The Magician's Elephant

 by Kate DiCamillo
201 pages

If you haven't read a Kate DiCamillo book yet, it's time you start. I'm writing about The Magician's Elephant today, but go back and read Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane because they are all really, really, really, really, really outstanding books.

In The Magician's Elephant, Kate DiCamillo writes in an old-worldly fashion, and it is all just so well done and put together so well. I am grateful to have children so that I have the opportunity to read books like this to them. I just can't write enough about what a great author Kate DiCamillo is and what wonderful stories she crafts. I really don't need to describe this book other than to say that it is about a boy, an elephant, and his journey to find his sister.

The book will get your kids saying, "I was crippled. Crippled by an elephant." (as well as, "I intended only lilies!")

Ocean, age 7 - I just liked the whole thing of The Magician's Elephant. I think it's a really good book and I think that the person who writes it writes different books because when the person writes different books they don't sound like this one.

Ezra, age 4 - I like how Peter found Adele, that was his sister.

The Giggler Treatment

by Roddy Doyle
112 pages

I just HAVE to recommend this book to everybody in the universe. It is such a great children's book. So well-written. So funny. Talks about dog poop. What more could you want?

Ocean, age 7 - "The Giggler Treatment is a good book and it's about Gigglers putting poo on the path, but I can't tell you about the rest of the story because it's a really, really, really good story."

Ezra, age 4 - "I like the The Giggler Treatment because there's these guys Robbie, Jimmy, Kayla, Billy Jean and Mr. Mack. And Robbie and Jimmy always say, "Me head! Me toe! Me window! Me finger!"

Clementine

by Sara Pennypacker
160 pages

Clementine is a precocious young red-headed girl with a heart of gold. There are three Clementine books so far (Clementine, The Talented Clementine, Clementine's Letter), with another set to be published July 2010 (Clementine: Friend of the Week!).

Clementine is funny and gets into all sorts of misadventures, and every single one of these books ends with something so sweet that I start crying.

Ocean, age 7: I like it because Clementine is really funny.

Ezra, age 4: I like it because Clementine always gets good ideas.

Gooney Bird Greene

by Lois Lowry
96 pages

There are actually four of these books total, this is the first (the other three are  Gooney the Fabulous, Gooney Bird and the Room Mother, and Gooney Bird the Absurd), and they are all extraordinarily delightful.

Gooney Bird is a funny and confident second-grader who does not get embarrassed. She wears funny outfits and she has funny reasons for everything she does.

Newbury award winning author, Lois Lowry, is a favorite from my childhood (the Anastasia series, anybody?). She writes these Gooney Bird books as wonderfully as she has written anything else. These are also great books to learn things from... in the first one she talks about what it takes to write a stories. In subsequent books, we learned about fables, acting in plays, and poetry. I couldn't recommend Gooney Bird more!

Ocean, age 7, says, "I like that she tells stories and she's really funny."

Ezra, age 4, says, "I like that Gooney Bird puts a suddenly in her stories."

Open

My hold for the book Open by Andre Agassi finally came through at the library the other day. I got the book, and I saw that I only had two weeks to read it because it was a new release. And, I was, like, "Frick. Now I have to read this book under pressure." Which I don't like. I don't like to have to read a book under pressure.

I mean, sure, I did just read Kathy Griffin's latest book (that's right, I read Kathy Griffin's  book, people. Whatever. It was awesome) in only two days, but I don't like going into something with some external pressure telling me what to do and when to do it (story of my life, right?).

So, I thought, maybe I won't even bother with Open. Too much trouble. I'll just read a page or two to determine that I'm not missing out on anything and then I'll return it.

I start reading it, and by the first page... literally, the first PARAGRAPH, I am hooked. It is freaking awesome, that's what it is. Agassi is a surprisingly amazing writer. I'm serious. It is really, really, really well-written. And it is really, really good.

I've been talking about the book all the time. To Vernon, when he's nervous about starting something new... "You know, Andre Agassi was really nervous the first time he went to the U.S. Open. He felt like he didn't fit in there, but look at him rule those courts now."

"Did you know Andre Agassi used to start things on fire as a way of dealing with stress?"

"Andre Agassi actually hated tennis, you know."

"I like these pancakes. You know what Andre Agassi liked? Crack."

"Hey, Andre Agassi's father made him hit 2,500 balls a day, 17,500 balls a week, which equals nearly one million balls a year. His father said that a child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable."

Pretty much everything that comes out of my mouth right now has something to do with Andre Agassi. (Except for the part about how it hurts when I pee after having sex.)

Here's some of his words that I particularly enjoyed (from page 7):

"One things I've learned in 29 years of playing tennis: Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It's your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you're not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back."

Love it.

Superfreakanomics car seats

Okay... who wants to talk about that car seat section in the book Superfreakanomics? This is big news, people! Why aren't more people talking about this?

It's an economist who co-wrote the book (thus no bias is intended or created) and what he did was compare a bunch of data on car seats crashes with and without car seats and this is what he came up with:

Children, older than age 2, are just as safe with a regular seat belt as they are in a car seat.

And then, the authors went and conducted their own children's seat belt safety test. But first they had to find a crash test place that would let them do the test (apparently, most of the crash test places are in cahoots with the car seat manufacturers so none of them wanted to do it). They finally found one who would do it for them (under the conditions of curiosity and anonymity on their end) and they again found that seat belts were just as safe.

So why are we all putting our kids in car seats? (And, yes, I still do, because I am required to by law... so don't go getting your panties in a knot people. But the minute my daughter turns 8 or grows taller than 4'9", she is getting out of that booster seat.)

Living a Balanced Life

We got home from our Christmas holiday yesterday. It went pretty much as expected. As I predicted before,we did get a couple of comments about how Ocean is not reading yet (she's only six and I believe in child-led reading), one educational Christmas gift, and one comment about doing elimination communication. And none of it was that big of a deal. The only comment that really annoyed me was when my mom said (of baby Peace), "Where's all her hair? Andrea Rivard's baby has lots of hair." But, I guess that comment wasn't so much annoying, inasmuch as it was just utterly stupid (as in, some babies just don't have hair, Mom!).

The whole week pretty much balanced itself out though, as life always does. I've been reading this book by Dr. John F. Demartini called The Breakthrough Experience where he talks about equilibrium and how at the center of all the positives and negatives in life is balance and love. "Nature won't allow anything but equilibrium. When you embrace the balance and the truth, love surrounds you." So, for everything that happens in life that is negative, there is a positive side to it (and vice versa).

I was thinking about this in relation to our holiday, and it couldn't be more true. Sure, I have to put up with the relatives making asinine comments about my babies hair, but I also don't have to do any cooking for an entire week. It's all balanced. I get to eat a lot of yummy, unhealthy food (seriously, I think I have some sort of holiday eating disorder or something), but then my body feels the effects of it afterwards. I have fun playing board games with my family, but then my sister gets sick and starts passing gas that smells worse than my dead grandma.

See... balance.