Books for Preschoolers that don't make me want to gouge my eyes out with a...

We have a lot of children's books in our house. A LOT of books, period. I lug them around every time I move. I wish I could part with more of them, but this is my hoarding achilles heel.

Many children's books bore me. They make me want to read them quickly to get them over with, especially after the umpteenth reading. There are a few books, however, that stand out from the crowd. The boy loves them and I love reading them to him, over and over again.

Spoon. Written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal with illustrations by Scott Magoon.

My best friend and I discovered this book at Powell's when we spent a weekend in Portland during the summer of 2009. It made such an impression that she was sure to order it for the boy last Christmas. From the Powell's website:

"Young Spoon lives a fairly happy life with a large extended family (including a ladle and a very fancy Aunt Silver), but he can't help being a bit jealous of some of his friends. Knife, for example, 'is so lucky! He gets to cut, he gets to spread.' Not to mention Chopsticks: 'Everyone thinks they're really cool and exotic! No one thinks I'm cool or exotic.' Spoon's mother doesn't try to change his mind, but reacts neutrally. Outside conversations let readers know that Spoon is being envied right back: 'Spoon is so lucky!' sigh the Chopsticks. 'We could never function apart.' At bedtime, Spoon's mom offers encouragement ('Your friends will never know the joy of diving headfirst into a bowl of ice cream') then invites him into the big bed — to spoon, of course. The talented Magoon (Mystery Ride!) gives the utensils plenty of personality, with wide eyes and expressive antlike appendages, and Rosenthal's (Little Pea) skillful storytelling moves along briskly. The humorous but earnest message about valuing one's own talents comes through loud and clear. Ages 2 — 6."

I simply love that he is invited into the big bed to "spoon" at the end. It never fails to make me laugh. The humor is clever and the story is endearing.

Instructions is a book that grew from a poem by Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by Charles Vess.

I adore Neil Gaiman. I read American Gods several years ago, and it quickly became one of my all-time favorite books. The book is based on the premise that the old gods still walk among us, and that they are organizing to fight against the new, modern gods--like the Internet, television, credit cards, etc. That book was written for grown-ups, and if you haven't read it, you should. Especially if you like folklore and Norse gods in particular. But this isn't about American Gods.

Gaiman also writes books for young adults and preschoolers. Instructions, based on poem by Gaiman,  is my favorite book that he has written for young children. It's rapidly becoming one of my favorite books, period. Gaiman has described it as a how-to-survive-should-you-ever-find-yourself-trapped-inside-a-fairy-tale book. You can read the poem here. You can watch a fantastic video below that shares many of the illustrations and features the author reading the entire poem.

Even after watching this enchanted video, it's still worth it to buy the book. After all, it offers damn good advice to live by:

"Remember your name.
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found.
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have
helped to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story."

And these last few words make me weepy each time I hear them or read them aloud:

"When you reach the little house, the
place your journey started,
you will recognize it, although it will seem
much smaller than you remember.
Walk up the path, and through the garden
gate you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.
Or rest. "

Crazy Hair. Also by Gaiman, with illustrations by Dave McKean.

This book is just plain silly. And it rhymes! I love the cadence and the illustrations are funny, fantastical, and just a tad creepy. I have fun reading it every time.

Me I Am.

When I read this book, I am struck by the depth of its poem. Seriously. It's a deep poem, no?

I am the only Me I Am  
Who qualifies as me,
no Me I AM has been before,  
and none will ever be  
No other Me I Am 
can feel the feelings I' ve within,  
no other Me I Am
can fit precisely in my skin  
There is no other Me I Am  
who thinks the thoughts I do,  
the world contains one Me I Am
There is no room for two
I am the only Me I Am
this earth shall ever see,
that Me I Am I always am
is no one else but Me!

This book is based on the above poem by Jack Prelutsky, the first winner of the Children’s Poet Laureate award. The poem is beautiful, and the illustrations that accompany it are great fun to look at with your child because there's a lot of "stuff" going on in the picture that they can ask questions about. In searching for more information about him, I discovered this section on the scholastic website, and he offers great tips (I think) for writers--child and adult alike. I also like that this book will serve as an early reader book because most of the words are simple.

Chip Wants a Dog.
This book is weird, but fun. The photographs and story are by William Wegman, who apparently luuurrrves weimaraners. Chip (who is, very obviously, a dog) wants a dog, but there are barriers to this goal, such as the fact that his parents (who are also dogs) won't allow him to get a dog because dogs are a lot of work, and his mother is a cat person. In the end, Chip realizes he doesn't need a dog--HE IS A DOG. I'm not sure what the "moral" is, but I think it's something about not needing someone to make your life complete. The photographs of the beautiful weimaraners (dressed in clothes, reading magazines, etc.) are hilarious.

The Human Body: A Magic Skeleton Book. Written by Janet Sacks. Illustrated by Jan Smith and Peter Bull.
When the boy was potty training, he wanted to know where poop comes from. It wasn't enough to know that poop came from food--he wanted to know how food turned into poop. I tried showing him images online, but they are confusing for a little guy. I looked at several books before finding this one. Most of the children's anatomy books are either WAY too detailed for a 3-4 year-old, or they are (in my opinion) just plain stupid. I was really excited when I found this book. You can't tell from the Amazon images, but each page has a slide-out tab, so that you can first see the skeleton (or digestive system, or brain, etc.) and then when you pull the slider out, you see where that particular organ (or skeleton) resides in the body. The book includes pull tabs for the skeleton, the brain, the heart, the lungs, and the digestive system; simple information about cells, teeth, and nutrition is also included. The boy loves it, and when he took it to show-and-tell, his teacher wrote the information down to order one for the classroom because she had also had difficulty finding something that was both appropriate and informative for young children. You do have to be a little gentle with it because if you pull really hard the tabs will come all the way out or get torn, but overall the book is sturdier than I thought it would be. The book will grow with him because there are sort of layers of information in the book, so that we can move from just enjoying the pull tabs to reading more of the details in the book.

Frog and Toad stories, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.

These are by no means new books. They were published in the 1970s, but I didn't read these books as a child. Now I feel like I was deprived :) If you were similarly deprived, buy them now so that you can enjoy them with your child. They are simple, sweet, and funny stories about two best friends--Frog and Toad. I would probably read these by myself even if I didn't have a child, now that I've discovered them.

On Prefixes, Priorites, and Breast Milk

I am an affiliate of the Women's Studies program here. There is no actual major in Women's Studies, just a program, and I am grateful that we have that. 

Apparently the state's higher board of education want our university and the other university to have the same prefix for their programs to make it easier to transfer credits. I get it. This is one of those little annoying things that isn't a big deal until you find yourself dealing with people's mistakes too much of the time. Go ahead--change the program name and/or the prefix. Let's move on.

Move on? But no. No, no, no, no, no. We can't just get it done and move on, because academics are a bunch of narcissistic crybabies. Not all of them, but too many of them.

Narcissistic crybabies. There, I said it.

I don't go to the Women's Studies meetings because it seems like a lot of drama. I feel bad about not attending, but there are a handful of people that really get under my skin who faithfully attend and I only have so much patience. I try to save it for my child :)

There is an awful lot of mental masturbation (i.e. big words that serve no more function than smaller words, theorizing for the sake of theorizing, using hard-to-understand, insider terminology) going on in this department. My friend C calls it academic masturbation. I think academic masturbators are just subsets of mental masturbators. My ex-husband was an MM, but not in the academic category. He was a music snob MM. Like High Fidelity, but way more "underground."


My friend, K, is a member of the Women's studies curriculum committee. Regarding the meetings about name changes: Oh my god. There was pointing and yelling and crying and all sorts of drama.

Narcissistic crybabies. I told you.

K then went on to say that she must be a bad feminist, because she just didn't care that much about the prefix--she wanted to get on with other challenges and problems in the curriculum.

The thing is, I totally understand why this kind of thing matters. They are currently debating two options to rename the program: Women and Gender Studies vs. Gender and Women's Studies. I find the second-wave feminists favor the first option and third-wave/queer theorists want the second. So while the some of them are duking it out, there are others (4th wave pragmatists?) who are like, um, hey, uh, we just need to get this done so we can move on to important shit.


Personally, I prefer the first option: Women and Gender Studies. I think it's important to include both Women and Gender in the title, but I think Women should come first, if for no reason other than to pay homage to those early programs that were hard to start and controversial. In this regard, I agree with the 2nd-wavers. If women will be subsumed under "Gender," then you might was well just take "Women" out of the name.

Yes, I have an opinion. But at the end of the day, I'll go with any of the options as long as we still have a program and funds to expand. I'm nauseated that this kind of thing is taking up so much time. Let's celebrate that we have a program that needs a name and that we have freedom to bicker about this bullshit. And then move on.

Because seriously, stuff like this is happening, and once again, women are being chastised for daring to assert that they know what is best for their children, even though they are in agreement with the recommendations from the World Health Organization. The overarching message is that women are too irresponsible to be able to care for their children appropriately. The overarching message is that women are really just children, after all. They can create life, but are obviously too feeble-minded to figure out how to boil milk. Obviously, we shouldn't trust them to cook meat to a proper temperature either. Those dirty, weak, imbeciles can't be trusted.

I'd rather put my time and effort into political action like this. This is where academic feminists should be putting their time and energy. The Eats on Feets "movement" didn't initially set out to be political; it has, of course, become political. Anytime women assert control over their bodies, it becomes political. There is always backlash. The medical-pharmaceutical-agricultural-industrial complex always knows best.

This woman started the first Facebook page. She is simply amazing, and I feel honored to know her:

"I'm not saying we need to discount possible concerns because they are real and legitimate," said Walker. "But women are smart enough to figure these things out."

Amen to that.

Birth and Death and Ear Movies of Snow

Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson died this morning at the age of 55. He was, in my opinion, on of the most influential artists of the last few decades. The contribution he made to experimental music, sampling, and general f*cking around with sound cannot be overstated. I don't usually get choked up about celebrity deaths, but this made me feel like someone had just head butted me in the chest, and then I started crying.

Sleazy was a member of the bands Throbbing Gristle and Coil, and an early member of Psychic TV, and contributed to several other musical projects. Additionally, he was a music video director and an artist. I have a special connection to the music that Sleazy produced as part of Coil. First of all, I think the albums that he and John Balance created were freaking brilliant, though sometimes challenging to listen to. Some have referred to their work as "ear movies" and I think this is an great description. Peter himself said that said that he composed Coil songs visually rather than muscially:

"As long as I can remember, I've approached music from a visual point of view. Any technique that you can apply to a film, you can also apply to a piece of music. Our tunes that start off with a sort of film script or filmic picture are much more successful than the songs that start with a riff or bass line or conventional musical cue."

His music blew my mind and expanded the boundaries of what I now like to call "auditory art". When we think about visual art, we have film, paint, sculpture (although that can be tactile as well), etc. But most people only think of music as music, rather than the potential for something more.

The Snow was one of the albums on my birthing playlist, and it happened to be the album that the boy was born to. He was born towards the end of the album, and it was actually a great album for that particular point in time because the last half an hour or so of labor was hard for me to get through. Had I not been so caught up in GETTING A BABY OUT, I probably would have asked someone to skip past it when it came on, because I would have thought it "unbirthy". We were in the bedroom, and the music was playing in the living room, and I was at a point where there was NO WAY that I would have asked anyone in the room at that time to leave my side for even a second. The album is upbeat and electronic, and I was dimly aware of it playing in between contractions, but not bothered by it. It was exactly what I needed to find the energy required in those last minutes. Something more ambient and dreamy would not have been quite so effective.

After the boy was born, I wrote to Sleazy and told him my son had been born to his album. He responded and seemed delighted. I was touched that he had replied.

It was only months later when Hym and I were listening to the album again that I realized that the second to last song--the song that was playing while the boy was stuck and then likely still playing when he came flying out--was Answers Come in Dreams II. 

Because the music was playing in another room and because I was deep inside birthland, I didn't hear these words that are spoken more than once in the song:

Get ready to be delivered, and delivered in a hurry.

Indeed. What could be a more appropriate song for the end of a hard labor that culminated in a shoulder dystocia?


It was only tonight, as I listened to the song again, that I took notice of these other words, spoken only once:

Man has given a false importance to death. Every animal, plant, or man that dies adds to nature's compost heap.

RIP Sleazy. You gave us so much while you were alive, and now you'll return to the earth. Thank you.

Ani DiFranco - The Atom (03.11.2008) Tampa

Lest you think that my last post was too flippant or too creepy, or that I don't take nuclear power seriously, here is one of my favorite songs EVER. As if nuclear weapons aren't bad enough, we use the same technology to create electricity, and politicians want to create more nuclear power plants. Seriously?



These are my favorite lines:

human beings are a cross
between monkeys and ants
you can see us from your spaceship
melting the polar ice caps
with our arrogance
summon a congress of angels
dressed in riot gear
we've got ourselves a serious situation
down here

i have this great great uncle
who worked on the atomic bomb
he got a nobel prize in physics
and a place in this song
and i bet there were no windows
and no women in the room
when they applied themselves
to the pure science of
boom

Here's a nice, clean, audio recording.


Nuclear power is stupid. I have heard, and really considered, the arguments in favor of it. It produces so little waste. It's "cleaner". It's cheap. (Or not). We can generate nuclear power without depending on other countries. I get it.  But unless you can find a solution--a real solution--to that minor toxic waste problem, how can we possibly consider MORE plants. And even if that was worked out, what about the risks associated with "minor" accidents? It's not even something that we should be discussing.

Rather than fucking around with nature in order to run all of our electric shit, why don't we USE LESS energy and focus on alternatives, rather than burning shit or splitting atoms? We can create a mushroom cloud, but green energy isn't really feasible? Pfft.