The second my younger daughter saw this book, Strange Bedfellows and other critters, she started running through the house saying “cock-a-doodle doo!” which, for a 2-year-old comes out something like “cock doo doo.” Until I saw the rooster on the cover, I thought, “oh boy, what’s going on now?” Like when your baby yells “fu*k” at the dinner table and you look all flabbergasted at her until you realize she’s just asking, very loudly, for a fork.

The book, by my step-dad Campbell Hutchinson (aka Hutch), is a compilation of his paintings and limericks about the bond that forms between differing species in the animal kingdom. These pairings work together, transcending their differences to unite against a common enemy. Much like grandparents and grandkids.

I think Hutchy, as Hutch is known in our household, wrote the book because of all of his grandkids and their cumulative unquenchable thirst for stories. And yes, my kids are his grandkids. Well I’m lying a little. Yes, Hutch is their granddad but we don’t really just call him Hutchy. To be honest we call him MinnieHutchy because he’s is married to my mom and when my babies started talking ‘Grandma’ was definitely NOT an option.

Maybe you can relate? Minnie became Grandma’s name since she has been affectionately known as Missy her whole life and my older daughter just couldn’t quite make the ‘s’ sound. How sweet are those little happenstances! Now the grandparents are BOTH known as MinnieHutchy. As in ‘hi MinnieHutchy and MinnieHutchy.’ It is actually fitting since those two are joined at the hip. At the hip. But I digress. Just wanted to be upfront about the family ties! And I’m sure MinnieHutchy two times is thrilled that I added this part. Thrilled.

Back to the book. It’s just plain fun to read! The paintings are sturdy but whimsical – abstract enough for the reader to project personality onto but you know when you’re looking at an elephant or a zebra, even if it’s from the rear. My favorite one is the cows kissing for the rhyme “A Swiss Kiss” (I think of it as a MinnieHutchy self portrait). The way the Swiss bovine leans into the smooch is so endearing.

The favored limerick by far is the one about Basil, the ‘Fraidy Cat. As cats are wont to do, this cat just sits and watches with disdain, even in the presence of a mouse:

“Catch that mouse,” I implored
advice which Basil ignored.
there she sat
on her kitty mat
looking for all the world bored.

My kitty-obsessed older daughter wants to hear this over and over. And over.

And that’s actually OK because it’s fun to read. While the limericks are easy in form to read, Hutch uses words that will tickle an adult’s fancy like “fume”, “transcend” and “contrarian” (to rhyme with vegetarian). You don’t often find those in children’s books! And, they are actually educational in the sense that you can glean the animal’s traits and environs from the rhymes.

For older kids, the limericks are long and interesting. For the younger set, the pictures keep the attention. I will say that my 4-year-old will sit for a long long time listening while the 2-year-old listens for a bit then busies herself with crayons, shoes or water glasses – you know, whatever is nearby. Sometimes, when I’m reading to just the wee one, I’ll chose one limerick and stretch it out, repeating it slowly and really getting animated with my voice. It makes her happy. Which makes me happy. I’m sure the girls will enjoy these books even more when they are just a bit older.

All in all Hutch has published four books so far. He started with Wild Things. Funny, he published that just as each of us siblings had our first child. I wonder if that was a coincidence, that title? Hmm. Then there is Strange Bedfellows, Animal Treks and another one called Great Woolly Beasts and some feathery aminals (no that’s not a typo, just another malapropism from the family). Here’s how to find them on blurb.com. Hutch’s books start at around $30 for softcover and go up to around $45 for hardcover.

Oh, and guess what! The original paintings that the book pages are based on are available, too. If you like the one of a kind paintings, you can visit his website to see what he has available. He also has archival prints of some of the critters as they appear in the series of his books. You fan find those, too, on his site.

I’m really excited that he’s chosen to make these books and artworks available to a wider audience than his ever-growing family. I thought we were just the lucky ones, but now you can delight in them too! Maybe you can help me spread the word?

I read in the New York Times on Sunday this article about a father who read started a family tradition with his daughter when she was in the fourth grade: reading to her for 100 straight nights.

That 100 turned in to 1000 when neither one of them wanted to give it up. That 1000 turned in to countless nights (well, OK, someone can count them, but it involves higher math) and ended only when she went off to college.

Think about that: reading together EVERY night from 4th grade to college…sometimes on the phone, sometimes at the theater when rehearsal went too long, sometimes in the snugness of home.

I hope that our family can adopt the spirit of the Streak.

photo credit: dotbenjamin

Chronicle Books has added to their fun, interactive book series with this new book, The Little Giraffe. While I haven’t read this one yet (no time to get to the bookstore with my two babies and juggling nap time), we do have the Little Polar Bear, Little Cow and Little Rabbit. All adorable.

This is the book series where you put your finger inside a finger puppet and wiggle it as you turn the pages. My first daughter loved the Little Cow and was tickled each time she wiggled her nose (the cow, not my daughter).

Now, that same daughter is fascinated by putting her own finger inside the cow and making her move. I thought she’d be upset at learning the “magic” behind Little Cow’s movement, but no, she’s even more intrigued. I wonder what magic Little Giraffe will hold for her…

Two books on the new releases wall caught my eye: Art for Baby and Night, Night Little Pookie.

Art For Baby is a collection if black and white images by top modern artists like Keith Haring, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. The drawings have been selected to enhance baby’s awareness of the world around them. If you are a contemporary art fan and have a new baby, then check out this book! I plan on getting it for my new little one once she pops out.

However, my 22 month old just LOVES Sandra Boynton. We have almost all of her books and I’m really stoked to see that she’s come out with yet another book, Night, Night Little Pookie. Pookie, I’m sure, has something in store for mom and daughter at bedtime – can’t wait to find out what it is.

This is me driving to the bookstore…or ordering from Amazon:

My daughter loves all things puppy. At a friend’s house tonight I saw Yoshitomo Nara’s children’s book, The Lonesome Puppy, and thought, “wow, gotta get that!” Then I opened it up and read it. It’s just plain weird.

I love Nara’s artwork, or at least I have in the past. Nara is one of the best known Japanese contemporary artists and his work is shown in top galleries and museums around the world.

The cover of the book is great: an adorable drawing of a puppy in Nara’s signature warped cartoonish style is wonderful. However, once you open the book and start reading the story, it’s just plain odd. Now, I’ve read a few children’s books in my 2 years of having a baby and some are boring, some fascinating. This one just seemed to take a bad idea and keep going and going and going.

Here’s the gist, not that you really need to know. A puppy, who is so big he straddles the world with one foot in one continent and one foot in another, is lonely because he has no friends. See, he’s so big, no one can see him. Until one day this little girl does see him. She climbs up him and befriends him. She’s scared at first but then she sings to him and they become fast friends. The moral of the story, it seems, is that there is always a friend out there for you – you just have to find them or they you.

Boiled down it doesn’t seem so bad, but when you’re reading the book, it is. It just is. However much I applaud the idea of teaching our children to see past another person’s physical “oddities” to who they are underneath, this story misses the mark for me.

Plus, the artwork in the rest of the book didn’t strike me as fanciful as the cover. The little girl looks, well, evil, and the puppy never manages to capture the whimsy of the one on the cover. Maybe I’m being too hard on it, but I can’t imagine reading this book over and over again when I can barely get through the first reading of it.

That being said, every single person who has reviewed the book on Amazon loves it, so maybe I’m missing something. My friend’s daughter also LOVES this book. She keeps asking for it, much to the chagrin of her mother…so, there you go, maybe Nara is actually on to something and I’m too adult to see it. But still, it won’t be on our bookshelf anytime soon.

My mother-in-law was at the bookstore the other day buying a few new additions to my daughter’s library when she (read: her granddaughter) spotted this little book perfect for tiny hands. It’s called “A Little Book of Puppies” published by Ariel Books. As the title implies, it is indeed very small and filled with puppies…pictures of all types of puppies.

I mean, what could be better?!? They both snapped it up and have been “reading” it non-stop. When not devouring every page, Sophie is running around the house saying, “book puuuppieees. Boooook puuuuuppieeees,” elongating every syllable to emphasize just how much she LOVES this book.

You can get it from Barnes & Noble online here. Best part: it’s only $3.95.