Thursday, November 20, 2008

5 of my favourite kids books

1. Red is Best by Kathy Stinson. This story is a classic that I’ve just recently discovered (thanks Dawn!). Three year old Kelly must have only the red cup, the red mittens, the red stockings. No other colour will do. As the mother of a three year old, the unwavering kid logic is immediately relatable to me. Little Kelly’s voice comes across loud, clear and with beautiful authenticity. For a mother who wants to encourage her daughter to embrace and defend her opinions, this one was an instant favourite.

2. If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Joffe Numeroff. Follow step by step all the crazy occurrences when forced to appease the largest species in the deer family who runs out of baked goods. Whimsical, quirky and with great illustrations, this book shows kids what reading for pleasure is all about: fun, imagination, entertainment.

3. Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now by Dr. Seuss. What kind of children’s book list would this be without Dr. Seuss? But you were probably expecting something more mainstream like Cat in the Hat or Go, Dog. Go! And rightly so. Those are great books, maybe even better than Marvin K. But when I was two years old my parents read Marvin K. to me so often I had it memorized right down to when to turn the pages. I would try and trick people into thinking I was reading. Flash forward thirty-ish years to me reading this toddler favourite of mine to my kids. What can I say? It gives me the warm fuzzies.

4. Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Permit me to go off on a tangent here that will not only enlighten you about a great book, if you haven’t heard of it already, but also tell you a lot about a big difference between my sister and me.

About this time last year my sister was visiting and we were reminiscing about a book we both loved when we were kids, a book whose title we could no longer remember. All that we could remember was that it was about a teacher, it was kinda creepy and we simultaneously loved it and were frightened by it. Cut to me, ordering a Christmas gift for my sister. This is always difficult for me because I’m a) crap at picking gifts for people and 2) never on time when it comes to shipping Christmas gifts overseas. This time I decided I would order something online. I found out from my sister she wanted kitchen gadgets: mini cheese grater, salt & pepper shaker, spoon rest, you get the picture. I found an online store in my family’s area so that they will ship for free to my mother, who had kindly agreed to wrap the presents for me and then pass them on to my sister. I finalized my online purchase thinking how clever I was, all without ever having to leave my house and brave the mall, which I avoid doing like a mammogram (which I know, I shouldn’t avoid those but geez, they don’t sound like fun, do they?). Anyway, a few weeks later I get a call from my mom: somehow I have shipped her 6 spoon rests, 6 salt and pepper shakers, 18 mini cheese graters!!! Turns out the store I was ordering from was a restaurant supplier for bulk purchases. ARGH!!

What, you may be wondering, does this have to do with the book? Well about a week later I get a Christmas package from my sister containing many wonderful, thoughtful and completely perfect gifts for my family. Among them is, you guessed it, Miss Nelson Is Missing. She somehow managed to locate the book from our childhood, a book we couldn’t even remember the title of, and send it to me. *Sigh* And now you know one of the many reasons my sister is so fabulous. She is one of those thoughtful people with the uncanny knack of selecting the absolute perfect gift.

Oh, you want to know about the book? Well, I’ll just say that this book was probably my first significant introduction to the “plot twist.” Done well, even at a children’s level, it is a thing of beauty. Get it. Read it. See what I mean.

5. The Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. Often I’ll get children’s books from the library and think, who the heck wrote this? Do they even have children? Don’t they know that children’s books are usually read to them and therefore have to sound good out loud? Karma Wilson gets it. The Bear Snores On has all the elements of a great children’s book: funny little story, easy to follow, likeable characters, cute pictures, but best of all is the lyrical element of the words. They roll off your tongue. My children love to hear it and I love to read it to them.

Yay books! Do you have a favourite? Tell me!

Monday, November 10, 2008

5 reasons I’m jealous of American politics

1. American politicians are like rock stars. Whereas Canadian politicians are like the nerds who got beat up in high school. Come on. You know forty years ago some jock was roughing up Dion for his lunch money. I remember about nine years ago I was flying in to Philadelphia to visit a friend when the plane started circling the airport. The pilot came on and explained that we had to wait to land because President Clinton was flying in at the same time. I suddenly felt a little giddy. I was in the same place as the President of the United States. I was sharing airspace with Bill! Cool! Then I thought, what if it were Jean Chretien, Prime Minister at the time, who was the one flying in. Totally different. Then I would have just been annoyed that he was delaying my landing time.

2. The choices are clear. During our election (Yes, American friends, we did have one! I know, blink and you missed it.) I kept lamenting, if I were American I know who I’d vote for. But up here it was confusing to me. At least five different choices. And not different like Republican vs. Democrat different. The Green Party vs. NDP differences were more subtle. And then there was this notion of strategic voting: giving your vote to whichever party had the better chance of beating the Conservatives depending on what riding you were in. Huh? I know I am woefully under informed when it comes to politics in general and Canadian politics in particular but I just wanted to ask someone, if I would vote for Obama in the States then who does that translate to in Canadian??

3. The debates. Now my fellow Canadians, be honest. How many of you watched the American Vice Presidential Debate instead of the Canadian Leaders’ Debate on October 2nd? You are not alone. It was hard not to be sucked in by the guilty temptation of potentially seeing Sarah Palin humiliate herself on internationally broadcasted television … again. In the end she did alright and I felt guilty so I watched a recording of the Canadian round table discussion online. But holy Snoozeville, Batman!

4. The glamour. Whether it’s the controversy over Palin’s pricey wardrobe, the talk about the return to Camelot now that an attractive younger couple are heading to the White House or comparing Michelle Obama to Jackie Kennedy, there’s a glamour to American politics. One that is completely absent from Canadian politics. Look what we have to work with. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against Elizabeth May. I thought she came across very well, intellectually, in the debate and in fact, I even voted Green. But it’s hard to imagine anyone referring to her as a MILF.

5. Barack Obama. I can’t be the only Canadian who, swept up in the excitement of the election and the emotion of the historical democratic win, felt a tinge of jealousy over the American’s shiny new president. I mean, it was such a long run, hard fought, emotionally charged race. To see the world celebrate as the U.S., with record numbers of voters flocking to the polls, voted in its first African American president. Then to see his acceptance speech, his beautiful family, grown men and women listening to him in tears. With images of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. rising from the past, to imagine the country forging forth on a new path, looking to this man to lead them … it was all so moving. In Canada after our own, in the words of Jon Stewart, “adorable” election, with decidedly mediocre numbers of Canadians voting, we were left with… the same damn guy. Crickets chirping. Ho hum.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

5 ways I can complete the sentence, “I’m an athiest but…”

1. I got married in a Catholic church. Hubby told me it was very important to him, even though he hasn’t set foot in a church, except for weddings, funerals and baptisms, since.

2. I love Little House on the Prairie. Come on! Pa, Half Pint, Nellie Olsen. Who doesn’t love it?? I’m so glad they’ve started showing reruns everyday at 5pm on CTS. I even tolerate the nauseating ads to watch it.

3. I love the saying, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” It’s such a poetically beautiful saying, don’t you think? When considering the plight of someone else enduring a hardship, I often find myself thinking “There but for the grace of …. something I believe in…. go I.” Somehow it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

4. I am learning that I can be spiritual. When I was a kid I thought of God as some white haired guy hanging out in the clouds looking down and judging everything I did. As I got older and the implausibility of this notion grew in my mind I began rejecting all things religious. The pendulum swung past agnostic, over to atheist and stuck there for a while. But these days the pendulum is starting to swing back. Or maybe not back but over. Over to the idea that, just because I no longer identify with this notion of a bearded man in robes residing in the heavens, doesn’t mean I necessarily reject the idea of a guiding force or a oneness to humanity. If I sound very “New Earth” it’s because I love that book! In homage, one of these days I plan to write the list “5 reasons Eckhart Tolle could never have a Facebook page.”

5. I wish my kids said grace before a meal. Or maybe not grace. But showed appreciation in some way. In Japanese one says “itadakimasu” before a meal which literally means “I receive” but is generally meant to express gratitude for the food one is about to eat. Maybe I should start this tradition with my kids. To make up for the tradition I started in my family…

Okay, true story: Even though I didn’t have a particularly religious upbringing, we always said grace before a meal, followed by itadakimasu. When I was about 20 I began to feel a bit hypocritical about participating in the religious part of this practice. So I mentioned to my mother one day that I would no longer be saying grace with them and explained why. I meant to just quietly sit and respectfully wait while they said grace. To lighten the situation I joked with her that I was sorry her daughter was such a heathen. Well. The next time they went to say grace they looked at me somewhat awkwardly until my dad laughed, pointed at me and said, “Heathen!” So now, not only does my whole family no longer say grace, but after saying itadakimasu they follow it up with simply yelling, “Heathens!” I know, it’s unbelievable that lightening doesn’t strike me down.