Picture Book Monday: Tell Me the Day Backwards & If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
We were mostly reinforcing the bindings on the holiday books at the library today, which is not conducive to actually reading the books, so I have few books on which to report. In fact, I have just one: I read a charming book about semi-anthropomorphized bears, Tell Me the Day Backwards, which is about bears who live in a den with little beds that they sleep in while they hibernate, and also like to sit next to anthills and nibble up the raw ants.
I think I'm used to my anthropomorphized animals being more fully anthropomorphized than that - Frances, for instance, never exchanges her bread and jam for worms, which would be a bit more badger-y - so the whole thing struck me as rather odd, but it is a sweet story and it's a game (let's go through the events of the day! Backwards!) that I could actually imagine a child enjoying.
We also got a battered copy of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I suggested that we should let nature take its course and destroy the book, but no, alas, we're going to repair it.
I have never appreciated this book. I think small children are supposed to see themselves in the demanding but adorable mouse, but I always figured that if I were in the story, I would be the one shlepping cookies to that ungrateful mouse, and I always felt indignant that the spineless human never said no to anything.
At least the human never went all Giving Tree for the mouse's sake. I firmly opposed the tree's boundless generosity in that book, too.
I also, while we're on the topic of picture books that I hated, always loathed Curious George. I never got over the book where he thoughtlessly destroys a dinosaur skeleton - I ask you! A dinosaur skeleton! - and everyone is so taken by his cuteness that they just forgive him. HE DESTROYED A DINOSAUR SKELETON. I don't think I ever devised an appropriate punishment regime for him, but at very least he ought to have to apologize and probably take a remedial class in proper dinosaur appreciation.
I think I'm used to my anthropomorphized animals being more fully anthropomorphized than that - Frances, for instance, never exchanges her bread and jam for worms, which would be a bit more badger-y - so the whole thing struck me as rather odd, but it is a sweet story and it's a game (let's go through the events of the day! Backwards!) that I could actually imagine a child enjoying.
We also got a battered copy of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I suggested that we should let nature take its course and destroy the book, but no, alas, we're going to repair it.
I have never appreciated this book. I think small children are supposed to see themselves in the demanding but adorable mouse, but I always figured that if I were in the story, I would be the one shlepping cookies to that ungrateful mouse, and I always felt indignant that the spineless human never said no to anything.
At least the human never went all Giving Tree for the mouse's sake. I firmly opposed the tree's boundless generosity in that book, too.
I also, while we're on the topic of picture books that I hated, always loathed Curious George. I never got over the book where he thoughtlessly destroys a dinosaur skeleton - I ask you! A dinosaur skeleton! - and everyone is so taken by his cuteness that they just forgive him. HE DESTROYED A DINOSAUR SKELETON. I don't think I ever devised an appropriate punishment regime for him, but at very least he ought to have to apologize and probably take a remedial class in proper dinosaur appreciation.