Books for snowy days

You're never too old for a snow day, and when we had ours last week I had a million ideas about what to do. Sledding, hot chocolate, a family of snow people.... All Clementine wanted to do was hang out in jammies and read, and that ended up being the best idea of all. Here are the books we hit hard then and every day. I've been meaning to post reading lists for a while because I strive to find books that are as entertaining to the reader as the audience (in other words, books that don't make me puke). Clementine has some damn good taste.

Punk Farm by Jarret J. Krosoczka

Definitely one of our all time favorites. It lets us practice animal sounds, talk about musical instruments and SING! Visit the website to download your copy of the song and you too might be Eee-Iii-Eee-Iii-Ooo-ing your way through the day.







The Wuggie Norple Story by Daniel M. Pinkwater; Tomie dePaola illustrator

This book was originally published in 1980 and was a favorite of mine and my sister’s while we were young. It is a book about Lunchbox Louie, a totally hippy whistle fixer whose wife is Bigfoot the Chipmunk and whose son is King Waffle. Louie buys them a cat, Wuggie Norple, who gets so ridiculously large, Louie brings home a menagerie of animals as a comparison. The animals include Exploding Poptart, Laughing Gas Alligator (not an alligator at all) and Papercup Mixmaster. It’s a riot to read, with lots of great repetition. Want to get it? Hope you’ve got $100 bucks or more to shell out for a paperback copy. The thing is out of print and impossible to get. My mom bought me a copy off aLibris.com for my baby shower because she is fabulous.


Honky-tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music by Holly George Warren; Laura Levine illustrator
also by the same duo: Shake, Rattle and Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll

When I first bought these, they were way more for me than Clementine—each featured musician or group has a folksy painting and a thorough history. Waaaay too many words for Clementine, but she’s fascinated by both books and likes to page through them and point out all their shoes and guitars. I usually just read the first paragraph or make up a quick story based on the pictures. When we get to the end, she always asks to read it again right away.

In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

I remember checking this out from the library when I was a little kid, mostly because I was fascinated by the fact that Mickey is NAKED at parts in the story. It’s hardly a detailed drawing, but for a curious young mind it was enough. Apparently, as I learned from my Google search just now, the book has been/is controversial and occasionally banned due to the nudity. That’s just silly. It’s a great book about a little boy who wanders into a nocturnal fantasy city which looks an awful lot like a basic cupboard from the 30s. C likes to read this over and over and over again, and I have no objections.

Anything at all by Mo Willems

We would be lost, lost, lost without Mo Willems. And while part of me wants to say his stuff is too precious, too cute, the fact is that Clementine can’t get enough of it and neither can we. I thought I had a big collection, but this guy is prolific—it would be hard to have an entire library. Our favorites include:

Time to Pee!

At first Clementine’s interest in this book was just curiosity, and then she took an extreme interest in what we adults do in the bathroom. She will be across the house downstairs and hear Nate in the bathroom and race as fast as she can to the door crying “Pee! Pee!” Yep. It happens in public too. But the book is having a very serious effect on her, as today she discovered the hand-me-down kid’s potty (is that a gross thing to have second-hand?) and insisted she use it. I thought I was just humoring her, but she really did take her pants off, sit down and pee. I’m not letting it get to my head, but you know I’m gonna brag a lot if my kid learned to pee at 17 months old from a book.

Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus!

Enjoyable and educational…if you consider learning to say “No No!” over and over again in response to various questions educational. The reader is instructed by the bus driver not to let the pigeon drive the bus in his absence. Of course the pigeon puts on the pressure and the charm, much to the delight of Clementine, who is all too happy to enforce the rules. She now refers to all trucks and buses as No No, to which I respond yes, that’s a bus. Everyone around us is always baffled.


Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late!

Similar premise to the bus story. She gets to say no over and over again as the pigeon begs to stay up late and refuses to admit he’s tired. Clementine doesn’t yet understand this as a lesson in irony.

Leonardo The Terrible Monster

Not my favorite story, but Clementine loves it. Maybe because she has a friend named Sam, same as the boy in the book. Maybe because she gets to make all sorts of silly noises like Blaggle and Roar along with Leonardo.


Pumkinhead by Eric Rohmann

An odd tale about a boy whose head is a pumpkin that is snatched away by a bat and begins a journey than ends happily. Very beautiful illustrations and just off-beat enough that I love to read it.




Alphabet Poem by Michael Rosen; Herve Tullet illustrator

This book is perhaps the most heavily rotated right now—we even have an upstairs copy and a downstairs copy. It’s your basic ABC book, but you won’t find no A is for Alligator, D is for Drum here. Instead, it’s Computers Cooking Cakes, Noses Need Nets, Fish Find Fans and, Clementine’s favorite, Teddies Tap. She insists we all tap our feet and say “Dapa Dapa,” which is also how she asks for the book…morning, noon and night. Seriously. At 3 AM the other night I heard her saying “Dapa Dapa” to herself.


Bad Cat by Tracy-Lee McGuinness-Kelly

Another big favorite for all of us, Bad Cat wanders through the Big Stinky causing all sorts of trouble…that is, until you look closer. It turns out that people may just be misjudging poor old Bad Cat. Pictures are amazing, and even when we’ve read the text 20 times in a row I can distract C by asking her to point out all kinds of cool details. Not surprisingly she likes the tattoo on the sailor most of all.





Clementine in the City by Jessie Hartland

We like to give this book as a gift because…well…it’s about a dog named Clementine (which, incidentally, C still hasn’t tried to say). The name isn’t the only draw—Clementine is a poodle who goes to the big city to have adventures. She also buys shoes, which is my little Imelda’s favorite thing about most books. Shoes, shoes, shoes.


That’s Disgusting by Francesco Pittau; Bernadette Gervais illustrator
also by the duo: That's Dangerous, That's Mean and Elephant Elephant, a Book of Opposites

These books aren’t for everyone, but they sure are fun. We like That’s Disgusting best of all, but That’s Mean will probably be great if Clementine ever has siblings. A lot of my non-parent friends really like the scatological inappropriateness of That’s Disgusting because they’re happy to know all kids books aren’t just talking rabbits and horses. The book is a sing-songy list of things that are gross, each followed by the refrain “That’s Disgusting.” Topics range from sticking your finger in the cat’s behind to pooping in the bathtub to blowing your nose in the curtains. They’re all disgusting. Elephant Elephant is a fun, usual book of opposites that Clementine probably won’t understand for a few years now. Each spread in the book has two elephants that represent opposites. Some are pretty straightforward, like big and small; others are interesting/off like inside and outside (one elephant is exposed beneath the skin) and boy and girl (no genitals—it’s all about where the pee comes out).

Frida by Jonah Winter; Ana Juan illustrator

There are lots of draws to this book. Beneath the dust jacket (we pull those off immediately lest they get ripped into a thousand little pieces to be distributed throughout the house by both Clementine AND cat), there are lots of interesting faces that we have created different sounds for—this is how C asks for the book: “Oooo! Oooo! Ah!” while pointing to it. Inside, the illustrations are amazing and very much influenced by Frida Kahlo’s work. C is less interested in the story than the pictures, most especially the skeleton, which makes her dance.

This really is just scratching the surface. Let’s do this again sometime, huh? Also, what are your favorites? I have a list of book I covet…add to it, will you?