check me out, where "me" is a book
Today I went to a "baby welcoming" at the main central public library downtown. Despite living in Vancouver about three years, I very rarely actually go downtown. Vancouver proper is kind of shaped like your right hand held palm facing you and fingertips to the left. The thumb is downtown. I live in the palm, and I pretty much never have any reason to leave the palm.
So this was my first time ever actually seeing the main library, and I was concerned I was going to get lost and miss it. Going back to the hand metaphor, when you hold your hand like that, you'll notice that your thumb naturally goes at a diagonal, and it's exactly the same with Vancouver's downtown. All the streets are also at a diagonal; they don't run north-south vs east-west, but rather northeast-southwest vs northwest-southeast. I think this is extra confusing because with very few exceptions, the rest of Vancouver is on a strict NSEW grid. It isn't like, say, Pittsburgh, with lots of meandering weird streets, so that you get accustomed to that.
So I often get completely turned around and head in the wrong direction in the rare times I'm downtown. So I was diligently checking my smartphone map every so often to make sure I was headed in the right direction.
But I needn't have worried I would miss it.
My first thought was of the Roman Colosseum. Apparently that was intentional, at least according to Wikipedia. It was just as cool inside as outside. The Children's Library was in the basement and had all kinds of cool little nooks and features. The room where they held the baby welcoming had a skylight roof, so I wished the rain would have started while we were in there, because I bet that would have been really cool. Alas, the rain waited until I got outside to start, although at least it didn't get too heavy until I got home.
The baby welcoming itself was surprisingly low key. I've been to tons of storytimes at various libraries before, and this was basically the same thing, with the exception that we received a free board book (I Heard a Little Baa, which I'd read to Pippa before, it's very cute) and also they served up some snacks and juice.
Then afterwards I got Mary-Alice a library card and picked out a few board books, notably a couple of those high contrast black and white books. Mary-Alice is soooo much more into books than Pippa was at this age! I was surprised because (and yes bad second time mom no biscuit) I'd never bothered to try reading her a book before today. Pippa didn't get interested in books as anything other than chewing material until she was close to a year old. Now I'm wondering if that was because of her vision. So I'm hopeful that means that Mary-Alice's vision is better than Pippa's was.
Anyway I read her one of the high contrast books when we got home and she was actually laughing at the pictures. Super cute.
The other really fun book we got is Devant Ma Maison by Marianne Debuc. (An English translation exists.) It's one of those "in front of my house is this thing (turn page), next to that thing is this thing (turn page), behind that thing is this thing (turn page)" books which are frequently boring, but this one has so much sly humor in it. For example, in a bush there's a rabbit, and behind the rabbit is a family of rabbits (hee), and behind the family of rabbits is the Big Bad Wolf ("le grand méchant loup!"), and inside him is all the poor things that he has gobbled up in folklore such as the three little pigs and Red Riding Hood's grandma. I would like to get a copy of it at some point for our home library, it's that cute and fun to read.
I really like the VPL. I mean, most libraries/librarians are awesome, but the VPL actually has a decent budget, and that means they can do all the stuff most librarians would want to do if they could, I think. Yay libraries.
So this was my first time ever actually seeing the main library, and I was concerned I was going to get lost and miss it. Going back to the hand metaphor, when you hold your hand like that, you'll notice that your thumb naturally goes at a diagonal, and it's exactly the same with Vancouver's downtown. All the streets are also at a diagonal; they don't run north-south vs east-west, but rather northeast-southwest vs northwest-southeast. I think this is extra confusing because with very few exceptions, the rest of Vancouver is on a strict NSEW grid. It isn't like, say, Pittsburgh, with lots of meandering weird streets, so that you get accustomed to that.
So I often get completely turned around and head in the wrong direction in the rare times I'm downtown. So I was diligently checking my smartphone map every so often to make sure I was headed in the right direction.
But I needn't have worried I would miss it.
My first thought was of the Roman Colosseum. Apparently that was intentional, at least according to Wikipedia. It was just as cool inside as outside. The Children's Library was in the basement and had all kinds of cool little nooks and features. The room where they held the baby welcoming had a skylight roof, so I wished the rain would have started while we were in there, because I bet that would have been really cool. Alas, the rain waited until I got outside to start, although at least it didn't get too heavy until I got home.
The baby welcoming itself was surprisingly low key. I've been to tons of storytimes at various libraries before, and this was basically the same thing, with the exception that we received a free board book (I Heard a Little Baa, which I'd read to Pippa before, it's very cute) and also they served up some snacks and juice.
Then afterwards I got Mary-Alice a library card and picked out a few board books, notably a couple of those high contrast black and white books. Mary-Alice is soooo much more into books than Pippa was at this age! I was surprised because (and yes bad second time mom no biscuit) I'd never bothered to try reading her a book before today. Pippa didn't get interested in books as anything other than chewing material until she was close to a year old. Now I'm wondering if that was because of her vision. So I'm hopeful that means that Mary-Alice's vision is better than Pippa's was.
Anyway I read her one of the high contrast books when we got home and she was actually laughing at the pictures. Super cute.
The other really fun book we got is Devant Ma Maison by Marianne Debuc. (An English translation exists.) It's one of those "in front of my house is this thing (turn page), next to that thing is this thing (turn page), behind that thing is this thing (turn page)" books which are frequently boring, but this one has so much sly humor in it. For example, in a bush there's a rabbit, and behind the rabbit is a family of rabbits (hee), and behind the family of rabbits is the Big Bad Wolf ("le grand méchant loup!"), and inside him is all the poor things that he has gobbled up in folklore such as the three little pigs and Red Riding Hood's grandma. I would like to get a copy of it at some point for our home library, it's that cute and fun to read.
I really like the VPL. I mean, most libraries/librarians are awesome, but the VPL actually has a decent budget, and that means they can do all the stuff most librarians would want to do if they could, I think. Yay libraries.