Every Christmas (birthdays, too) Scott gives each child one special
picture book. Yes, our older girls are well past picture-book age by
now—except that you’re never past picture-book age, not really.
I’m certainly not. And this is a treasured family tradition; it’s
always great fun to see what gems he comes up with.

His picks for Christmas, 2008:

Rilla: an oldie but one of the best. Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.
Our dog-eared paperback copy was recently destroyed in that little bit
of flooding we had on my birthday. Scott replaced it with a hardcover,
because Rilla is ripe for that time-honored, giggle-inducing refrain of
“You monkeys you, you give me back my caps!”

Wonderboy: a newish Boynton book called Fifteen Animals! (Most of which are named Bob.) A perfect choice for our little guy, who loves rhythm, repitition, and all things Boyton.

Beanie: Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by the fabulous Mo Willems.
This would have been a fine choice for any of our brood, but Scott
singled it out for our belly-laughing Bean, and belly-laugh she did. We
all loved the Caldicott honor-winning combination of black-and-white
photo backgrounds and whimsical Willems art, and poor little Trixie’s
desperate attempts to communicate the disappearance of her beloved
bunny to her father are utterly priceless. A slam-dunk, daddy dear.

Rose: A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton.
This was one of the Cybils nominees, and when I read the library copy,
I knew it was a keeper. Sweet, funny story about a rather curmudgeonly
bear who, despite his best efforts, finds himself playing host to a
persistent and amiable mouse. I showed it to Scott, who instantly
pegged it as a perfect Rose book. Endearing art, charming story.

Jane: Diary of a Fly by Doreen Cronin and Harry Bliss. Various children have been given its companion books, Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider,
in years past. I believe Scott said he chose this one for Jane because
of the line about the young fly being relieved to discover that he’s
not the only kid at school who likes regurgitated food. (Cue satisfying
shriek from thirteen-year-old.)

Of course our Christmas book bounty didn’t end with the Daddy-books, but the rest of the treasures must wait for another post.

(A note about the links here: I stopped including Amazon links in
my posts a long while back, for various angsty reasons of my own.
However, a recent Kidlitosphere discussion alerted me to the copyright
question involved with using book cover images from Amazon and not
linking to that site, so in this post I have returned to my old
practice of including the Amazon link. Since I have an affiliate
account, any purchases made from a clickthrough here will earn me a
small referral fee. Wanted to be very up-front with that info! In years
past, such referrals helped pay for the maintenance of this site. For
that, I thank you!)

Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Jane Dyer.

Credit for discovering this scrumptious morsel of a book goes to my pal Lisa, who read it, loved it, and knew my kids and I would eat it up. And right she was. This charming picture book is an exploration of virtues (and a few vices) as demonstrated by one’s relationship to cookies.

"TRUSTWORTHY means, If you ask me to hold your cookie until you come back, when you come back, I will still be holding your cookie."

"COMPASSIONATE means, Don’t worry, it’s okay, you can have part of my cookie."

"ENVY means, I can’t stop looking at your cookie out of the corner of my eye—it looks so much better than my cookie. Boy, I wish it were mine and not yours."

"LOYAL means that even though the new person has a much bigger cookie, I’m sticking by you and your little cookies because you’re my very best friend."

Sweet, simple, and nourishing: this is the perfect recipe for a picture book. There is much food for discussion here. Really it’s quite an ingenious concept: Beanie, my resident six-year-old, was captivated by this illustration of qualities worth cultivating. We have often talked about ‘cultivating the virtues,’ and I think Cookies made the abstract concepts crystal clear. It also made us hungry. If you’ve given up sweets for Lent, you might want to save this one for the Easter basket.

I’m so excited! I just learned from Fuse #8 that the most beloved picture book of my childhood has been reissued—and the icing on this cake? The new illustrations are by George Booth. So! Excited!

The book: Never Tease a Weasel by Jean Conder Soule. Did you hear that, father of mine? The very one, the book we quoted a dozen times a day when my sisters and I were tiny. I remember standing in my grandma’s kitchen chanting, "Never tease a weasel, Daddy! Not even once or twice…" (The Daddy part was a bit of preschooler editorializing.)

I have hunted for this book to no avail on Abebooks and other bookfinder sources. And now, finally, FINALLY, someone at Random House has gotten smart and brought it back.  Who was the brilliant editor, I wonder? I shall have to investigate and send flowers or something. I am that thrilled.

And getting George Booth to do the art! GENIUS! George is a New Yorker cartoonist, but far more important, he was the illustrator of April Halprin Wayland’s It’s Not My Turn to Look for Grandma—which Bonny Glen regulars might recognize as another one of my favorite picture books ever. Nobody, nobody, does whimsy-with-an-edge like George Booth. He was the perfect choice, an inspired choice, for Never Tease a Weasel, and Fuse#8 seems to agree.

Another illustrator might have gone the ootsy-cutesy route and
sacchrined this puppy up by the end. Not Booth. The final image is
heartwarming without ever becoming too overtly adorable. It’s nice.
That’s what Booth brings to the book. The rhymes are exceedingly clever
at times, but it’s the illustrator that has to compliment the action in
just the right way. For example, the rabbit in the riding habit, then,
hops along in his picture, losing various accouterments as he goes
“plop ploppity plop plop.” Booth gets how to do "awkward". If the
thought of a possum in an Easter Sunday hat is silly then Booth knows
how to make such an image doubly so. Plus, he never makes the mistake
of having these ridiculous combinations make any sense. So the goat in
a coat “with a collar trimmed in mink”, looks simultaneously goatish
AND pissed off. The mule in swimming trunks (blinders still on) leaps
from the diving board in pretty much the most peculiar position
possible. And even as these various critters do their thing, they’re
enticing enough to hold a squirmy child’s attention for long periods of
time.

I was an editorial staffer at Random House Children’s when Mr. Booth was finishing up the art for Not My Turn to Look for Grandma. As I recall, he had been working on that book for a long, long time, and in the end he began coming into the RH offices to work: his idea, I believe, to get himself past the final hurdles. I was a young coffee-fetcher perched in a cubicle at the end of a long corridor, and I loved to see Mr. Booth amble down the hall in his quiet, courteous, gentle-giant way. I don’t believe we ever spoke, unless perhaps he asked once or twice if my boss, his editor, was in her office. Usually my boss was the one who went in search of him, peeking into the room down the hall and around the corner where George had set up camp. Inevitably I would hear her peal of laughter ringing down the corridor within seconds of her arrival in George’s office. He cracked her up, every time.

When the finished boards for each page would mosey past my desk, I too would dissolve into helpless giggles: George Booth’s art is quietly, deliciously killing. That sneaky old porcupine in the Grandma book! The dirty old dogs! Grandma herself, the hillbilly queen, with her knobby bun and toothless smirk, toes upspread as she slides down a haystack: children’s book art doesn’t get better than this.

And now, and now! This perfect marriage! I cannot WAIT to get my hands on a copy. Thank you, Betsy, for the heads-up!

How Do I Love You? by Leslie Kimmelman, pictures by Lisa McCue.

“How do I love you, little one? Let me count the ways…” says the mama alligator. (Or maybe it’s the daddy; who can tell with alligators?) And she begins to name all the ways she adores her young’un, much to my own young’un’s delight.

“Twelve, I’ll love you when you’re grown; thirteen, I love you small,” I read. “Read that part again, Mommy,” Beanie begs. She caught me in the midst of my Tasmanian-devil impersonation as I was whirling through the house trying to get it ready to go on the market (which it now officially is, gulp) and asked me to read this book to her, and when we snuggled up together on the couch with the smell of Windex still lingering in the air, the look on her face was like the end of a Mastercard commercial. Putting your house on the market on the spur of the moment: Hours of labor. Reading to your kid even though the realtor is about to walk in the door and the house ISN’T READY YET: Priceless.

“Read that part again!”

She loves those lines, about how the mama will love her little one when she’s grown and loves her when she’s small. At the end of the book she turns back to that page and asks me to read it “two more times.” The art makes her giggle: now the baby alligator is grinning at its reflection in funhouse mirrors. And the breadth of the mama’s assertions of love seem infinitely satisfying to this five-year-old lass.

It’s a simple book, and a sweet one. The art is lively and fun, whimsically painted in a palette of greens and blues—cool colors that manage to convey deep warmth. This parent and child adore one another, and that’s what my little girl wants to hear.

“Fourteen fifteen sixteen
each silly dance you do,
or spin you spin, or grin you grin
when you try something new.”

Eventually the alligator pair runs out of fingers and toes to count off, and the mama says that “when it comes to loving you, well, twenty’s not enough.” The little alligator is glowing with glee by this point, and Beanie’s face mirrors that emotion.

“Go back to twelve,” she says, snuggling in a little closer.

The Windex will just have to wait.