Happy birthday to Astrid...and me

Today is Astrid Lindgren's birthday; it would have been her 101st.  It's also this blog's birthday: its first!  I'm celebrating by making plans for bookstogether's future.  All of which include...more posts, for starters.  Thank you for reading and commenting thus far!

And check out this gorgeous edition of Pippi Longstocking (Viking, 2007).  Tiina Nunnally's translation is described as sparkling; I like it, but I definitely prefer "thing-finder" to Nunnally's "thing-searcher" (does anyone know what that is in Swedish?).  I love Lauren Child's illustrations, though; her Pippi is sweeter somehow than Glanzman's (the one I grew up with), but still sassy.  And I really love the book's design, which occasionally merges text and illustration (full-color throughout) in all kinds of interesting ways.  Our new favorite Pippi.  And we do love our Pippi.

[N.b., it's not actually my birthday; that's October 5, and I share it with Toot of Holly Hobbie's Toot and Puddle (see A Present for Toot).  Although I'm probably more of a Puddle than a Toot, except when it comes to European travel.  And definitely more of an Annika than a Pippi, for that matter.]

Bakfiets

I finally found a bike with a basket big enough to hold my library books.  Bakfiets!

Not reporting from Miami

We were on vacation in Miami Beach for the last two weeks.  The first week the weather was gorgeous.  After a day of playing in the white sand and clear blue water, the kids and I would clean up and go out to the wide tiled terrace overlooking the ocean, to sort through the day's collection of seashells and sit on deck chairs reading Pippi in the South Seas (this image is of my childhood copy, illustrated by Louis S. Glanzman; Puffin, 1977).  I think this is my favorite Pippi book, and the chapters that take place on board the Hoptoad (Pippi's father's ship) and on Kurrekurredutt Island made perfect on-location reading.

Pippi and Tommy and Annika set off for home before the start of the rainy season.  We mistimed our departure, and it rained for most of the second week of our vacation [see Tropical Storm Fay].  Now reporting from Arlington, VA:  we're home.

Goodreads

I've been looking for a way to keep track of what I'm reading since January (see this post) and finally decided to commit to Goodreads.  You can find me (and add me as a friend) there at www.goodreads.com/profile/bookstogether.  If you're on Goodreads, please consider adding me as a friend; and if you're not, please consider joining.  I would love to see what you're reading.

N.b, the Goodreads widget in my sidebar is showing someone else's books at the moment!

[Updated to add:  I switched to a different widget.  And, Goodreads is addictive.]

Fast forward

We've been busy reading and making, gardening and baking.  All of it with support from our local library: I think we have a record number of books checked out.  Okay, over a 100 (how many do you have out right now? I'm curious).  I had several times that number checked out from the Grad Library at Michigan for years while I was writing my dissertation, so 100 library books doesn't sound like that much to me, but it seems to concern the librarians.  We've never lost one yet! I tell them cheerfully when they remark on it.  It's true: we keep them all in their own bookcase unless they're being read at bedtime.  Bedtime books are on the nightnightstand.

I have been hanging on to some of our library books longer than usual, just so I could write about them here: please look for a lot of short posts this week as I try to catch up.  Thanks for reading!

Miscellaneous Picture Books Now Organized by Color

This is the miscellaneous picture books shelf in our living room.  Yesterday there were about twice as many books all haphazardly jammed onto it; these are the ones that didn't get sorted into some other, more logical place or category.  I never (never!) thought I would organize books by color, but now I think it actually makes sense--for the miscellaneous picture books, at least.  The kids love the new arrangement, too: Leo helped me line the books up; and even three-year-old Milly can put them back (when she wants to, that is).

[If you think I'm crazy:  I saw this brilliant and beautiful book, Apples for Jam: A Colorful Cookbook by Tessa Kiros (Andrews McMeel, 2007) at Williams-Sonoma today.  The recipes are organized by the color of the food.  Thankfully, there's also an index (I checked).]

RIF

Reading is Fundamental is asking us to act now to reinstate RIF's funding.  From their website:  "The President's proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 eliminates the Inexpensive Book Distribution Program, which is the RIF Book Distribution Program. Unless Congress reinstates funding for this program, RIF would be unable to distribute 16 million books annually to the nation's youngest and most at-risk children."  Please consider contacting Congress in support of RIF via this link  (it's easy!).  And thank you to the children's lit bloggers who brought this to my attention.

[I love the cover image on The Art of Reading: Forty Illustrators Celebrate RIF's 40th Anniversary (Dutton, 2005)--Fred Marcellino's cat and mouse remind me a little of my kids when they're reading together.]

Listmaking

2008 is not even a week old and already I've lost track of what I've read this year.  Not quite, maybe, but that's where I'm headed.  Now is the time to set up some sort of system, but what?  I could try:

• A website like Goodreads or Library Thing
• An unpublished blog post
• Pen-and-paper.  Tricia keeps a list of titles in a notebook in her purse [see her helpful comment for how she keeps track of different kinds of books: picture books, teaching-related books, her own reading.  Thank you, Tricia!]
• Christie recommends BookCat, a database program designed to catalog book collections [see her helpful comment for more on how she uses BookCat to catalog picture books.  Thank you, Christie!]
• She also recommends keeping an annotated list with links (saves time later)
• Something else entirely

How do you do it?  Please advise.

[Oh, and what about picture books?  I read hundreds (upon hundreds, probably) of picture books.  I don't think it makes sense to keep track of all of them:  maybe just new releases and books we love?]

Unwrapped

For the record.  Thank you, Santa and our generous relatives.

Olivia Helps with Christmas by Ian Falconer (Atheneum, 2007).  Another one for the Christmas book basket.  Olivia is not always my favorite, but even I can't resist her when she gets tangled up in the lights.

First the Egg by Laura Seeger (Roaring Brook, 2007).  We loved Lemons Are Not Red (I think it was the first book Milly could "read" all by herself; with lots of expression).  This one is good, too.  You can page through both of them at LookyBook.com (with this caveat).

Hug Time by Patrick McDonnell (Little, Brown; 2007).  Very, very sweet.  Maybe even a little too sweet for me, but Milly likes it.

Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary by Beverly D'Onofrio; illustrated by Barbara McClintock (Schwartz and Wade, 2007).  Santa must have read this post.

Scholastic Children's Encyclopedia (2004).  We have a freecycled 1951 World Book Encyclopedia that sees a surprising amount of use from me and my second-grader.  I would love to upgrade to a new(er) set, but in the meantime Leo can learn to use this single-volume encyclopedia on his own.  So far: no entry for Armor, but some relevant information under Knight.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves:  Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! by Lynne Truss; illustrated by Bonnie Timmons (Putnam Juvenile, 2006).  Insert clever sentence with comma variations here.

The Boy Who Drew Birds by Jacqueline Davies; illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).  Look for an upcoming post about this lovely book, a story from the life of John James Audubon.

The Toothpaste Millionaire by Jean Merrill.  Instead of The Lemonade Wars (also by Jacqueline Davies; see above), which will have to wait until Leo is a little older.  He and his dad read 11 chapters of Toothpaste Millionaire last night; they really like it.

The Chronicles of Narnia with pop-ups by Robert Sabuda (HarperCollins, 2007) and Winter's Tale.  With many thanks to my mother-in-law (who must have read this post).

I didn't receive any gift books this year (I'm not complaining; I got a great new camera), but a big stack of books to review did arrive in the mail for me on Christmas Eve....

Going to Philadelphia

Our family is going to Philadelphia this weekend:  Axel (my husband) is giving a talk at the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday, and the kids and I are tagging along.  Not to the conference, thankfully (sorry, Axel):  we'll be visiting the historic area.  Leo, my second-grader, likes colonial and revolutionary American history, so he's particularly excited about the trip.  He and I have been reading about the people who lived in Philadelphia (mostly about Benjamin Franklin) and the events that took place there during that period (the signing of the Declaration of Independence).  What he really wants to see, of course, is the Liberty Bell; that, and buy a replica of it (n.b, there are a lot of children's books about saving the Liberty Bell).  Favorite Philadelphia books will be in this space on Monday.