Santa vs. The Penguins

We have an on-going interest in our house in the North and South Poles.  Ben likes to look at maps and ask about where Santa lives and whether it is colder or warmer than where the penguins live.  So, I decided to get us a bit more focused on learning about what's going on at the ends of the Earth.

Firth, we revisited one of our favorite children's books, The Polar Express - which, of course, doesn't tell us too much about the North Pole, but introduces it as a wonderfully cold and magical place where Santa lives.  For our weekly chapter book, I picked one about the South Pole, Mr. Popper's Penguins - a fun little book about a man who is fascinated with explorations to the South Pole and finds himself with a house-full of penguins.  Both these books have been turned into movies (starring Tom Hanks  and Jim Carrey, respectively).  I haven't seen either of them, but look forward to seeing them, along with Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two (featuring the voice of Robin Williams), when the weather gets a bit colder.  I also wonder if the kids would enjoy one of my favorites, March of the Penguins.

We've also explored a few children's books about Inuit culture, as well as others about animal migration, and a few random fun ones just set in the North or South poles.  They include:

• The Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Tale - Lydia Dabcovich
• Ookpik - Bruce Hiscock
• The Adventures of a South Pole Pig - Chris Kurtz
• Nothing Ever Happens at the South Pole - Stan & Jan Berenstain
• Thank You Aunt Tallulah - Carmela LaVigna Coyle (also good for encouraging the writing of thank you notes!)
• The North Pole Penguin - Christopher Payne

For more scientific information, we visited the non-fiction section of the library and checked out the Eyewitness book, Arctic and Antarctic where we learned more about the differences between the two poles and a great deal about the animals that live there.  We also learned about how climate change is affecting the polar ice caps.  North Pole, South Pole is also filled with fun and easily accessible factual information.

The muskox is one of the few mammals to live in the Arctic year-round

 I anticipate that as winter and Christmas approach that we will revisit many of these books, and a great deal more.  There are also so many fun holiday crafts that incorporate ice and penguins, so while I'm enjoying the last of the summer weather, there is certainly lots to look forward to in the coming months!

Book of the Week: Around the World with Mouk

A recent favorite in our house is Around the World with Mouk by Marc Boutavant.

This colorfully illustrated book follows Mouk, a large-headed bear, as he travels the world.  Ben has recently been fascinated by maps and learning about new countries - who lives in them, where they are, and what different people do in different places.  This book has been a welcome addition to our travel literature.  Each page is filled with such intricate details that I think one could read the book a hundred times and still discover something new.  As we learn about specific new countries, it has also been nice to pull out this book and look more closely at specific pages.  The other day, for example, after a meal of Greek food, I opened the book up to the page below and shared stories of my own travels to Greece.  The bright colors and adorable animals on each page are an invitation to discussion and imagination that cannot be ignored.

Mouk in Greece

Danny the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl

I have been choosing chapter books to read with Ben just by remembering books I enjoyed as a child.  I haven't gone back to read them before sharing them with Ben, and while I can read ahead a bit as I go and censor the books here and there, Danny the Champion of the World is probably a good example of why I may need to start reading books to myself in their entirety again before sharing them with Ben.  Not to say that this isn't an amazing book, but just that I only really remembered just loving it, not quite the fact that some of the themes may have been a bit too much for a three-year-old.

On the heels of Charlotte's Web, I was ready to leave death behind and move on to a nice story about a boy and his father.  Danny the Champion of the World is the story of young Danny and his father.  They live modestly in a trailer next to their gas station, and one day, Danny discovers that his father is a pheasant poacher.  As his father takes him into the fold of the poaching world, with the secret that pheasants love raisins, the two begin to scheme about how effectively to steal all the pheasants from the rich man who owns the nearby Hazell's Wood.

Well in the first couple pages of the book, Danny's mother dies.  I actually tried to skip over that paragraph, but right away when Danny revealed that he lived with his dad, Ben asked where his mom was.  When I revealed that his mother had died, Ben then spent the next couple chapters obsessed with what would happen to Danny if his father died.  Of course that fear wasn't totally unfounded as early on Danny's dad does disappear into Hazell's Wood and Danny has to go after him.

We then had to address the issue of the keepers in the woods who carry guns.  Ben wanted to know if they would shoot Danny's dad?  What were their names?  Why did they need guns?  After all, the ENTIRE book is about hunting and shooting, so I should have anticipated this conversation!  We also had a few interesting discussions about why Danny's father needed to take the pheasants, and we delved a little into the idea of wealth disparity and whether it is ever ok to take things that do not belong to you.  Admittedly, it is difficult to have gray area conversations with a three-year-old without causing too much confusion.  Well, at least with my three-year-old, so I tried to keep it as simple as I could while still addressing the issues he seemed to find most fascinating.

All in all though, this is such a nice book about the relationship between a boy and his dad, that I liked when we settled into the plot and started to focus on the positives.  I made the decision not to abandon the book just because I didn't like all the hunting and stealing.  I was rewarded a week or so later when we traveled to England and stayed at a property with pheasants where people do a lot of hunting.  Ben recalled instances from the book and kept asking me if I remembered when Danny went to the woods and when the pheasants ate the raisins.  Then one morning at breakfast, as we were all suffering from jet lag, some of our relatives were discussing various sleeping pills - Ben got a kick out of the conversation and explained how sometimes pheasants eat sleeping pills (this was described as a way to catch pheasants in the book).  Everyone else was a bit confused, but I was glad to see that he had been listening to the story and was eager to talk more about it.

My lesson about reading ahead has been learned, but I've also learned that sometimes when you think certain subjects are over your kids' heads, they might still get something fun and useful out of them.

Charlotte's Web

When Ben and I first embarked on our foray into chapter books, I expressed my excitement about sharing Charlotte's Web with him.  An elementary school teacher friend of mine warned me that he would probably be required to read it in second grade, and that I shouldn't spoil the wonder of it all for him now.  I definitely took that advice into consideration.  But then I discarded it, perhaps for the selfish reason that I wanted to re-read the book.  But, also because Ben has been fascinated and confused by death lately, and I thought perhaps Charlotte's circle of life wisdom might be helpful to him.  Plus, I figure whatever we read now he is unlikely to remember four years from now.

And so we began the story of little Fern saving the runt Wilbur from certain death.  Right away, Ben enjoyed the talking animals and was quite interested in how Wilbur would be saved from death, why the farmers wanted to kill him, and why they planned to eat him later in the year. These weren't all questions I was prepared to answer - I had forgotten just how much death was truly part of this story.  But, we soldiered on.

Despite the focus on Wilbur and Charlotte and Fern's constant presence on a stool observing their lives, Ben was most interested in Avery, Fern's older brother, and Templeton, the rat.  Ben really enjoyed Avery's misbehavior, the fact that he keeps frogs in his pocket, and his attempt to capture Charlotte for his collection.  Ben had many questions about Templeton's collection of garbage, and truly enjoyed the scene involved Templeton's rotten egg.  I liked seeing all the fun Ben was having with the various characters, even though his questions about what was going on in the book sometimes took more time to answer than the time we actually spent reading the book on a given night.

And then we neared the end.  I started to feel myself fearing Charlotte's death - wondering how Ben would react and whether he would be upset by it all.  I knew it was coming and I started to brace myself.  What I did not remember was that Wilbur first had to be saved and win his special prize at the county fair.  I was more than a little annoyed to find out that after all the time, and having bottle-fed Wilbur since birth, that Fern could not be bothered to attend the prize ceremony - because she was off riding the ferris wheel with a boy.  It was so disappointing.  I know Fern's actions were just another example of how the world moves on and people change and can't always stick around when you need them to, but it just seemed so sad that she dropped in a second someone she had loved for years.  And for a boy.  Of course, I reminded myself that this book was written in 1952, but the scene has really stuck with me and overshadowed everything else about this book - and made me doubt that I will introduce my girls to the story when they get older.  They can wait until they have to read it in elementary school - and are better equipped to discuss and deal with my tirades against this sterotypical depiction of young girls in literature.

Then Charlotte died.  Like I said, I knew it was coming - but I still cried.  A genuine tear slid down my cheek. Ben noticed and we had the following exchange:

• Ben:  Mom, why did Charlotte die?
• Me: Because it was her time.
• Ben: That means she won't go back to the farm with Wilbur?
• Me: That's right, but Wilbur brought all her eggs back so her children will be born there.
• Ben:  But why are you sad?
• Me:  Because Charlotte died and when things die, sometimes we feel sad.
• Ben:  But Mom, Charlotte is a spider!

And then I realized with that conversation what should have been obvious from the beginning of trying to explain and deal with death - that all kinds of deaths are different and trying to create analogies among them doesn't always work.  There are some nice messages about death in Charlotte's Web for sure - and I am sure they will translate for some kids to the death of a human relative - or perhaps they would be more closely appropriate for the death of a beloved family companion animal.  Then it made me think more about dealing with death with children - and how there are so many more complexities involved than simply trying to explain why people die or where people go when they die.  There is the death of a parent which is different than the death of a sibling which is different that the death of an uncle or the death of someone after a prolonged illness or a sudden accident.  Which is all to say that there can't be one universal way of introducing this topic to your child or getting them to understand it.  But, also to say that I guess we just keep talking about it - in a way that is comforting but hopefully not obsessive.

So, in the end, while I was angry with Fern for ditching Wilbur in his finest hour, I still think there was so much value in sharing this book with Ben at this time.  Not just for the information it gave me about death which will come in handy as our discussions evolve, but because of the fun he had hearing the stories of the animals and Avery over the week it took us to read the book.  I suppose that's ultimately what makes a book a classic - something we can fall in love with in the moment, but that also keeps us wondering and thinking for a long time to come.

Children's Author of the Week: Oliver Jeffers

I first heard of Oliver Jeffers back in 2010, at my baby shower for Ben, when I received his book Up and Down from my wonderful friend, Eleanor.  I fell in love immediately with the illustrations and the story of two best friends, a little boy and a penguin.  When the penguin becomes determined to fly, the two are separated, and must find their way back to each other.  Ben and I then went back to read Lost and Found where the little boy and penguin are first introduced.

Then one day while shopping for a birthday gift for one of Ben's classmates, I came across The Day the Crayons Quit, a really fun book about a box of crayons that decides it time to go on vacation.  Each color writes a letter to the boy who normally draws with them to let him know why they need a break.  Each letter is colorful and clever, though I have to admit I had a bit of a problem with some of the gender assumptions of some of the colors (like pink, as one would expect).  But, all in all, it is a really cute book - a fun story for my older son, and a nice way to learn colors for my younger girls.

This week we borrowed The Way Back Home about a boy and a martian who run into each other on their respective trips to the moon.  It is, again, a cute story of friendship with delightful illustrations.  I was happy to learn that Jeffers has about ten more picture books for us to explore and enjoy.  I do wish he had a few with little girl main characters on adventures, but I'm hopeful that they're in the works!

Everything England

In a little less than two weeks, our family is headed to England for a little adventure.  Assuming we survive the flight, we are looking forward to spending about twelve days in a small town located about an hour outside of London.  Whenever I travel, I like to immerse myself in books set in the place where I'm traveling.  When it comes to England, of course, this makes for a very broad reading selection.  Here are just a few I've enjoyed over the years.

• The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follet
• Drood - Dan Simmons
• The Crimson Petal and the White  - Michael Faber
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie 
• 84 Charring Cross Road - Helene Hanff
• Thursday Next Series - Jasper Fforde
• The Adrian Mole Series - Sue Townsend (YA)

As we prepare for our trip, I have also been seeking out children's books by British authors.  This week we've been reading:

• Beatrix Potter's Stories
• All things Roald Dahl (after finishing James and the Giant Peach, we've just moved on to Danny the Champion of the World)
• Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

I'm hoping our trip will bring me some quiet time to curl up with a blanket, a warm cup of tea, and a wonderfully British novel.

Japanese Children's Stories

When I was a child, we had a number of books in our house that were collections of children's stories from different parts of the world.  My favorite was Japanese Children's Favorite Stories.  I read the stories over and over - and like all folktales from no matter the region, they were about goblins and animals and strange people learning the values of kindness.  The characters ate delicious foods and traveled to far away places.  Everything about the stories and pictures was magical to me.  Along with this book, we also had two other books of Japanese Children's stories:  Kintaro's Adventures and Urashima Taro.

When I read to Ben before bed, we usually read a couple chapters from whatever chapter book we're on, and then if he's still awake, I let him pick out a book from his bookshelf.  For the past couple nights, he has picked Kintaro's Adventures - and asked specifically for the "story about the rice cakes" - which is the story of an old man who shares his rice cakes with some very hungry mice who in return for his kindness present him with a magic bag of rice.  I think Ben likes the idea of the rice cakes rolling down into the mouse hole, but it's been fun to see him laugh and get excited about stories that I really enjoyed myself as a child.  I'm looking forward to digging out some of my other folklore collections to share with him.