Current Kids Book Hits At My House
I’m currently sitting at the highest library check-out count of my whole life: 22, some of which are a couple random nonfictions for myself I was hoping had many more pictures than they do (looking at you especially, “Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion”), and a couple poetry books for myself. A lot of them are kids books, though: a few okay board books, and a really good current roster of picture books. I’ll tell you real quick about the grown-up books I’m enjoying, then all the many kids books!
I am about halfway through “Common Bonds: A Speculative Aromantic Anthology”, and have enjoyed a lot of the stories in it quite a bit.
“Taslīm: We are the prophets: Poems on a Coptic Girlhood” by Carolyn M. Ramzy, an Ottawa professor of Egyptian Coptic heritage has been really interesting, too. I didn’t go in knowing a ton about Coptic culture or theology, but I read the notes in back first and that gave me a good enough starting point to appreciate some of the themes presented. I learned that in Coptic Christiainity (a religious minority in Egypt), sacred music is central in worship, but women’s voices are suspect, too potentially sin-inducing, and expected to blend into the background, never heard solo or even able to be picked out individually in group singing. Ramzy writes in this context, of trying to make sense of the sacred and begin to claim one’s own voice as worthy, as a person growing up in the Coptic diaspora in Canada. There’s a lot more to it, too, and I’d definitely recommend checking this one out if you get a chance.
Kids books, though! You clicked for kids books. We’ve got a great crop of kids books we’ve been reading lately. In no particular order…
“Blueberries for Sal,” first published in 1976 by Robert McCloskey seems to be my 4 year old’s current favorite. The illustrations are nice - I love the character art of Little Sal and her mother especially, and the shocked expression on Mother Bear and how they match Little Sal’s mother’s shocked expression are great. There’s a very pleasing symmetry across the text: Little Sal does this, Little Bear does this, etc. It doesn’t necessarily sound as dated as the very classic-feeling art looks to read, but somehow I still end up slipping into that voice that I imagine newscasters or actors used in the 50s when I read it aloud. I definitely want to pick up “Make Way for Ducklings” next time I see it at the library.
Second to “Blueberries for Sal” currently as a household favorite is “How It Feels to Be A Boat” by James Kwan. The art in this one is really nice, and it flows well to read aloud without being overly sing-songy. I would describe it as basically “intro to Internal Family Systems for kids”, though it doesn’t use any therapy-speak at all or get into any traumatic stuff. You are a boat! And the many individuals who live in your belly-rooms, with their various interests and alignments (the chef, the octopus with his gadgets, the superhero waiting by his telephone, the big brass band, Daniel) usually get along, but sometimes they fight. They have different ideas about where the boat should go. But you are a boat, and you are strong. Ahoy! I love this book; it’s really quite lovely.
“Here Comes Truck Driver Hippo” by Jonathan London is also very big right now. Little Hippo is the main character and he likes pretending to be big, like when he decided to become Truck Driver Hippo for the day to deliver sand to the lion cubs so they could have a sandbox. He crosses a lot of other animals on his way to make the delivery. And then he goes home and and takes a nap in his truck. I stumbled into hot water at bed time the other night when I suggested we put the book away, because it turns out it’s become an essential part of bedtime lately for the book to be near my kid’s head in their nest of blankets on their bedroom floor (I promise they have a perfectly normal twin bed that only occasionally gets slept in; this is not a battle I care about), open to the page where Truck Driver Hippo is asleep in the bed of the truck.
We picked up “Construction Site: Farming Strong, All Year Long” from the library as a companion to the French version I had given the kids for Christmas. Since I (re)started just in the last year or so with speaking to our older kid in French, when they can communicate in English now, I often read books in French to them with an ad-hoc English translation for each sentence or page as we go along. (This is to ensure we get to keep reading French books and it’s still fun and my primarily anglophone kid doesn’t just get mad and hate French. It may not be the ideal language acquisition strategy, but neither is never getting to read in French together or making it into a chore!) The construction site books use a lot of truck-specific words though that I was struggling a bit with on the fly. So we’ve done a couple sessions now of reading them side by side, with two books open at once. The library version in English (after the ripped-out first pages we have to skip, sorry OPL I swear it wasn’t us) and our home version in French. The translation isn’t perfect; the book’s rhymes definitely flows much more nicely in English than in French. Same with the other Construction Site book we have in French now - “Bonjour les camions”. It’s a bit disappointing; the rhythm in all the books in the series works so well and they’re so pleasant to read in English! In French they’re… fine.
“Plenty of Hugs” features two moms in the pictures, but the text doesn’t really focus on that. Really it’s like a poem about abundance, and the joy in our lives that has no limit. There’s blue for every blueberry, and red for every strawberry, and plenty of hugs for you and me. It’s really beautiful and touching, and also hard to read and not tear up a little bit thinking about how violence and hate keeps so many kids from having plenty of hugs from their parents, whether that’s from bombings in Gaza or kidnappings and murders in Minneapolis. It’s hard to finish the sentence here, finish the paragraph, get back to thinking about kids books. So I went back to the book itself: “The world is full of wonders. Just look around: It’s true. There are seas for ships, and kisses for lips, so we can whisper I love you.”
“How to Say Hello” by Sophie Beer is another big, bright, colorful board book with nice pictures. ”Love Makes a Family” is the original, and there’s a few out now - I hadn’t even seen this one before though when we found it at the library! I think “Kindness Makes Us Strong” is my favorite one so far. (Every English speaking queer family you know probably has a copy of “Love Makes a Family” already. If you want to gift a board book on inclusive family themes, “Families Can” and “Families Belong” are actually a couple of my favorites to read, though kids do love the bright pictures in Sophie Beer’s work!)
Speaking of different family structures, today we read “My Friends and Me“ by Stephanie Stansbie. Each friend is introduced with the people they live with: a friend with two moms and lots of siblings, one with two dads, one with two houses, a single mom, a foster mom, one with an older sister caring for them, and the main character lives with their grandparents. It was cute. The illustrations include little snippets of text labeling different parts, like “best meal ever” labeling a tower of treats at the brunch Kate’s dads take her out. My kid enjoyed pointing at the different pieces of text: “what’s this one say?” And also was proud to know already that brunch means breakfast and lunch at the same time, since we discussed that last time grandma & grandpa were in town and we went out for it.)
“Our Home: The Love, Work, and Heart of Family” is a book I like more than my kid, sadly. It talks about it’s a lot of work to keep things going around a house and do stuff like make doctor’s appointments and make grocery lists and get everyone and all their things where they need to go... but kids can contribute too to the household by helping out with stuff, too! No idea why my four year old isn’t obsessed with it tbh.
“Robin Hood” by Bethan Woollvin is a fresh-feeling retelling of Robin Hood with eye-catching high contrast art and a she/her Robin. We’re pretty into this one. We haven’t previously read any others from the same author (or series?) but I’m definitely interested in checking more out.
“Roto and Roy to the Rescue!” by Sherri Duskey Rinker (of “Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site” fame) I had to grab when I saw it - a couple months ago we had “Roto and Roy: Helicopter Heroes” and loved it. All the Construction Site books are great, as I said before. (We even have the Christmas and Halloween special editions at home; they’re fun.) Roto and Roy are recognizable as the same author via the text: the rhyme scheme and meter are the same or very similar, and quite consistent. (this is a compliment, to be clear!) But Roto and Roy are also clearly for a slightly older audience, and have slightly more high stakes action. In “to the Rescue”, there’s a flood in what appears to be a town in a desert and Roto and Roy help rescue people who are stranded, then work through the night to lay sandbags with other helpers. In “Helicopter Heroes”, Roto and Roy help put out a wildfire, but first they rescue some people who were camping and now find themselves surrounded by fire.
“Goldfish on Vacation” by Sally Lloyd-Jones is apparently based on a true story of a fountain in some semi-famous New York City park that for a decade or so, local kids dumped their gold fish in at the start of the summer and then reclaimed a couple fish from the fountain, after someone had started maintaining the fountain, sort of? It’s a cute story but as the parent reader I have a lot of unanswered questions about the logistics here and the pet care implications!
“Izzy Paints” by Tim Miller is about a koala named Izzy who visits a museum and is inspired to become an artist. We read it and my kid immediately was inspired to visit a museum and become an artist. 10/10.
“All Are Neighbors” by Alexandra Penfold is pretty simple and repetitive in text, but the illustrations are so detailed and colorful that it’s still a pretty fun read. It’s probably about time to take this one back (we’ve renewed a couple times already) and time to hit our local indie bookstore to get a copy to keep.
“Un coin de parapluie” by David Herńandez Sevillano is one of the best French picture books we’ve read lately. It’s about a zebra at the start of the rainy season who has a big colorful umbrella, and a variety of animal friends show up and ask if they can sit under it to stay dry. “Bien sûr,” the zebra says over and over, of course! Come on in, there’s room under my umbrella! Simplicity is its strength, I think, and it’s just really charming. The page with no text, just a close up full-bleed illustration of all the animals huddled up drinking hot cocoa under the umbrella always makes us all smile.
“A Dress With Pockets” by Lily Murray is a fun read with fun illustrations to look at and pretty good text. The main character’s aunt takes her to a store that sells all kinds of dresses, and after a demonstration of the wide variety of kinds of dresses the stores sells, what the kid really wants most is a dress with pockets. Then we hear all about the cool adventures she could go on wearing a dress with pockets. Leave your tropes at the door, though: I don’t think the sentence “thanks, it has pockets” appears in this book anywhere.