Sharing the Love

A wonderful thing happened the other night. In a darkened bedroom with the curtains drawn and a lamp lit, my little girl pointed up to her bookshelves and said, "I want that one there, Mummy. The one in the middle. The one with the mouse." "What, this one?" I replied, hopefully, picking up Slow Loris by Alexis Deacon. "Yes." Heaven!

I have always, always loved this book. Originally published in 2002, it was Alexis Deacon's first book and, amongst other accolades, was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Best Books of All Time.* It's a work of comedy genius and if you've never experienced Slow Loris, you are in for an absolute treat.

Everyone at the zoo thinks that Loris is boring, because he's SO slow. It takes him ten minutes to eat a satsuma, twenty minutes to get from one end of his branch to the other and an hour to scratch his bottom (this is a particularly favourite part for Little C). But what no one knows, is that Slow Loris has a secret: at night, he likes to do things FAST!

I loved reading this book with Little C and I was even happier when she asked me to read it again, and then again the following morning. Sharing things you love is one of the great joys of having a small person and I can't think of anything lovelier than enjoying a book we both love, cooking together, playing the piano together and making things together. I can only hope that there will be more and more of these magical moments as she gets older. There is so much to look forward to. Lucky me!

* More on this list in a future post, I think.

Read it Again!

Read it again, Daddy!

One of the things that always pleasantly surprises me about reading with a small person is their amazing ability not to get bored. I remember once going to a talk about children and reading and being told the statistic that on average children will read the same book 40 times. 40? Yes, 40! And I'm beginning to suspect that that's a conservative estimate.

Every single night for the last three weeks, I have had the pleasure of reading from Yummy by Lucy Cousins. It is a brilliant book, but a very dark book indeed – no doubt about it. Foxy Loxy does bite the heads off Ducky Lucky, Cocky Locky, Goosey Poosey and co. The wolf does swallow up Little Red Riding Hood and her poor sick granny and the woodsman then really does go on to hack his head off. From the format of the book, the level of the text and the bright, cheerful illustration it's obvious that this collection of traditional tales is aimed at two-year-olds but to me it's a bit scary. Lucy Cousins' stories and illustrations are pretty terrifying (albeit terrifying in primary-coloured way) but Little C cannot get enough of them. She gets five stories (or sometimes more) a night and if she had her way, they would all come from Yummy.

Just a few of our current favourites

Mummy however, has a lower tolerance for repetition and limits this anarchic toddler-fodder to two or three stories per night with the remains of the quota made up from a regular selection of firm favourites. I love it when we like the same books and I always feel a little bit proud when she chooses a Walker Book. A Bit Lost by Chris Haughton, I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klaassen and the fabulously feminist The Princess and the Pony by Kate Beaton never fail to please. But we also love The Gruffalo (who doesn't?), The Storm Whale, Orange Pear Apple Bear and just about anything illustrated by Britta Teckentrup. We like books that rhyme, books with lots of different voices (even if my accents are a bit inconsistent), funny books and above all, books with animals in them.

It's nice to bring new books into our (not-so) little library, but we will always return to the old favourites. Even if we have read them a time or two too many!

Read Me a Story

So you may have noticed that my most recent blog post was a little bit different from what I normally write. There was less about me and mine and more about the books that I have been reading and enjoying. I've really missed writing here, as it's something very much for me, and I have come to the realisation that if I want to write I need to actively make the time to do it and then just do it! Now, reading on the other hand is something that I can always find time to do (especially on the train into London) and if I write about reading then I have the perfect prompt – something to write about that I'm passionate about and that I do all the time so, in theory, I should always have something to write about.

I am seriously lacking creativity in my life right now, so this is my way of getting some back. Bear with me while I figure out how it will work. At the moment, I'm thinking that during the week I will post about one or two of Little C's books (and naturally about her) then at the weekend, I will post about the books that I read for pleasure (and whatever else has brought a bit of pleasure into my life). The main thing, though, is that I will be writing, and hopefully that will lead to me making, baking, getting out and about a bit more and generally making more of my life. (At least that's the theory!) So here goes.

This week, for the very first time, Little C read us her bedtime story. The story of choice was The Biggest Kiss by Joanna Walsh and Judi Abbot (published by Simon and Schuster). It's a follow up to The Perfect Hug from the same team, which we enjoyed a great deal in boardbook. When we first read The Perfect Hug, I didn't get it. It didn't scan particularly well, it didn't rhyme brilliantly and there wasn't a huge amount of story, but then one night something just clicked and we discovered the real flow of the book. And it was magic. Trust in editors and go with it. Just reading the words as they come, without trying to get them to fit into the regular norms was lyrical and lovely and made all the difference in the world to our reading. And I think this must be what has helped Little C to love the book so much and to remember practically all the words so that she could read the book to us. I think that these two books are poetry and we'll remember her reading her first story to us for a very long time. Thanks to Aunty Laura, Uncle Mark, Adam and Sam for such a lovely present.

The second book that I'd like to share with you this week is the rather scrumptious Deep in the Woods by Christopher Corr (published by Frances Lincoln), which we bought last weekend at The Hambledon in Winchester.  It is luminous and lovely with almost-neon colours that shout out of the pages. The artwork is charming and the story, with its group of animal friends is delightful. There are no bad characters in it, everyone is friendly and they work together to find a way that they can co-exist happily. The sense of community fosters a kindness in the book that is all too often missing, sacrificed for a bit of dramatic tension or some mild peril. A really special book that I'm sure will stay in rotation for a good while yet.