makes HIM quake in fright.

The ducks get the last laugh in this little tale: Quack!

While I still think I prefer text to pictures, these stories are definitely an exception to the rule. You should TOTALLY check them out!

Reading My Library

Meet Bubba and Beau

June 1, 2010 1 Comment by bekahcubed

Bubba is the son of Big Bubba and Momma Pearl.

Beau is the puppy of Maurice and Evelyn.

Bubba and Beau are best friends. They both go around on all fours, and both are keen on chewing.

Bubba and Beau books

The Bubba and Beau books, written by Kathi Appelt and illustrated by Arthur Howard, are a hilarious set of tales about a family of Texas rednecks.

Each book boasts a full cast of characters, including Bubba, Big Bubba, Momma Pearl, Beau, Earl (the trusty pickup truck), and a whole host of other folk.

The stories are told in a mixture of Southern colloquialisms and children’s rhyming language. “Bubba and Beau loved its squishy squish. They loved its squishy squash…Sister, that mud hole was better than pickled eggs.” “Yes siree, those relatives caught up till the cows came home.” “Y’all come back now, ya hear?”

Each story tells a tale in a series of [very] short chapters, describing some typical childhood event: kids getting dirty and not wanting a bath, a baby not wanting to sleep until daddy takes him for a car ride, getting primped and kissed when relatives visit, etc.

The stories focus on childhood events, but they’re really probably of more interest to adults than to children. Mommies (or adept babysitters) will laugh at the typical description of a child’s behavior in each situation. Anyone redneck (which, in books, generally means anybody conservative) will smile and nod when Big Bubba tears up at the sight of so many flags on the stamps he buys from the post office. Anybody who knows older men, particularly of the farming variety, will enjoy the “conversation” the men have on the front porch of the Feed and Seed. “Good day to shoot the breeze.” “Yep.” “Yes siree.”

This is definitely a series worth checking out the next time you’re at your local library. Even if your children don’t entirely appreciate their humor, you’ll undoubtedly get a few giggles out of this fun little set of books.

For more comments on children’s books (counting and otherwise), check out Carrie’s blog Reading My Library, which chronicles her and her children’s trip through the children’s section of their local library.