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!
