Those were some quality selections! I still have my copies of Mister Muster & It’s Raining, Said John Twaining, and have sent copies to wee youngsters of my acquaintance over the years 💖📚
Voyage to the Bunny Planet by Rosemary Wells is so beautiful and calm - it takes you through three different (original, touching, insightful, funny to both adults and kids) scenarios where a kid bunny has a trying day until Janet, the Bunny Queen, invites them to imagine the day that “should have been”. One of them is simply spending the whole day all alone in a tree. The words have a great rhythm, illustrations are gorgeous, and it is all so satisfying!
Yay, another Bunny Planet fan! That little trilogy was a standby when our Seb was little, and has been a hit as a gift to new babies of our acquaintance 💖
Millions of Cats is one of my favorites! At a Jonathan Lethem talk the other night at the Brooklyn library, I learned that this is credited as being the first "picture book." (I also learned the author, Wanda Gag, was best friends with the creator of the Boerum Hill neighborhood.)
Happy to see beautiful books from your childhood days still getting some love, Dame Karen. It bought to mind many good times reading together! So that in itself is a peaceful respite from the world.
Re: classic rock radio. We subscribe to Sirius XM, and on our road trip from MN to AZ, kept switching among the various permutations of 'classic rewind', 'deep cuts', etc. And found that the same songs were played on all of them, multiple times a day. There are lots of songs out there to choose from! I think it may have been on 'yacht rock deep cuts' that we finally lost it and I agreed to listen to Dave Ramsey (my husband enjoys hearing people's stories and I like yelling at the religious-ness when it overrides logical thinking).
We have Sirius XM now, too, and the sheer number of options is overwhelming! I think that’s part of why my music discovery, such as it is these days, typically comes via individually-made playlists (Naima Cochrane of Music Sermon fame is one of my standbys, for example). Algorithmic playlists are fine but they also lean hard towards sonic confirmation bias
It is so gratifying to read this article - especially as the original selector and reader to you of many of the aforementioned books.
I too loved Ferdinand and his cork tree. Some of the books were from my childhood and it was a joy to read them to you and your sisters.
Those were some quality selections! I still have my copies of Mister Muster & It’s Raining, Said John Twaining, and have sent copies to wee youngsters of my acquaintance over the years 💖📚
Voyage to the Bunny Planet by Rosemary Wells is so beautiful and calm - it takes you through three different (original, touching, insightful, funny to both adults and kids) scenarios where a kid bunny has a trying day until Janet, the Bunny Queen, invites them to imagine the day that “should have been”. One of them is simply spending the whole day all alone in a tree. The words have a great rhythm, illustrations are gorgeous, and it is all so satisfying!
Yay, another Bunny Planet fan! That little trilogy was a standby when our Seb was little, and has been a hit as a gift to new babies of our acquaintance 💖
Millions of Cats is one of my favorites! At a Jonathan Lethem talk the other night at the Brooklyn library, I learned that this is credited as being the first "picture book." (I also learned the author, Wanda Gag, was best friends with the creator of the Boerum Hill neighborhood.)
SO COOL! AND, it recently went into the public domain! https://www.nujournal.com/news/local-news/2024/01/03/public-domain-sets-millions-of-cats-free/
Hooray! I hope to see many plays & spinoffs!!!
Happy to see beautiful books from your childhood days still getting some love, Dame Karen. It bought to mind many good times reading together! So that in itself is a peaceful respite from the world.
Re: classic rock radio. We subscribe to Sirius XM, and on our road trip from MN to AZ, kept switching among the various permutations of 'classic rewind', 'deep cuts', etc. And found that the same songs were played on all of them, multiple times a day. There are lots of songs out there to choose from! I think it may have been on 'yacht rock deep cuts' that we finally lost it and I agreed to listen to Dave Ramsey (my husband enjoys hearing people's stories and I like yelling at the religious-ness when it overrides logical thinking).
We have Sirius XM now, too, and the sheer number of options is overwhelming! I think that’s part of why my music discovery, such as it is these days, typically comes via individually-made playlists (Naima Cochrane of Music Sermon fame is one of my standbys, for example). Algorithmic playlists are fine but they also lean hard towards sonic confirmation bias