2024 Gift Guide: The Picture Books
November 23, 2024 Comments Off on 2024 Gift Guide: The Picture Books
This year’s Gift Guide continues with twelve favorite picture books of the late summer and fall. I think this might be the best collection of picture books I’ve ever put on a Gift Guide: every single one is a book I would have happily bought for my own kids and never tired of reading (on repeat!). Many a night I lay in bed turning picture book titles over in my head to land on just the right combination. And I love where I landed. I really, really love these quirky, imaginative, beautiful, memorable books that enfold the listener in the magic and merriment of storytelling. (Spoiler alert: even when they smell like vomit.)
I wish you luck making the hard choices, because there are so many good options. As always, links will take you to Old Town Books, where I take great pride in curating the kids and teens collection, and I hope you will consider supporting us.
And PSST, if you’ve got a kiddo who is starting to come out of picture books, don’t miss the last one on this list: it’s long-form, wonderfully inventive, and proves once again that the Brits are in a class of their own when it comes to children’s stories.
« Read the rest of this entry »An Easter Bunny All Moms Can Get Behind
April 15, 2014 Comments Off on An Easter Bunny All Moms Can Get Behind
When JP was three years old, and I went from working full time to staying home full time, these were the thoughts that kept me up at night: What will happen when my children see me as “just a mom” instead of as a mom and a professional? Will they respect the work I do? Will they think of it with the same importance that they bestow upon their father, when he leaves for the office every morning? Will they grow up believing that women aren’t capable of the same career success as men—or entitled to make the same sacrifices, reap the same compensation for comparable work? Will I be a role model for them or merely someone whom they take for granted?
In the past four years, I have largely reconciled my angst around these questions. I’m keenly aware that even to have the choice to stay home is a luxury not afforded to all—and one that could abruptly end for me someday. The work that I do every day on behalf of my kids, my husband, and our house makes all of us happy. But I’m also aware that when I did work 9-5, the time that I made for my (at the time only) child was quality, focused time. I got down on the floor and played with my son more than I probably do today, when too often I’m in the kitchen or chatting to other moms on the sidelines of playdates. I think about my own mom, who was around every single day, and how out-of-this-world excited I got when my dad’s car pulled into the driveway at night. There is perhaps some inevitability in taking for granted quantity and romanticizing quality.
But perhaps at no time do I feel greater validation as a mother—stay-at-home or not—than when I take out The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes (Ages 4-10) and read Du Bose Heyward’s 1939 classic to my kids each Easter season. As much as the story is a celebration of traditional motherhood, it is also one of the earliest feminist tales—for a simple mother bunny outwits her bigger, stronger, prouder, and more handsome male competitors to earn the coveted position of fifth Easter Bunny. « Read the rest of this entry »
What to Read to Your Kids 