Are there, at any point, too many monkey fighting snakes on the Monday to Friday plane?
(From the clean version of Snakes on a Plane, I can only imagine how much fun the censor people had).
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No. Pretty straightforward train stuff with mostly sensible well behaved somewhat anthropomorphic snakes who are riding the train as passengers not unintended cargo like I assume the snakes in a plane are. I haven’t seen the movie and I’m ok with that.
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I have also never seen the movie, the internet memes were sufficient. I am slightly disappointed that there were never too many snakes on the train at any point, though.
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Got a Barnes & Nobel gift card for Xmas, gonna pick up a few things for Ravi. Including this lovely one about an old farm house! The Marginalian has good kids book recs.
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We’ve found some winners recently:
- Bee-bim Bop! By Linda Sue Park.
It’s a board book but at theore advanced end. All about a girl and her mom who shop for and cook Bibimbap for dinner. Pipsqueak loves shouting “Bee-bim Bop!” at the end of each page and requested we make some for dinner tonight. Bonus, she ate a lot of spinach for the first time since that’s part of the recipe!
- Harriet gets carried away by Jessie Sima
Cute narrative book about a little girl on the day of her birthday party who gets some extra adventures while wearing costumes
- The house that she built by Mollie Elkman
Every page details one step of building a house (i.e. "This is the woman who created the design. The Architect uses science and art to draw the building plans). Every job is done by a woman including the roofers and cabinet makers and landscapers.
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My almost-4 year old picked this out at the library a few weeks ago. These are internet pictures, I haven’t taken any of my own, but I have so many questions.
Sometimes it feels like the words have a nice rhythm, other times it totally breaks down.
Also why are they wearing fur coats???
ALSO also apparently there’s a version of the book where the cover is actually made of fur.
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Recent winners:
Farmhouse
Ten ways to hear snow
A perfect day for digging
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Hey Bruce
Just Breathe Bear
Got this recently and liked it more than I expected:
I’ll flip through when I get it back but I loaned it to a friend.
Pros:
Cute art, mix of boys and girls. No overt emphasis on gender or roles specific genders should have.
Good narrative flow even through ABCs books don’t usually have much in the way of a “story”.
Positive values of friendship, teamwork, courage, positive self image and persistence.
I expected it to be kind of an “A is for Alchemist, B is for Bugbear” boring kind of thing but it was way better than that. Maybe not as pointed for teaching sounds or words as an A is for Apple kind of book but at least more enjoyable for me 
Fun rhyming.
Cons:
There were a couple of places I felt the cadence was a little off and I tripped over it reading it in my head. Will have to verify and give examples when I get it back.
I can’t remember the balance throughout the book on split of images of boys vs girls or body diversity. I don’t explicitly remember any visible disabilities represented in the book or any more heavyset kids. I suspect the representation inside the book roughly corresponds to the diversity on the cover, but now I want to check. But I would have loved to see right off the bat half girls and half boys with maybe a girl in a more “strong” or physically based role. Will report back on the innards of the book once returned.
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Recommendation for Wolves in the Walls by Niel Gaiman. Kiddo is reading it to grandparents now and has requested it nightly. It seemed like it might be scary the first time but it isn’t too scary. And the adults are wrong, and the little girl saves the day. The art is also lovely, I’m sure there’s better words to describe the style but it reminds me of The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar but without the white space.
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This book is excellent. The questions were a bit hard for a 3yo, but it made sense to him
hello I am unfortunately focusing more on school this semester but if you’ve got slightly older kids (or if they can handle a long readaloud, maybe? but they are probably rated PG for “some scary moments”) I want to recommend THE WITCHLINGS series by Claribel E. Ortega!!! the second one is coming out in May and it’s one of the only books I’ve been able to read this semester besides my class reading (the only other thing I’ve finished was Heartstopper, volume 1)
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Super cute book by an illustrator who has just 90% of his vision left from a degenerative disease. He’s also adorable and makes videos with his husband on Instagram
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I had no idea he was an illustrator but his videos are hilarious.
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Yes I was surprised! Also I meant 10% vision left not 90% 
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Mr. Watson’s Chickens - Jarrett Dapier
The main character is raising backyard chickens, but they get out of control (relatable much?). Zany, busy illustrations that keep kids staring at the pages so you don’t have to read the whole time. The couple is gay, but that isn’t the primary plotline.
It Might Be An Apple - Shinsuke Yoshitake
A kid and his imagination go ham on a humble little apple. Whimsical, creative, delightful. We read this one almost every day for two weeks.
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PTF for Reasons
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Mr. Watson’s Chickens is amazing! I love it so much, and so do our kids.
My mom read it once when she was up, and I could see her realizing that the main characters were gay as she read. She persevered, thankfully, but I wasn’t sure if she would 
It’s absolutely not central to the plot, which is so nice! It’s just a fact about them.
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Mr Watson’s Chickens is one of our all time favorites! So good.
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