Note To Future Self

Those who’ve visited us understand that the library plays a rather important role in our teeny-tiny parental lives. I (Aaron) go to the local library just about every day the Sprouticus and I are home together. It helps that the library has a cafe.

It does mean we go through a lot of kids books. Yes, most (all) of them are well beyond what we need right now, but it entertains us at least.

Based on the fact I rather enjoyed our last post. I thought maybe we’d try mentioning the books which catch our eye. That should drive off our two remaining friends who don’t choose books based on their chewability. It could be worse, we could be mentioning what the adults of the household are reading, but then you’d just laugh at us, give us a wedgie and steal our lunch money.

I’m sure every parent has gone through a phase when they finally discover kid’s books which don’t talk down to kids, and decide they should waste their precious few electrons broadcasting this wondrous fact to a wide world which already knows. It’s a phase, it’ll pass. I don’t intend to become another smarmy kids book review site, but it’s a nice break and lets us do some posts with complete run-on sentences now and again.

Today’s find is When You Were Small by Sara O’Leary and Julie Morstad (illustrators are people too). It’s sweet. It even has its own blog.

I won’t ruin it for you, though if I think of a good “when you were small…” I might post it in the comments.

We recently borrowed Tae-Jun Lee and Dong-Sung Kim’s Waiting for Mummy from the library.

Holy cats. Coming from the extended psychotropic sugar high of Seuss, or even the sacchrine high of Milne and Potter, it’s a bit like stumbling out of the latest showing of Terminatatron III into that slightly dusty theatre uptown. You know, subtitles. Five minute slow pans of pigeons and the Vienna skyline. No beginning, no middle and no end. The same.

The first few times I read it, I found the book overwhelmingly melancholy. It seems to just end, without resolution. You can imagine the film version. The child standing stoically in the wan puddle from the streetlight as the snow falls quietly. Just the sound of the wind and the receding streetcar bell. Slow pan of the snow-covered city. Fade to black, roll the credits. Sniff.

Later Anna pointed out the happy ending, but it’s subtle.

The publisher has put the whole book up in PDF form. It doesn’t do it justice.

p.s. I just noticed Waiting for Mummy is actually an Australasian release, and neither Powells nor Amazon have it. Order now at Marburg books, just in time for Christmas!

p.p.s. I should of course mention that the book cover from above came from the 8 comments » | New Zealand