Book Reviews

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts featuring book reviews. This one is going to be about our favorite books for Lucy, by which I mean, books that Lucy loves that we also love. I should stress that that particular distinction is indeed important, as there are some books that Lucy loves that we don't enjoy reading, or that we actively despise. Seriously. We hide them. And then we feel bad. But really, I just cringe every time she drags over Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? (which she did, just a few hours ago before she went down for her nap). It's a lovely book with lovely pictures, but reading it is a trial.

[Before I go any further, in the interest of full disclosure, the book images and links below take you to Amazon, in case you would like to purchase a book. I recently signed up for the Amazon Associates program, which means we get a commission when people buy stuff after following our links. Monetizing the blog. Oh yes. We are.]

One of my own favorite stories when I was a kid was by James Marshall (no relation) and featured two hippos named George and Martha. Martha made split pea soup for George, but George hated split pea soup. But George also wanted to avoid telling Martha that he didn't like her soup, so he poured his soup into his galoshes. I loved this story. What's not to love? It had hippos, dreaded split pea soup (I hated it too!) and galoshes (which I thought were really really cool because my Dad had some that went on over his dress shoes and I really really wanted a pair).

Anyway, not too long ago, we discovered a treasury of George and Martha stories:



It is awesome. There are 35 George and Martha stories, along with some background and discussions with other children's authors. Buy it for a child you love (but not Lucy, as we already have it). Actually, just get anything by James Marshall. He has a whole series of fairy tales (Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs) and we've borrowed them from the library and found them to be delightful. They're pretty straight-ahead in their rendition of the classics, but with nice illustrations, and just enough understated James-Marshall-ish gestures. You can't go wrong with his stuff.

Another related favorite is Miss Nelson Is Missing!, which is illustrated by James Marshall (still no relation) but written by Harry Allard. It features a very nasty elementary school teacher. I loved this book, and Lucy seems to enjoy it.

I see that there are now some sequels to it, but I don't know how they are. We've been burned by sequels before. For instance, I am a big big fan of the original Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, by Judi Barrett

I liked this book a lot when I was a kid, and my brother liked it even more. Apparently (I don't remember this) my brother brought this home from the library EVERY week. It drove my mother crazy. But it's a fun book. A while ago, I was at a bookstore and saw that there was a sequel called Pickles to Pittsburgh. I bought it in a very nice double-issue with both the original Meatballs and this together. I'm not even going to include an image and link here because it's just awful. We gave it away to the library book sale. It was that bad.

If you really enjoy the giant food of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, you should instead check out The Giant Jam Sandwichby John Vernon Lord. I love the illustrations in this one, and the rhyming story is very cute. It features a lovely community of Itching Down, which is plagued by wasps. They come up with an ingenious way to rid themselves of the pest (hint: the title). I love it, and so does Lucy:

This is actually one that we got as a used library book -- I think it's one that Aunt Maggie and Aunt Judy actually shipped to the beach from their library's discard sale.

If you're looking for stories that feature mice (and wow, there are SO many kids' books that do!) and bikes and cheese and France, look no further than the wonderful Anatoleby Eve Titus. We discovered this at a little bookstore in New Hampshire (I think) and as soon as we saw the mice bicycling through France, we knew we had to have it (in fact, Lucy wasn't even born yet when we bought it!).

We also have the sequel, Anatole and the Catwhich is also lovely.

Apparently, there are more in the series, though we haven't yet had a chance to check them out. But so far, the series is terrific.

Lucy also loves another book about Paris, called This is Parisby Miroslav Sasek. It was a present from Tamara (no surprise) and it's a charming portrait of the city. It was first published in 1959, so this is a re-issue, with some slightly updated bits, but mostly true to the original.


The images are amazing, and there's all kinds of amusing details. Lucy *really* wants to go to Paris!

That's all for now; Lucy is awake and it's time to go read something!