matt vs everything

I'm matt. I'm a librarian, and I like things.

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Twelve

I have lots and lots of catching up to do.  Apparently, somewhere along the way, my baby turned into a toddler, and that changes everything.  It's a sort of beautiful chaos that I wouldn't give up for the world.

Anyway, back before Christmas (because, again, toddler), we received our 12th Imagination Library book.  This selection was Your Kind of Mommy, written by Marjorie Blain Parker and illustrated by Cyd Moore.  It's a very sweet book with lots of vibrant two-page illustrations--incredibly colorful.  In fact, it's so colorful that there are colors that don't seem to belong, like lines of blue and green in reddish-blonde hair, but that's part of the charm.  It keeps things light and cheery.

Ideally, I suppose I should have let my wife read this one to Charlotte.  It's about mothers, after all, but I like being comfortable enough to read anything to her, even if the words and characters are of a feminine nature.  She doesn't care, so I don't either.  She loves the pictures and the words just the same, and the message is in no way invalidated by using the term mommy instead of daddy.  The sentiment always remains, and I'm sure my daughter picks up on it.  Kids are smart.

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Eleven

We left the park and wandered around to the front of the adjacent friendly neighborhood public library.  It looks like something built during the Cold War, and I have no doubt that if worse came to worse, it could be used as a bomb shelter.  I love my library, but there's no rule that says I have to love the building that it resides in!

Anyway, this book.  This freaking book, right here.  It's a classic in its own right, and it's ripe for interactivity.  If you don't make a game out of this book while reading it to your child, you are dead inside.  So this is All of Baby Nose to Toes by Victoria Adler and Hiroe Nakata (illustrator).

It's full of simple, color pictures, and the words are a sing-songy rhyme with a definite rhythm to them.  The text basically begs you to point, grab, or kiss your baby on their nose, ears, belly, toes, etc.  But, like, not in an overly weird way.  It's Playing with your Baby 101, basically, and it's pure joy.

Charlotte approves.

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Ten

Time for a two-fer.  Fall is incredibly busy, have you noticed that?  Every weekend, it's like there's something else going on--Charlotte's first trip to the pumpkin patch, Halloween parties, a trip to the zoo.  All of these would have been great venues for storytime, but sometimes being in the moment and enjoying things for what they are really gets in the way.  We made a special trip to the park, instead.

This month's selection (technically, September's, but who's counting?) was Pouch! by David Ezra Stein.  I'll admit, I was jazzed for this one.  We have another of his books, Leaves, which to me is the quintessential book about Fall.  Pouch! did not disappoint.

I love Stein's rough art (offhand, it looks like a mix of crayon and watercolor) and his use of motion and action.  The story is pretty freaking adorable, too.  Baby kangaroo gets excited about exploring the world, gets spooked, runs back to mom, etc.

It's cute; it has animals (that's a plus in Charlotte's book); and it makes a great story about exploring the world around.  How can I complain about that?

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Nine

I'm way late on this one, I know.  Technically, this is the book we received in August.  August just happened to be an incredibly busy month, but everything works out in the end, right?

August's Imagination Library selection was Little Pink Pup by Johanna Kerby, about a piglet that gets adopted by a mother dog.  It's super cute stuff.  This is a bit of a departure, though, from your typically IL book because instead of illustrations, this one features photographs throughout that actually depict the (I'm assuming) true story of Pink and Tink.  Charlotte loved it, but I'm sure the photos played a huge role in that--she's to the point where any real life animal is worthy of smiles, laughs, and all sorts of attention.  It's an adorable stage. 

We recently spent a long weekend in Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati.  There was an Oktoberfest and a Comic-Con going on at the same time, so it was basically heaven for me.  We also saw this as a great opportunity for Charlotte, so we explored some of the kid-friendly venues in the Cincy area.  The Newport Aquarium, with its giant room of roaming, swimming, splashing penguins was a definite highlight of the trip for her, but we also took the opportunity to sit beneath the impressive Roebling Suspension Bridge and read our book.  The background seemed appropriate.  After all, I'm a runner, so I naturally associate Cincinnati with the Flying Pig Marathon.  Pigs, Cincinnati, that's sort of a connection.

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Eight

I was waiting for the right time to read this book to Charlotte.  We received it on-time in July, but it was the first of August before we had our best chance of going to the park.  Thematically, it felt like the right place to be.  Themes are important; context is everything.

This month's selection from the Imagination Library folks was Little Loon and Papa by Toni Buzzeo and Margaret Spengler--a charming little book about a father loon teaching his baby loon how to dive underwater.  The illustrations are nothing short of gorgeous.

Back to the theme of... well... themes.  This one was important for two reasons.  One, it was a chance to get outside and show Charlotte locations similar to those in the book.  We have a park that circles a small, manmade lake in our hometown, and though we don't exactly have any loons (or moose or beavers or sometimes bears), there are plenty of geese and ducks that Charlotte can latch onto and that can serve as surrogate representations of the characters in the book.  Geese--close enough, right?

Two, this book is clearly about the father-child dynamic, and so far, I think it's the first example that we've come across.  I don't want to marginalize the mother-child relationship in anyway, and don't get me wrong, my wife is no slouch when it comes to taking care of our child, but it doesn't seem as common to see a loving, supportive father-child relationship well-represented.  There's this stereotype, I think, that the mother is the obvious nurturing force, and fathers are strict or conservative or bumbling by nature, and it's nice that, as someone who likes to think of himself as an active and involved component in his daughter's upbringing, things definitely seem to be shifting toward a more reasonable outlook on what it means to be a good, modern dad.  This is me passing along something I can teach--a love of reading, of books, of learning and bettering oneself, of symbols and representations, of open communication.  This is me being a librarian for my daughter.

Anyway, so, nice book.  Lovely illustrations.  Themes.  I think I covered everything.  Thanks again, Imagination Library!

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Seven

We're slowly but surely becoming experts at traveling with a baby.  We've taken plenty of day trips and a weekend trip or two, but sometimes it's nice to enjoy your own hometown.  The weather was sketchy, so between the day's rain showers, we set out for a day of early literacy fun!  Our first stop was the local library for Read! Play! Grow!--a program for the library's youngest patrons that involves reading a story and playing with assorted toys and activities.  It's become Charlotte's regular play group, and I'm so glad that she's already building a lifelong relationship with the library.

Then we took her a few blocks over to our town's historic train depot, where the covered benches were a nice shelter from the drizzle, and pulled out our book.

This month's selection was Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, and we had a great time with it.  The text is limited to dialogue balloons, so not only does it give the parent a great opportunity to set the stage and describe the setting and the action in his or her own words, but older kids can do the same--effectively, they can create a new story every time this book is opened, and two readings may never be the same.  That's the magic of children's books right there.

I think Charlotte got to absorb a lot more from the illustrations of this book.  Whether that's due to the narrative structure of the book or her natural development, I haven't the slightest idea, but I know she had a great time as we read--and the above pic perfectly captured her enthusiasm.  

Previous installments:

Book One: The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

Book Two: Spot Goes to the Library by Eric Hill

Book Three: My Farm Friends by Wendell Minor

Book Four: You are my I Love You/Tu eres mi te Quiero by Maryann Cusimano Love and Satomi Ichikawa

Book Five: Red Wagon by Renata Liwska

Book Six: Corduroy by Don Freeman

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Six

A weekend (or maybe two) back, the Knoxville Public Library was holding its annual Children's Festival of Reading, which meant a park full of storytellers, children's book authors/illustrators, and a generally fun atmosphere for fans of early literacy.  We had a break in the weather (Tennessee has notoriously rainy weekends in the springtime--in other words, we totally lucked out), so we decided to make the drive and reinforce the attitudes and behaviors about books and reading that we've been trying to impress upon Charlotte's mind since the day she was born.  Luckily, our latest Imagination Library book had just come in the mail.  Wouldn't it be great to snap our monthly Imagination Library pic at the Children's Festival of Reading?  Wouldn't it, though!

Well, we forgot.  So we went to our favorite Knoxville beer garden and read to her there.

This month's selection was Corduroy by Don Freeman.  I can't say a lot about it, really.  I mean, it's a classic, and everything that's going to be said has already been said.  Charlotte seemed to really respond to it, though, and I'm glad that because of the Imagination Library, we had a chance to add it to her collection.  I'm also glad to have so many opportunities to share the love of reading that my wife and I both have with our daughter.

Previous installments:

Book One: The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

Book Two: Spot Goes to the Library by Eric Hill

Book Three: My Farm Friends by Wendell Minor

Book Four: You are my I Love You/Tu eres mi te Quiero by Maryann Cusimano Love and Satomi Ichikawa

Book Five: Red Wagon by Renata Liwska

[thegraphiclibrarian]

It’s the first Saturday in May, and that means it’s Free Comic Book Day! This year’s offerings include 2 incredibly applicable titles for librarians: Help the CBLDF Defend Comics and Raising a Reader!, both from the non-profit Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Defend Comics is a short...

[mattvseverything]

Do you know the Dewey Decimal System? Is it alchemy?

Rick Bragg, TLA 2014

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Five

These books seriously just keep getting better and better. My daughter is six months old now, and it's ridiculous how quickly time passes. She has a couple of tiny teeth, and she sits up like a champ, which definitely helps with the whole storytime thing.

This month's Imagination Library book was Red Wagon by Renata Liwska, and it is absolutely gorgeous. The cover art is the same style used throughout the entire book, with more and more elaborately imaginative scenes presented using this colorful, though hazy and dreamlike, art. I loved it, if you can't tell, and I think this will be one of Charlotte's favorites. It helps that all the characters are the same forest animals that adorn her nursery; I think that's a huge part of the draw. She also seems to be responding better toward friendly cartoony faces (to which our Netflix account can unfortunately attest), so this book is perfect for her current developmental stage.

I think we'll be tracking down more of Renata Liwska's books in the future, so really this month's selection was a huge win-win.

Previous installments:

Book One: The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

Book Two: Spot Goes to the Library by Eric Hill

Book Three: My Farm Friends by Wendell Minor

Book Four: You are my I Love You/Tu eres mi te Quiero by Maryann Cusimano Love and Satomi Ichikawa

[ruckawriter-deactivated20200128]

Contents Under Pressure

I rarely use this to just blog. I’m going to just blog now, so you can all just ignore this if it’s not to your liking.

Warning. Contents under pressure.

Read More

[nothingman]

via http://www.listen-tome.com/save-me/

[fozmeadows]

IT’S 2AM AND I’M LAUGHING WAY TOO LOUD HELP

[davepress-deactivated20230816]

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman’s home on Remodelista, because I’m in a nesting phase..

[mattvseverything]

Me, explaining a beer flight to My daughter while wearing a Hawkeye T-shirt. This photo hangs on the wall of our regular pub. Sometimes I question my life choices and decide that they are awesome.

[mattvseverything]

Imagination Library: Book Four

This is month 4 out of 60.  I came home from work to find that my daughter does not like wearing pants.  I'm hoping this trend does not continue.

This month, Charlotte received You Are My I Love You/Tu Eres Mi Te Quiero by Maryann Cusimano Love and Satomi Ichikawa, and so far it's been my favorite.  It's a bilingual picture book, so all of the text is presented in both English and Spanish.  I know nothing about Spanish pronunciation (and I didn't want my daughter's introduction to another tongue being a complete slaughterhouse), so I primarily recited in English alone.  I was also slightly worried that Charlotte would be confused by words in another language, but my lovely wife informed me that babies often recognize when a language is not the one they are accustomed to hearing.  She's the one who took Early Childhood Development classes, so I choose not to question her authority.

Anyway, the text is poignant and moving, telling the child that the parent is the steady, dependable constant in their life and that they can play and explore safely.  The accompanying illustrations are sweet and colorful.  Charlotte seemed to enjoy it, and that's all that matters to me.

This selection actually got me to thinking: while I adore everything The Imagination Library stands for, how do they meet the needs of patrons and communities for whom English is a second language?  As it turns out, informational materials and enrollment forms are available in English and Spanish, and while there is not currently an option for books in other languages, a great number of the books that kids receive are bilingual.  So that's good to know, at least.  Every child deserves this, and I'm glad to see that at least some efforts are being made.

Previous installments:

Book One: The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

Book Two: Spot Goes to the Library by Eric Hill

Book Three: My Farm Friends by Wendell Minor

[awesomepeoplereading]

Debbie Harry reads.

[thelifeguardlibrarian]

Today in research finds, TJ’s beer guide.

[mattvseverything]

I'm pretty sure that Beer Librarian is not a job title that exists in the real world, but it's still on my short list of dream jobs.