Lynley Dodd

What We Read This Week (E’s Choice)

/ annamurray / 1 Comment

We are back to having a pile of books on my sofa. They are mostly E choices as C joins in for E’s story time and then usually asks for another story when she’s in bed.

Bob Bilby is a very popular choice. Board books just take one element of juggling away. Usually E is clambering all over me, trying to reach things behind me on the back of the sofa or craning to see what daddy is up to in the kitchen or playing with a washer or bath toy and then dropping it and lurching as far over the sofa arm as she can to see it. Not having to worry about her tearing book pages is just a relief. And she loves turning these pages herself and trying to pull off the pictures that look like they’ve been stuck on.

That said… she is learning gentle hands for page turning. Several paper-page books have been explored without any ripping so maybe we are out of that phase. Well, maybe not. But we are on the way though, definitely. So we have been able to read Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy (Lynley Dodd); This and That (a favourite, by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek); Goldilocks (the First Readers version); and The Wonky Donkey (Craig Smith and Katz Cowley). 

For a few months, I would play The Wonky Donkey on my phone on the way to daycare (thank you Apple Music). We’ve had a break on that for a while, and had a break on reading the story for a while, but it came out again this week and E’s face lights up every time. 

What We Read This Week (Christmas Books)

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We had a wonderfully bookish Christmas. When C was a baby, I learned of the Icelandic tradition of giving books on Christmas Eve so you get to read books all night. This was (I think) the first tradition that I introduced to our family that was from somewhere else. The night before Christmas Eve, the book fairy comes and leaves books for you to find in the morning. This year, C received ‘Where’s Bluey?’ (a hide and seek book!) and ‘The Painted Ponies’ by Alison Lester. E received ‘Hairy Maclary’s Hat Tricks’ (Lynley Dodd) and ‘The Very Noisy Baby’ (Alison Lester). 

C was set on giving E the Bob Bilby book from Bluey for Christmas (partly because it’s a board book, and partly – I suspect – because C loves this story herself), and E also received Verandah Santa (another Bluey book) from some cousins. Both girls were given a Beatrix Potter book, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, and a book of three Horton stories by Dr. Seuss, by Uncle Alex and Aunty Alys.

Adding to this the ‘book from Santa’ (The River Riddle, daycare Christmas present), and there has been a delightful expansion of reading repertoire in our family. C will happily look for all of the things in the Bluey hide and seek book when we need her to do something quiet. One of my favourite moments recently was, having just read both girls Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and then starting the nap process with E, spotting C in her fluffy tutu dress, carefully ‘reading’ it to her toys on her bed. 

Our very own very noisy baby is rather enthusiastic in lifting the flaps of the very noisy baby book. She’s not so much into the longer, wordier stories just yet, but Bob Bilby is receiving daily attention. Extra delight with this one right now is that it has fireworks – just like we saw on New Year’s Eve. Ooooohhhhh….. Oh, and C won’t go to sleep unless I read her a Horton story in her bedroom. She snuggles up and gets rather sleepy until we get to a bit that she just can’t help laughing at and then when she’s recovered we keep going and she gets sleepier and sleepier and when it’s done she is far more ready for sleep. Books are wonderful.