schemingreader

I love this guy, Vladimir Radunsky. We had a very clever set of his books that were remaindered, that were different shapes. My son really loved those as a little crawling guy. Today we got his book The Mighty Asparagus, which combined silliness with pastiche images from Renaissance art. I didn't expect that, based on the other books of his we've read--illustrations of Woody Guthrie's lyrics for children's songs, and his amazingly silly book with Chris Raschka on the importance of good table manners.

We also got another book by Daniel and Jill Pinkwater about Larry the Polar Bear, Dancing Larry, and a book we'd never read by Maira Kalman about Poppy Brite's dog Pete. I adore Maira Kalman. We have some more of her stuff on hold for us.

I got three Lord Peter Wimsy mysteries that our library didn't have through the library network: Strong Poison, Busman's Honeymoon and Have His Carcase. Also a book on the history of British cuisine and a pleasantly gimicky vegetarian cookbook that I hadn't seen before. Oh man! Have you seen that vegan cupcakes are about to take over the world?

I couldn't find a good book on origami at the library. Maybe I should let his passion for origami die a natural death, anyway. Though right now as I type this he is making another origami boulder while claiming to make a waterbomb base. But we did get another terrific book on classical music with an accompanying CD, The Story of the Orchestra by Robert Levine, aka Orchestra Bob.

I walked both ways to the library, pushing the stroller full of books and toddler. We had 19 items to return, and came home with 14 books. Argh. I looked it up and it turns out that it's only about 1.5 miles each way, which isn't that far. We ate a picnic on the tables in front of the library that included local organic cherry tomatoes and sliced cucumbers.