Select Book Reviews From the Storch Family Library
July 17, 2009
FULL DISCLOSURE: I was not paid to do any of these reviews and I paid for all of these books with my own cash money, except for maybe one or two that I received as political campaign hush incentives
Christmas presents from my mom. Also, these are not actually reviews at all, because whatever, like I care about giving you people useful content. I mean, really.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Noah (at age 3 months to like, two years): Awesome! Eric Carle's finest work. A tour de force of meter and rhyme and bright colors and OMFG PURPLE CAT AAAHAAAA HAA HAAAAA.
Ezra (like, always, and still): I hate this book. Stop reading me this book.
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?
Noah: *learns a very important lessons about the inevitable disappointment of sequels*
Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?
Amy: "And that's how George Lucas and the Wachowski brothers ruined their franchises. The end. Goodnight, sweetie."
Peek-a-Boo Baby Faces!
Noah: Are you kidding me with this nonsense? Photos of stupid babies with one word of text per page? Honestly, Mother, I'm not sure what's worse: that you paid money for this crap, or that you didn't think of it yourself, thus making a fortune and then using that money to buy me MORE INTERESTING BOOKS.
Ezra: Babies! Hi babies! Yay babies! A tour de force of absolutely nothing happening! Two slobbery thumbs up!
Almost Practically Every Book Sandra Boynton Has Ever Written, And Holy Shit, That's a Lot
Noah: Yeah, I'm a little old for these, but MAN, that Blue Hat, Green Hat one gets me EVERY. TIME.
Amy: *is probably a little overly fond of What's Wrong Little Pookie? than she should be*
Guess How Much I Love You
Noah: Ugh.
Ezra: Whatever.
Amy: SOB
The Giving Tree
Noah: What happened to the tree? Where'd the tree go? Mommy, WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT TREE?
Ezra: *poops*
Amy: SOB SOB SOB SOB SOB SOB
Love You Forever
Noah: BOOOORING.
Ezra: I concur.
Amy: You know, this book is kinda creepy, what kind of mother spies on her grown son and...oh...Oh. OH. SOB SOB SOB SOB SOB SOB SOB SOB (breathes) SOB SOB SOB SOB
T-Rex & Friends, aka Some Hand-Me-Down Cloth Busy Book Thing
Noah: It CRINKLES. It MAKES NOISE. It FEELS WEIRD. I HATE IT.
Ezra: *nom nom nom nom delicious busy book nom*
You Can Go To The Potty!
Noah: I liked the part where the boy went to the potty.
Amy: I dunno, but the exclamation point in the title had me thinking this book would be a bit more exciting.
Hands Are Not For Hitting
Amy: Damn skippy.
Make Way For Ducklings
Noah: My favorite book in the entire world, the only one that is remotely acceptable to read before bed, and OMFG DUCKS! LOOK! LOOK! I SEE DUCKS IN A BOOK ABOUT DUCKS WHAT ARE THE ODDS?
Amy: Please let me read you something else Please let me read you something else Please let me read you something else
Jason: *quietly retells the story of a shrewish Mrs. Mallard and her deadbeat husband who abandons the eight ducklings to run off with a slutty swan*
Noah: *totally doesn't notice because OMFG DUCKS DUCKS DUCKS*
The Monster at the End of This Book
Noah: Yay!
Amy: Yay! Something from my childhood that is actually as good as I remember! Take that, stupid ducks.
The Snowy Day, by EZRA Jack Keats, Bitches
Noah: Also yay, although mostly for the page that says: PLOP. Because "PLOP" is apparently the funniest word in the English language.
Amy: This book should be required reading for everybody on earth, just so they'll stop thinking that we 1) made Ezra's name up, 2) gave him a girl's name, or 3) named him after a band that I didn't even think was around anymore, because I guess I suck at fact-checking.
Green Eggs & Ham
Noah: I love this book, I adore this book, I refuse to notice any sort of applicable life lesson from this book.
Amy: Holy crap, does this book ever end? Was this book always this long? My God, it's like if J.K. Rowling wrote The Half-Blood Prince using just 50 words for 800 pages. More, more, Dumbledore said with a roar, just before slamming Snape's hand in the door.
Amy: *totally has a brilliant, not-at-all-copyright-violating idea*
Goodnight, Moon
Noah: Pure board book magic.
Ezra: The greatest book I have read in my entire life, and I'm pretty sure I've read AT LEAST four.
Amy: Why is no one concerned about the fucking mouse? Why don't the kittens kill the mouse? And just who is that quiet old lady? Shouldn't somebody put that leftover mush in some Tupperware? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.
LOVE THIS. I saw Make Way for Ducklings in a store and wouldn't even buy it because it was too damn long to read before bed! And you know which Dr. Suess book is really long? Horton Hears a Who! I love it, but it takes FOREVER!
The one I have to read over and over and over is Fox in Socks. Fox. Socks. Box. Knox. Blahhhx!
LOVE THIS. Madeline gives rave reviews to Sandra Boynton as well, and last night I read Goodnight Moon about ten times.
"MOON! Mo'? Mo'? MOON!"
Yup, that sentence just about sums up my evenings.
At my house:
The Cat in the Hat:
Claire (age 3) - The cat is bad mommy. I don't want the cat to come to our house.
Hannah (11 months) - I need to honk your nose and dig in with my claws.
Mom - I loved this book when I was little . . . and you know, I am allergic to cats.
Pat the Bunny
Claire - I can wear mommy's ring. Give me your ring mommy.
Mommy - No, it is too expensive, I don't want you to lose it.
Hannah - nom, nom, nom.
Great Day for Up
Claire - That man who doesn't get up looks like Daddy.
Hannah - shrieking for fun.
Mommy - Yes, Daddy likes to sleep a lot. Because we are so loud.
I just have to skip thinking about the life lessons or I'm stuck with You Can Count at the Ocean.
If Noah likes the word plop then you should get The Owl Who's Afraid of The Dark. His name is Plop and it always used to really amuse me. It might be a bit too old for him though, I can't remember how old I was when I read it but I read it myself so I must have been at least 4.
I LOVE "What's Wrong, Little Pookie." LOVE LOVE LOVE. It's the one book that goes with us everywhere...namely to the doctors office as a shot distractor (did I just make up a word?).
Sandra Boynton is genius, for sure!
If you haven't yet, definitely check out Tomie De Paola.
Amen to Sandra Boynton. Henry can be calmed or alternately set AFLAME by _Hippos Go Berzerk!_. We read it before every nap time, because I like it so much, too. But I picked up _Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!_ (also Boynton) yesterday to try to mix things up a bit.
We read _Goodnight Moon_ at bedtime. I also want to know why the "old lady" is referred to as such (seems a bit rude) and why she isn't related to the little bunny in some way. If she's a night nanny, then I might not want my little boy exposed to this snooty upperclass b.s. But it is a pretty great book.
The only other board book with any narrative (so not counting _What Does Baby See?_ and the like) is Wise Brown's other one: _Runaway Bunny_, which we received as a shower gift. It is the CREEPIEST. FRIGHTENING. ABSURD. I intend to give it away.
I LOVE this post. LOVE! You are a comedic genius and I concur with all of your reviews...your Noah entries are hysterical! AND I now realize why you chose the name Ezra although I am sure I read that somewhere in a previous post. DUH!
Thanks for breathing some life into my dull day!
I have "Whats Wrong Little Pookie" because that's my daughters nickname...Though I got it because she looked like Garfields little bear.
As for I'll Love You Forever...Even at like, 6, I thought it was creepy. Who the hell sneaks into a teenagers bedroom at night to rock them and hold them?! But yeah at the end...OMFG WE NEED MORE KLEENEX, THIS IS SO SWEET BAWL BAWL BAWL.
Brilliant. We were BIG Judith Viorst fans, especially "I'll Fix Anthony." And the Critter books????! Oh, LAWD, take me home.
And all the McCloskey books! Blueberries for Sal!
And Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel!
Sandra Boynton = completely awesome. In my small opinion ...
Hahahaha, love the commentary from the children! Very funny!
i thought ezra was a bible name. did i make that up?
"Guess How Much I Love You" = how to not take a compliment while teaching your child one-upsmanship
"Moo Baa La La La" by Sandra Boynton = give that woman an award!
Love you forever: TOTALLY CREEPY BUT TOTALLY MAKES ME SOB SOB SOB TOO!
And why did we say "good night clocks, good night socks" when neither clocks nor socks were acknowledged in the first half of the book? Why?????
I feel exactly the same way about Goodnight, Moon!!!
The "Plop!" always gets Henry and has since he was like 4 months old. Also popular: "Brush brush brush brush comb comb comb comb" from One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.
I'll love you forever is really creepy.
My kids loved Brown Bear. It's the only one they would sit quietly for. Until they tore it pieces.
You should probably be thankful that Noah isn't getting any life lessons from "Green Eggs and Ham," because the lesson my son got from it was not, "Try new things and you may discover you like them," but instead, "If you pester somebody enough they'll eventually give in and do what you want just to shut you up." Somebody should have taken a tire iron to Sam-I-Am.
Love, love, love this! My daughter was pretty much in line with Ezra's reviews on all of them. I totally agree with you on the Monster at the End of This Book "DON'T TURN THE PAGE!!!!" And, oddly, Brown Bear was a favorite of kids that I worked with who fell under the PDD spectrum - maybe it's the predictability? While I agree with you on Boyntin's Pookie, my personal fave in her collection is Pajama Time. I enjoy giving a very dramatic interpretive rap performance while reading it - complete with some interpretive dance thrown in (I have a trademarked routine for "Jamma to the Left! Jamma to the Right! Jamma, Jamma, Jamma, Jamma, P! J!").
"Go Dog Go" -- love the utopian party-in-a-tree ending and the fuck-your-hats attitude interwoven throughout.
"One Fish Two Fish" -- the best Seuss. I always hated "Cat in the Asshat" -- he's an egotistical jerk and I would NOT like to have a beer with him, which is a requirement for protagonists of books I read aloud to my preshus offspring.
"Polka Bats and Octopus Slacks" -- works on so many levels, including mine
"Kat Kong, "Dogzilla" and anything else by Pilkey (including the Captain Underpants series for the more sophisticated reader)
"The Velveteen Rabbit" -- Never had it as a kid myself; I read it for the first time when I was in my 30s. SOB SOB SOB SOB OMFG SOB!! More powerful antidepressants were immediately obtained.
I said it when I was a little kid and I'll say it again now- "Goodnight nobody/goodnight mush" is the greatest couplet in a child's book in all time.
It's just so calm and still and beautiful in a way that the rest of the goodnights just quite aren't.
(Am hoping you will do the Seussian HBP.)
I love Ezra's name and have always enjoyed Better Than Ezra the band. In no way does one make me think of the other.
How does Noah feel about Olivia? (I know Olivia is a "she" but I still find the books very gender neutral.) I think perhaps he'd side with her on the under-enthusiasm of the art at MOMA.
As a kid I loved, could not put down, must be read again many lovely tales including Pat The Bunny and A Day At Wilbur Robinson's.
Now I'm buying my nephew books and I recently bought him "Chicken Cheeks" which is a book entirely about an animal totem pole (they were climbing to reach the honey or something) and it shows...ahem..their butts. But cute animal butts with illustrations and phrases like "duckbill platypus gluteuous maximus" and I'm sorry, whats not to love?!
This was a brilliant post. Thank you for admitting that "I Love You Forever" is a bit stalkerish. If only her son had a blog, she wouldn't have to drive across town and crawl through his window to see what he was up to.
That bit about "PLOP" in The Snowy Day made me laugh. Okay, *still* makes me laugh.
And Love You Forever is DAMN creepy. Maybe you have to be a mom to see the touching side of it, but OMG is that ending totally like the ending of an episode of Law & Order.
Thank you, Amy, for never failing to make me laugh!
OMG, Goodnight Moon? My not quite 2-year old FREAKED out one day when he noticed that the red balloon goes MISSING. He's so sad about it too. So that is my question. What happened to the f-ing balloon???
We have read Moo Baa LaLaLa about a thousand times, and I would gladly read it a thousand more...
Thanks so much for this.
Thank God so many agree with me about "I'll Love you Forever" (not that I need validation). Love Fraulein N's "Law and Order" statement--made me laugh out loud at work and then quickly look around to see if my boss was nearby.
Does Noah like garbage trucks? The "I Stink" book is a big fave in our house right now. Also the Dinosaur books by Jane Yolen are nice; the stories are kind of simple, but you can see all the different kinds of dinos.
Sandra Boynton=genius in my mind. I think our favorites are "Barn Yard Dance" and "The Belly Button Book". My kiddos both refer to their bellybuttons as "bee-bos" thanks to her brilliance.
Great post Amy!
OMG - I had the SAME reaction when I read B the Dr. Suess books! I was like "Really? It's like 408 pages long? I always thought it was maybe 10..." And one of my faves from childhood was "A Fly Went By." After reading it two times to B, I was like "Uh... yeah. Wayyyyy too much paranoia for one little book."
For us Goodnight Moon and Guess How Much I Love You are great. The one I just can't quite get myself to read is The Velveteen Rabbit. I can't get through it without crying, and I can't explain it to B whilst blubbering! It's like Dumbo. That movie is NOT allowed in my house because I totally lose it at the part where Dumbo's Mom rocks him with her trunk when she's all locked up... OH GOD, I'm even tearing up now!!!! *SOB!*
I look forward to a Storch Bros. review of "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," my all-time favorite children's book.
Oh this was good!!!
Guess How Much I Love ALWAYS makes me sob pathetically and my voice catches so the boy stares at me funny and asks to read A DIFFERENT book mommy.
Love Boynton too - glad that we have a baby to read these to again. The four year old is basically done with that board book stuff and like a wine snob he even turns his noise up to them. OY!
Agreed on the Good Night Moon thing. I mean seriously - classic?? Wha? I do not get it and I do not remember ever reading it as a kid so THERE!
I nodded like 5 bajillion times reading these. Like, the 'Love You Forever' book? I thought maybe I was the only one who felt that was a BIT creepy that the mom spied on her adult son. Glad to know it's not just me.
And also, maybe, I might, sometimes, skip 5 pages at a time in Green Eggs and Ham. And also maybe I might skip a few lines here and there.
Maybe. (That sucker is loooong.)
I have loved Snowy Day since I was a kid. I still smile heartily when I see it on bookshelves
What? No Where the Wild Things Live? Get on the ball woman. I mean really, if we can't count on our unpaid blogger for sh*ts and giggles book review, what can we count on?
The mouse? Dude, the main characters are rabbits, with CATS for pets. One day the kittens will grow up and EAT the quiet old lady rabbit, because for damn sure she'll be too slow to run away.
Dude, NO ONE has said anything about how hysterical the Dumbledore comment was! I totally had tears in my eyes over how funny that was. And I am way too excited for an adult over HPATHBP that I am going to go see tonight! Squee!
I have similar concerns about the bowl full of mush in Goodnight Moon. I'm not sure what "mush" is, and as appetizing as it might be fresh, I doubt it would still be good in the morning...
"Goodnight, Moon" has been read every night in this house for 3.5 years now. EVERY. NIGHT. Jack now reads it to us and Emmie every night. It's a favorite.
As for "I'll Love You Forever," well let's just say the first time we read that was when Jack was in the hospital when he was five days old because he had a low temperature and he was hooked up to oxygen and laying under a heat lamp and we read it to him and both my husband and I were bawling. Good times!
Fabulous! I can sooooo relate to the "Please let me read you something else! Please let me read you something else!"
And this, Amy, is why I heart you so hard!! If you start a "book club," I'll bring the wine.
I literally LOL'd, then got in trouble for reading a blog at work, then closed the window and reopened it to say that I think this should be a recurring feature because this was the funniest fucking thing I've read all day. Or week. It doesn't hurt that my kids are 4 years and 7 months so this could be my house, except I have more estrogen and things like Purplelicious and The Starlight Ballerina. Wretch.
Sandra Boynton's Belly Button Book is very popular around here. My daughter will probably be a teenager before she finds out that belly buttons aren't called "bee-bo" by most people. Love You Forever is creepy, and the Giving Tree is kind of effed up, too.
At our house I would beg not to read Curious George, it was so boring - "Please, I will even read The Pokey Little Puppy or A Berenstain Bears."
Goodnight Gorilla makes me want to die. Have your kids read it?
P.S. There are people who haven't heard the name Ezra before? I always figured he was either named after Ezra Pound or the Book of Ezra. Or, you know, you guys were really into Better Than Ezra.
I give good gifts. The end.