More Literarature Colloquy

"It's the dinosaur book!" Andrew said when he came home from work and looked in the book bin.

He was having trouble hiding his excitement and was almost bouncing up and down like Rachel does when she gets excited.

"If the dinosaurs came back! I loved this book when I was younger."

He opened it up and started reading it to himself, giddy as a schoolboy. I'll admit that I remember reading that book as a child as well--I was into dinosaurs, but mostly just because David was into dinosaurs. I think they even made a movie of this book...or maybe it was just featured on the Reading Rainbow. I don't know. I was making dinner and wasn't focusing on childhood memories. One thing I knew though was that only one thing could make this book continue to be a childhood classic...

"Why don't you read it to your daughter?" I suggested.

"Oh, yeah!" he said, grabbed her, and started reading his beloved childhood story to her. I don't think I've ever heard him read to her with such expression. He even inserted her name in the last line of the book, making it read that "they would make great pets for [Rachel] who love[s] dinosaurs," instead of just saying "people."

When he was finished reading her the story he looked over some of the other books.

"You got a lot of dinosaur books," he commented, putting all the books back in the bin and leaving it on the floor.

"Well, Rachel likes dinosaurs," I said from the kitchen, "But can you guess which books she picked out herself?"

"Was this one of them?" he asked, carrying Whose Baby Am I? into the kitchen.


"Yes!" I said, "How did you know?"

Rachel had pulled herself up on the book bin and then dug through all the books until she came across this one. She lifted it out of the bin with both hands and fell down onto her bum so that she could look at it. It's the story she found in the tepee--it has some really cute pictures and she seemed to enjoy them a lot. So much, in fact, that when I picked her up to leave the tepee she took the book with her.

I'm so glad to have a baby who loves to read. I just need to somehow get her to stop trying to eat the books, or accidentally rip them--it's an ongoing battle at our house.

And for those of you who are looking for some good children's books, of the fifteen books we just returned to the library, some of our favorites were Pots and Pans, Let's Go Visiting, The runaway dinner, and Mouse's First Valentine.

Rachel kept choosing to read Mouse's First Valentine over and over again. She just loved it for some reason. We own a book by Williams/Vivas and we read it a lot, so that's why I think she enjoyed Let's Go Visiting. Pots and Pans was just cute. And The Runaway Dinner, well, Rachel didn't really like that book but Andrew and I thought it was absolutely hilarious.

So there you have it. I love picture books. My favorite part of working in the acquisitions/cataloging department at the HBLL was that I was one of the first people to see all the children's books. We only got one shipment of juvenile books per year, and that shipment was usually before the books even hit the shelves in many other libraries because they were sent to us for review. I got to unpack them and enter them into the library's catalog system before sending them off to a full-time cataloger. Usually we'd get them in the summer or early fall--and I just loved getting to handle each one (and read it, if it struck my fancy). I probably read more children's books in one sitting as a university student than I ever will get to again in my whole life!