It’ll “B” Forever

I was inclined to despair as I thought of how long I’d been working on the “B” picture books in my library’s collection. Surely I’d been at it at least as long as it had taken me to complete the whole “A” section. And I had only gotten to “BO”.

Then, I counted up how many books I’d read in the B’s already–and came up with 635. That’d be 179 more books than are found in the entire “A” section.

I feel a little better about how slowly I’ve been progressing through the B’s.

Here are a couple of my recent favorites:

If you’re not from the prairie… by David Bouchard
(Images by Henry Ripplinger)

Where you’re from makes a difference. It affects who you are, what kind of person you become. You can’t truly know a person until you know their background, their context.

I am from the prairie.

And if you’re not from the prairie…

“You don’t know the wind,
You can’t know the wind.

Our cold winds of winter cut right to the core,
Hot summer wind devils can blow down the door.
As children we know when we play any game,
The wind will be there, yet we play just the same.

If you’re not from the prairie,
You don’t know the wind.”

There’s plenty more you don’t know if you’re not from the prairie–plenty more that David Bouchard shares in this lovely tribute to prairie life (modern-day prairie life, not just the romanticized “prairie novel” life).

Paired with the lyrical prose are stunning scenes of prairie life painted by Henry Ripplinger, a prairie boy from Saskatchewan. Highly worth reading and seeing.

Blue Moo by Sandra Boynton

Frankly, I was a bit baffled by this book when I first opened it up. It wasn’t a story book. It–I couldn’t figure out what it was. But then I popped in the CD and fell in love. The book has illustrations and original lyrics to 18 hilarious songs, played in a variety of styles from doo-wop to blues to tango.

In the style of the Beach Boys’ iconic car songs, “Speed Turtle” includes:

“It is compact, streamlined, built to last,
shiny and green and so incredibly fast–

It’s a speed turtle! Whoa-ho!
It’s a speed turtle! Oh, no!
Man alive, it’s in overdrive. Go, little turtle, go go”

And my favorite song of all, “Your Personal Penguin” has me singing:

“I want to be your personal penguin
I want to walk right by your side…
I want to be your personal penguin from now on.”

This book/CD combo is too great not to share, so I pulled it out and popped in the disc when my friend Gena and her children (third and fifth grade?) were over one evening. C and N (as well as Gena, Anna, and I) had a blast singing and dancing along, all the while enjoying the illustrations and enjoyably laid out lyrics.

I’m contemplating buying myself a copy.

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I’m still reading my way through the children’s picture book section of my no-longer-local library. For more comments on children’s books, see the rest of my Reading My Library posts or check out Carrie’s blog Reading My Library, which chronicles her and her children’s trip through the children’s section of their local library.