August 2009

It’s no wonder Gail Carson Levine’s charming adaptation of Cinderella won the Newberry Award. Ella Enchanted is a truly enchanting read for both children as well as any lover of fairy tales, magic and fantasy.

As a child, I always wondered why Cinderella didn’t just leave her wicked stepmother and stepsisters; after all, she had free will, and she was resourceful enough to make it on her own. That must have been what Levine was thinking as she penned this amazing novel.

Ella in this version is strong-willed, but cursed to follow the orders that anyone gives her through the “gift” of a well-meaning but ditzy fairy. Because of this “gift” of obedience, Ella must do as she is told by everyone. She is protected by her loving mother until she is fifteen, when her mother dies.

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Wild Animal Baby is a combination Highlights and Ranger Rick for babies and toddlers. Instead of a glossy, easy-to-tear magazine format, it’s in a thin board book-type format with durable pages that can withstand light chew and wear. (If you don’t catch your baby gnawing on it within seconds, though, you can lose a page corner; trust me.)

Published by the National Wildlife Federation, Animal Baby is filled with stories about—you guessed it—animals. The cover of each issue is a cartoon image of the featured animal inside—a giraffe, for example, or a sea otter—and is always a baby version of the creature.

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Like any intangible concept, peace can be a difficult lesson to teach to children. We can start with basic lessons—be nice to your friends, don’t hit your sister, don’t throw the cat—but even teaching what peace is can seem a bit tough to do. It’s very easy to complicate—even a simple explanation, like “Peace means not hurting each other,” can get mixed up with questions like, “But what about when we argue/ Jennifer takes my toys/ I get a time-out?” on the table.

Even if your child is likely to come up with his own eloquent and beautiful idea of what peace is—and he probably will—it may not encompass all of the ideas that you wish to share with your own values. Does peace include the environment? A universal brotherhood among all countries? Being a good neighbor? Is it simply the absence of violence, or also the continual goodwill and helping of people by all of humankind?

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The first time my daughter and I read A Splendid Friend, Indeed, it was on LookyBook.com. If you are familiar with the site, you know that it was an incredibly fun place to actually “turn” the pages of books and try them out before you buy them. Unfortunately, LookyBook is no longer a functioning site, though there are other sites where you can check out children’s books online in similar ways.

While we were at the library over the weekend my daughter pointed it out and said, “Look! The duck and bear book!” Smiling, I instantly remembered the sweet little book and checked it out for her.

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