The Recent Library Haul

P.D. Eastman is always a safe bet when looking for a good children's book. Sam and the Firefly is about an owl who is looking for a friend when he wakes up late at night and meets Gus the firefly. They play around and eventually Sam teaches Gus how to write words in the sky with his light. Gus decides to use this power for evil and causes car crashes, airliner mishaps and, saddest of all, loss of business to a hot dog stand. When he crosses out the "hot" and replaces it with "cold" he fools the patrons who shout "We want our Hot Dogs HOT, not COLD!" Pure genius! Gus gets in trouble for being bad but when the time comes for him to save the day, Sam trusts him and helps him see that it's better to be good. This was a good beginning reader but it is a bit long so you may have to help your little bookworm to finish out the story like Z asked me to do.

Duck & Company by Kathy Caple is a short five story book about a duck and a rat that own a bookstore. They have the standard problems of a cat customer who wants to find a rat cookbook, a mother hen who is sick of reading children's books and just wants a nice scary story for herself and getting in a new "cliff-hanger" book that they stay up all night reading only to fall asleep in the store the next day. This book is very simple and should be an easy read for your beginner. Z liked the "chapter" divisions again ... he's a bit obsessed with chapters at the moment.

The kids tv channel Sprout has started showing some Frances cartoons and so we picked up our first Frances book this time out. A Bargain for Frances (Russell Hoban) is about how Frances has a certain friend who somehow always gets the best of her. Frances' mom warns her not to play with this girl but she does anyway and gets tricked out of some money. Frances then proceeds to trick the girl back and then everything is even. I wasn't especially pleased with this concept. This doesn't really fit in with the philosophy of "not stooping to their level" that I learned from my mom. I don't think I read these books as a kid so we will try another and see if the moral is a little less vindictive. Let's give the kids a few years before they learn to be mean-spirited and shady. ::wink::

Reading our way through the kids' section,
K and Z


Buy Sam and the Firefly, Duck & Company and A Bargain for Frances on Amazon or find them at your local library.