Book Reviews (Children's Book Edition)

Lucy received some lovely books for Christmas, so I write to sing the praises of some her most recent favorites.

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

This is a lovely story with lovely pictures.  It's the tale of an old lady who goes by the name "Miss Rumphius" or "the Lupine Lady," and tells of how she planted the lupine all over her lovely land.  If you've been to Maine, you'll know what I'm talking about here -- the lupine are everywhere, and so very very lovely.  Miss Rumphius's goal (which she passes on to the young girl in the book, and thus, the reader, too) is to make the world more beautiful.  This seems a lovely aspiration.  The book pleases me and makes me want to make the world more beautiful, too.

Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown

I love the illustrations in this, which feature an adorable bear.  That bear's name: Lucy.  Too perfect.  In this book, said bear goes out into the world and finds a child. She thinks it would be great to make that child into a pet.  But, as the title explains, "Children make terrible pets."  It's a keeper.  We actually checked this out from the library and accumulated some overdue fines for it.  We got Lucy another book by this author for Christmas: YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND!, which is also pretty great.


I think our previous review of favorite children's books neglected to mention another of our favorite authors, Mo Willems.  He's responsible for the insanely popular "Pigeon" books, including such classics as Pigeon Wants a Puppy, and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, which were in heavy rotation a couple years ago.


He is also responsible for the whole Elephant and Piggie series, which seems pretty huge.  We have three or so of them; my favorite is There is a Bird on my Head:

But there are tons more. Elephant and Piggie have some great comic back-and-forth, and they discuss important questions like "Are you ready to play outside?" "Can elephants dance?" and "Should I Share My Ice Cream?"  These are the tough questions kids have to face, and Elephant and Piggie help kids figure out the answers.

We're also very excited about a new development at one of our favorite publishers: McSweeney's.  Warning: unless you have a lot of time on your hands, or a huge amount of self-restraint in the browsing of the internets, don't click that link.  You can easily lose hours (pleasant hours!) spinning around McSweeney's Internet Tendencies.  The list of grammar- and punctuation-related bar jokes is worth the price. We're also big fans of Open Letters to People or Entities Not Likely to Respond.
They now have a brand new children's imprint: McSweeney's McMullens.  This link will take you to the page with links to the first four books in the series (we've already signed up for it & so far, they are amazing!).

That's all for now, but I hope to do more book-reviewing soon.  There are so many wonderful children's books -- Lucy's luck....and so are we!!