Posts Tagged ‘69’

If you never imagined that your little baby could leap over tall buildings, soar across the sky in a hot air balloon, or surf a gnarly wave…you haven’t met Adele Enerson. When her newborn Mila was asleep, she would take a few minutes and create a whimsical “scene” around the baby and snap a picture. She created the blog milasdaydreams.blogspot.com to share the enchanting pictures and it has since attracted millions of viewers worldwide.

Like many unique and creative forces online, her blog has been turned into a book, When My Baby Dreams, available this month. With a new baby on the way, we can’t wait to see what Adele might have in store for us next.

Available at Amazon.com

* Mila’s Daydreams on YouTube

* Adele shares her story and book publication on the Today show on January 17th.

* Follow Mila’s Daydreams on Facebook

In an age when children seem mesmerized by iPads and smart phones and things that go bleep and bloop, Press Here is giggly proof that they don’t need all that to have a good time. Readers are first instructed to do what the title says: Press here, with an arrow indicating a yellow dot. You do, you turn the page — and the dot has turned red!

Readers are next instructed to shake the book, turn it upside down, and do other actions, as the dots multiply, diminish, change colors, move across the page, and otherwise “react” to what you’ve just done. It’s a simple idea, but a powerful one: Kids and adults alike giggle wildly as they read this book. And it’s proved so popular that it all but flies off bookstore shelves, so the next time you see a copy, grab it: You may not be so lucky again!

Press Here, $10

The book’s title is I’ll Tell You Why I Can’t Wear Those Clothes, and that’s a good thing, because that’s exactly what legions of young children would like to explain to their parents, and can’t. Many children suffer from a little-understood and almost unknown disorder called tactile defensiveness. Seams and tags may bother them, or tight shoes, or clothing that doesn’t feel “right.” They may avoid touching things that are sticky or dirty, or may act in socially awkward ways due to their dislike of touch.

Written by a mom with her own tactile defensive daughter, I’ll Tell You Why I Can’t Wear These Clothes explains, in language simple enough for a kindergartener to understand, why clothes bothers these kids, why they can’t help it, and invites them to think about what could help them cope. Indeed, not just think about it, but write down their thoughts or ideas, in spaces provided by the book.

I’ll Tell You Why I Can’t Wear These Clothes is a short, easy read that will linger with parents and children who dread getting dressed, and help them work their way through the kinks.

I’ll Tell You Why I Can’t Wear These Clothes, $30

Goodnight iPad: A Parody for the Next Generation by Ann Droyd

We are a people obsessed. Our devotion and dependence on all things technology and electronics takes over most aspects of our daily life. We tweet, we Facebook, we game, we download the coolest app, we share the latest viral video from YouTube with our friends - all via our iDevice.

There is much chatter in the parenting-sphere about how this constant buzz affects our children and their healthy development - NYTimes “Why Parents Lie to Let Kids Join Facebook” - TIME “Bringing Up Baby in the Digital Age” - and - SF Gate “New Child Safety iPhone App.”

So for the kid in your house with a refined sense of humor, this parody on the well known classic can provide a lesson in finding time to power down. A day-in-the-life of modern day Johnny includes HD Tvs, WiFi, viral videos, and handhelds with plenty of apps. It’s a nice thought to unplug our electronic friends at the end of the day and say goodnight.

Although we’ll always treasure the calm pace of the original, this entertaining homage will no doubt provide young ones with an appropriate end-of-day reminder to find quiet for sleep. (Parents might need the reminder too!)

Ann Droyd is the pseudonym for IRA/CBC Children’s Choice winner, David Milgrim, who has written and illustrated over twenty picture books for young readers.

Available at Amazon.com and Independent Booksellers

Richard Scarry is justly famous for his Busytown series, extraordinarily detailed drawings of lederhosen-wearing anthorpomorphic kitty cats, and a worm driving an apple car. Busytown is great to look at, don’t get me wrong. But I never have enjoyed reading Richard Scarry’s works aloud. Though he’s a genius illustrator, he doesn’t have the same knack with the words. Sentences feel stilted and strange in the mouth; paragraphs don’t flow.

Thus, we prefer the books that Scarry collaborated on with his wife, writer Patricia. Her simple-yet-swinging sentences have bounce and rhythm; they make you smile when you read instead of stumbling. In a series of Little Golden Books that Patricia and Richard did together in the ’50s and ’60s, the talents of both are shown at their peaks.

Richard’s work took a more cartoonish turn in the ’70s, but in the Little Golden Books, bunnies and dogs and cats and bears are rendered in soft, blurry paint. Richard’s whimsical style is evident, but the paintings have more depth and appeal than Busytown’s crowded landscapes. And Patricia’s stories, sweet nothings about snuggling on pillows or pet puppies, are awfully fun to read. Best of all: When Bunny Grows Up, reissued recently in hardcover. Little Bunny’s relatives wonder what Little Bunny will become when he’s grown. A circus clown, a policeman, a cowboy? But Little Bunny knows what he wants to be: A daddy bunny who takes good care of his baby bunnies. If you can read the end without choking up, you’re stronger than we are.

This time of year the slight hint of fall in the air might easily be missed if it weren’t for the halloween candy in the grocery stores and costumes in catalogs. There are more natural ways of noticing the passage of seasonal time and we love watching Amanda Blake Soule and her family show us how they do it in Maine.

Last year, we were inspired to encourage imagination at home reading her book The Creative Family. Her latest book is The Rhythm of Family: Discovering a Sense of Wonder through the Seasons written with her husband Stephen Soule. They chronicled a year in their lives with reflective essays, family insights, projects, activities, recipes, and book recommendations that follow the rhythm of the seasons. Along with their five children, they find that spending time in nature creates deep family bonds, promotes personal strength, and helps slow down the hectic pace of modern life.

“A year around the sun becomes a spin of the earth on which a whole family rides.” Amanda Blake Soule

Available at Amazon.com and Independent Booksellers

At what age should a child be able to remove his glass eye and use the socket as a bottle-opener? When is it appropriate to plunder the neighbors, after or before family dinner? How can one turn an unassuming minivan into a pirate schooner? All these questions and more are answered in this complete Guide to Pirate Parenting, probably the only parenting guide you’ll ever read that neither has an opinion on sleep training nor time-outs.

There is advice both out-there (how to remove an octopus from your child’s hair) and strangely sensible: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to be a pirate, and he’ll steal other people’s fish for a lifetime.” There are pirate-themed nursery rhymes, checklists to chart your pirate’s developmental progress, and even suggestions for pirate-compliant discipline methods, such as smacking your teen in the head with an oar. Somehow this seems like a much more appropriate bridal-shower gift than one of Dr. Sears’ enormous tomes.

Guide to Pirate Parenting, $11.99

Little kids giggle when they’re talking about butts. So has it always been, and so will it always be. Endless repeating of the phrase “We talk about that when we’re in the bathroom” will not change it. So why fight it, when there’s a book like Chicken Cheeks? The simple picture book, written by Michael Ian Black of Michael & Michael Have Issues and I Love the 80’s fame, is just a series of pictures of animal’s butts, with alliterative names: penguin patootie, chicken cheeks, polar bear derriere. But it makes kids crack up.

“Chicken cheeks!” they’ll say, rocking back and forth with hysteria. “Turkey tushie!”

Ah, childhood. The sweet illustrations are by Kevin Hawkes, who’s probably best known for Library Lion. Apparently he did research at the zoo to figure out what each animals’ hindquarters look like. Now that speaks to the transformative power of literature!

You’re tired of hearing about the “right” time to have a baby. You seek advice from someone who knows that planning for a pregnancy is different these days.

In her latest edition of Dr. Miriam Stoppard’s New Pregnancy and Birth Book, the author takes into account the fact that women are becoming mothers later in life (”It’s now commonplace for a woman to pursue her career into her thirties and decide to have her first child somewhere around 35,” she writes). This updated version of the bestseller includes new info about the latest fertility treatments, antenatal tests, obstetric procedures and working during pregnancy. Also included is month-by-month pregnancy calendar highlights all the changes that are about to occur, sprinkled with tips on diet and exercise (plus the images are um, realistic).

It feels good to be acknowledged.

Available at amazon.com.

Rewind to 1974: The Dow was around 600, polyester was far too prevalent and Vogue featured Beverly Johnson on the cover. It was also the year actress Marlo Thomas released the kids’ cult classic Free to Be…You and Me, a book (the record actually preceded it) celebrating diversity and challenging stereotypes about gender, class and race.

How timely that the book’s 35th anniversary edition has just hit shelves, and Obama is now getting ready to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Free to Be has all your old faves — “Boy Meets Girl,” “William’s Doll” and Shel Silverstein’s “Ladies First” — plus selections from new contributors, including Tony DiTerlizzi of The Spiderwick Chronicles. A new CD and whimsical illustrations are also part of the makeover. Plus, all book proceeds go to the Free to Be Foundation, a subsidiary of the Ms. Foundation for Women, which benefits children and families.

Sometimes even the classics need a facelift.

Visit freetobefoundation.org.