Gift Guide 2018: Neighborhood Superheroes
December 2, 2018 § 2 Comments
To say that Chad Sell’s graphic novel, The Cardboard Kingdom (Ages 7-10), has developed a cult following among my children and their friends might be an understatement. In the week we got it, each of my kids read it five times, conservatively. Then they introduced it to friends on a beach trip, where the book was passed back and forth among all five children every morning on our way to the beach and every afternoon on our way home. A few weeks after we left, my friend texted me a picture of her girls wearing handmade costumes. “They told me you would understand?” she wrote. I needed a little help from my daughter, who didn’t hesitate for a second: “Animal Queen and Big Banshee!” « Read the rest of this entry »
What’s Old is New Again
January 8, 2015 § 1 Comment
In what increasingly feels like the Age of Excess, one of my greatest parenting rushes has become the Art of Purging. Quick, toss the stacks of paint-splotched easel paper while the kids are still at school! Drag missing-pieced toys to the curb as the garbage truck rounds the corner! Bag up old PJs, hats, and shoes for Goodwill! I look around my newly streamlined rooms and closets and feel a brief, momentary thrill. In a matter of weeks, it will feel like I need to purge again.
While we’re busy tossing out, our children are busy holding on. “Wait! I want to save my (broken) balance bike for my own children!” my son laments. “Can we put my old dresses in my memory box?” asks my daughter.
It recently dawned on me that, if left to their own devices, children make marvelous recyclers. This past fall, on a Sunday morning, while my husband was overseas for work (read: far, far away), I lay in bed burning up with a fever and cursing the Murphy’s Law of Motherhood, whereby moms only fall prey to The Plague when we’re on our own with no one around to help. I drifted in and out of sleep and didn’t realize until it was approaching lunchtime that my children had been awake and downstairs for hours. My son poked his head in: “Hi, Mommy. It’s OK, you don’t need to come down. I just wanted to let you know that we have been playing with the recycling.” « Read the rest of this entry »
Sibling Play
April 11, 2014 § 1 Comment
I’ll never forget the first time it happened. JP was four, Emily was a little over one, and I realized that 45 minutes had passed and there were still only happy voices in the other room. I called a friend: “The kids are playing together! ON THEIR OWN! For like a really long time! I’m just sitting here reading a book!” (Well, technically I was talking on the phone, but the point is that I could have been reading a book.) And that’s when it hit me: this is why some people have more than one kid (or more than one dog, cat, or fish).
Watching siblings play together is one of the most endearing and gratifying experiences for a parent. (Well, until it all goes south—which it inevitably does—usually right at the moment when you have finished the dishes, wiped down the lunch table, dust-bustered the floor, and finally sat down on the sofa to page through a magazine.) But when the stars do align, as they increasingly do with age, it is in these moments that I get the clearest glimpses of my children’s budding personalities, of the people they will someday become. I see tenderness and compromise in my now six and a half year old boy, amidst the bossiness and tendency to escalate play into some form of physical combat. And in my now three and a half year old daughter, I feel her excitement, her sheer pride, in the way she confidently prattles on after her brother agrees, “OK, you can be the mommy bird, and I’ll be the baby bird.” Because, really, is it not the best feeling in the world when that older brother whom you revere in every way decides to drop everything for you?
Imagination is the great equalizer in sibling play. In the world of pretend play, it doesn’t matter how old you are. Enter Lola M. Schaefer and Jessica Meserve’s latest picture book, One Busy Day: A Story for Big Brothers and Sisters (Ages 2-6), in some ways a sequel to their first book, One Special Day, about the moment in which a little boy becomes a big brother. « Read the rest of this entry »
Ce N’est Pas Un Box
April 23, 2012 § 2 Comments
For adults, the worst part about moving is cardboard boxes. For kids, the best part about moving is cardboard boxes! We managed to save a giant wardrobe box from our last move, and we bring it out on rainy days. It’s the Mother of All Boxes. Don’t get me wrong: they also love playing with diaper boxes, amazon.com boxes, and wine boxes (that these seem to be the predominant boxes around our house at any given time probably says much about our priorities). Our “house rule,” when a new box shows up, is that the kids get it for one week—and then (because Mom can’t take it any longer) it’s dumped in the recycling bin, regardless of how beautifully decorated it is by then. But that wardrobe box is still kicking around some 18 months later, because, well, it’s just THAT AWESOME. One of the more originally executed children’s books of the past decade is Not a Box (Ages 3-5), by Antoinette Portis. The book deceives: at first glance, its sparse text and simple graphics appear to be designed for a very young child. In fact, the perfect audience for this book is the precocious preschooler, who’s just beginning to forage into Imaginary Play. Through a little bunny’s mind, a simple cardboard box becomes a burning building, a hot air balloon, a robot, or a rocket, among other things. Like said bunny, my own preschooler can come up with endless roles for a cardboard box. Sure, he sat through the book when he was a two year old, but it wasn’t until he turned three that he finally “got” it, that he related not only to the bunny’s pretending but also to the bunny’s frustration each time the narrator asks him about his “box” and gets the answer, “It’s NOT a box!” Ah, to be young again, where our imagination can totally usurp daily life! Why just tonight, when I was pointing out to JP that I was still seated at the dinner table because I hadn’t yet finished my food, his answer was “But Mommy, firefighters have to leave EVERYTHING when the alarm goes off!” (What was I thinking?) Another reason why this book is lost on a younger audience is in its unique (out-of-the-box, if you will) outside: with its matte-finish, brown-paper, and jacketless cover, the book itself resembles a cardboard box (just make sure you get your hands on the hardcover, as the recently-released board book edition falls flat in this regard). Like with so many things, sometimes the best books (and boxes) are worth waiting for.
Other Favorites About Pretending With Boxes (& Sofa Cushions):
King Jack and the Dragon, by Peter Bently & Helen Oxenbury
Sitting In My Box, by Dee Lillegard & Jon Agee
A House is a House for Me, by Mary Ann Hoberman
