Book Report: Read-Aloud Books

Amongst the picture books Your Humble Blogger read to his Perfect Non-Reader in 2004 in the first two weeks of 2004 (to keep the list at reasonable length; I’ll break it up into two entries):

• Margaret Mahy, 17 Kings and 42 Elephants; great, great, great!
• Margaret Mahy, A Summery Saturday Morning; good, but not great. Did I mention that 17 Kings and 42 Elephants is great?
• Gabrielle Vincent, Ernest and Celestine’s Patchwork Quilt; terrific wordless Belgian book, part of a series about a very large bear and his ward, a mouse.
• Paul O. Zelinsky, The Maid and the Mouse and the Odd-Shaped House; since the point of the story is to draw it as you tell it, it just doesn’t really work in a book.
• Dr. Seuss, There’s a Wocket in my Pocket; there are a couple of imperfections, but it’s still in the top twenty or thirty Dr. Seuss books, which ain’t bad.
• Stan and Jan Berenstain, The Berenstain Bears Learn about Strangers, The Berenstain Bears' Moving Day, and The Big Honey Hunt; the last is one of the early (or as I think of them ‘real’) Berenstain Bears books, and the others are from an extensive series of unrhymed topics-for-tots books, which I loathe but seem to be successful at their aim. Of course, I loathe the ‘real’ ones, too, so that’s neither here nor there.
• Bernard Waber, The House on East 88th Street; the first appearance of Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.
• Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar; enh, not one of his best
• Trinka Hakes Noble, Jimmy's Boa Bounces Back; a sequel to The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash, a substantially better book (tho' still not very good)
• Paulette Bourgeois, Franklin’s New Friend; not memorable, except that I can’t help wondering what Mr. Owl, with his classroom of a Moose, a Fox, a Beaver, a Snail, a Turtle, and a Bear could be keeping in that terrarium
• Eleanor Hudson, Can You Show Me How to Get to Sesame Street?; considering this is 90s Sesame Street, and about Elmo, it has some positives. It’s not the worst children’s book in the world.
• Sesame Street’s Zoe in Are We There Yet?; this is the worst children’s book in the world.
• Out and About with Disney’s Pooh: The Friendship Garden, by Rita Balducci and Eeyore’s Happy Tail, by Ronald Kidd, and also Walt Disney’s Winnie the Pooh: Eeyore, Be Happy, by Don Ferguson; these are among the worst children’s books in the world. They don’t actually teach bad behaviour patterns, much, but they what they do to Mr. Milne’s characters is disgusting, and the language, for anyone familiar with the originals, is an abomination.
• Maurice Sendak, Chicken Soup with Rice; this isn’t the best children’s book in the world, but it’s awfully good. It was my favorite for a portion of my toddlerhood, evidently.
• Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are; oddly enough, considering how Important and Influential this book is, there isn’t much too it. I prefer In the Night Kitchen, myself.
• Doreen Rappaport, Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; well, we gave it a try, to explain about MLK day. Not inspiring. We did better singing ‘We Shall Overcome’.
• Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, Gila Monsters Meet You At the Airport; they do, you know. Plastic ones, in the gift shop. Duty-free.
• Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archimbault, Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom; my own rendition has been irreparably influenced by the Ray Charles version.

There were more, I know, but I can’t recall what they were. And, of course, many of them I read many times, or many times a day.

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.