Read booky!

AND THE WINNER OF A COPY OF BARBARA ROSS'S CLAMMED UP: RobinPS!
Robin knew all about the egg!
Robin, please email your shipping address to BarbaraRoss "at" MaineClambakeMysteries dot com
 
HALLIE EPHRON: We have a baby in the family, and I have no doubt that my daughter picked her name in part because she grew up loving a character by the same name in a children's book, one of many books that she used chase us around the house waving and crying, "Read booky!"

This new person in our lives has been cause for great celebration, cooing and ahing, and a provides welcome excuse to buy fresh copies of the books we loved to read to (and later with) our kids.

Remember Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline? I can recite it cover to cover from
In an old house in Paris
All covered with vines,
Lived twelve little girls
In two straight lines
to
"And now go to sleep," said Miss Clavell.
And she turned out the light
And closed the door.
That's all there is,
There isn't any more.

Here are some more of my favorites that I can't wait to try out on a our new audience:

The Berenstain Bears Old Hat, New Hat in which our bear goes looking for a new hat and finds them wanting:
Too beady.
Too bumpy.
Too leafy.
Too lumpy.
Too twisty.
Too twirly.
Too wrinkly.
Too curly.


Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon, the perfect poetry to fall asleep to.
In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of--
The cow jumping over the moon

A. A. Milne's Now We Are Six is full of lovely rhymes for short attention spans.
Christopher Robin
Had wheezles
And sneezles,
They bundled him
Into
His bed.






Ogden Nash's The Tale of Custard the Dragon which brought "realio, turlio" into our vocabulary:
Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

The sublime poetic imagery of Carl Sandburg in Rootabaga Stories that I love and kids tolerate:
An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, "Come and find me, come and find me." (from "Three Boys With Jugs of Molasses and Secret Ambitions")

And from the sublime to the ridiculous, my personal favorite:
Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? which I can also recite cover to cover.
Mr. Brown is a wonder, he makes thunder!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
He makes lightning
Splatt! Splatt! 
And it's very very hard
To make a noise like that.




Is the poetry of beloved children's books lodged in your brain? What are your personal favorites to read to the little people in your life?