3 Chapter Books for 3 Year-Olds

I wrote here a while back about how Harper and I fell hopelessly in love with the Winnie-the-Pooh gang.  What I haven’t mentioned is that this sent us on a wormhole-ish hunt for toddler-friendly chapter books. It is really so fun to read chapter books together – the curling up, the flicker in her eyes as she pictures a scene, or asks me to repeat a detail so she can really really picture it — and it is also, I’ve found, really hard to find just the right books that she can follow, aren’t too dark or complicated, and have enough pictures but not too many. And that don’t involve dying parents. Or dying anyone. We’re just not there yet (thankfully!). I mean, Harper thought the Heffalump was terrifying.

Here are our findings so far:

1. Jenny and the Cat Club, by Esther Averill

“Time is nothing to a cat when he is dancing.”

This is, next to the Winnie-the-Pooh books, our biggest hit so far. Harper has been playing Jenny Linsky, drawing Jenny Linsky, telling stories about Jenny Linsky, ever since she recovered from the shock of receiving this (deceivingly!) boring-looking chapter book as a Hanukkah present. Esther Averill’s stories about Jenny Linsky, a shy yet brave little black cat who lives with her master, Captain Tinker, in Greenwich Village, are just nonstop charming. There is nothing scarier than a mean dog who steals Jenny’s signature red scarf – this episode made Harper hyperventilate with anxiety, both at the meanness of the dog, and the great crime of a theft of an accessory. Throughout these sweet stories, Jenny deals with issues like her shyness, smallness, and learning to be generous, all big issues in a preschooler’s life.

For here is the rub – I find that other chapter books, probably naturally, address questions Harper hasn’t even started to consider yet, like getting teased by mean kids. I am so thankful, particularly in the face of horrifying recent events, that this is so – that Harper still lives in a sweet little bubble where her biggest issues are her brother, Hair Puller Extraordinaire, and that sometimes her annoying mama wants her to brush her teeth, and that the meanest person she knows is her imaginary friend Murray. So in that vein, I find that older books, somehow, are the only ones that can manage to be innocent enough for this highly sensitive kiddo. Isn’t that a little weird and sad?

Anyway, good thing this book has been reprinted by the excellent New York Review Children’s Collection, and is just such a lovely object, full of charming drawings, that I find myself looking through it again and again (and unable to choose illustrations to share because they are all the best one). Best of all, this is part of series, so we can read even more about our dear little J. Linsky, as Harper likes to call her.

2. The Magic Treehouse: Dinosaurs Before Dark

I heard about Mary Pope Osbourne’s insanely popular series on, who knows, probably Pinterest. Apparently all kids everywhere love it, though I, elderly ignoramous!, had never heard of it. Harper and I had a very lovely afternoon at a local coffeeshop having hot chocolate and tearing through chapter after chapter of this first book in the series, Dinosaurs Before Dark. She liked studying the pictures, and most of all she liked the idea (as did I!) of this magic treehouse full of magic books (!!!!!!!), and the brother and sister who have adventures together. She was carrying around a notebook and backpack for a few days, just like Jack and Annie in the book. I thought we were really on to something. But somehow the next books in the series have not held her interest. I think they’re a bit too complicated – there’s all this business with magicians and Merlin and legends. But that first one, wow, what a page-turner it was! And we love happy-sibling-propaganda. So this was a good one too.

3. A Bear Called Paddington

I’m cheating a bit here, because we’ve only read one chapter of this book, which Harper’s grandmother gave her for Christmas – Harper’s daddy’s childhood copy! This has been fun for me to discover too, though, since somehow I missed the whole Paddington phenomenon as a kid. Were you aware Paddington is a real bear? From Peru? (Excuse me, darkest Peru?)Who comes to live with a family in London? There aren’t quite enough pictures for Harper’s tastes, and there is that problem familiar to us from our painstaking attempts at Stuart Little of the humor being largely pitched to witty adults, but one chapter in, so far so good. I even heard some stories being muttered about darkest Peru in one of Harper’s marathon story-telling-sessions. Chapter two happens tonight. Wish us luck!

Any other good chapter books for the very wee we’re missing? I have been remiss, by the way, in not thanking lovely commenter Genevieve who this summer led us to many awesome wordless picture books, including our favorite, You Can’t Bring a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum. Genevieve, are you out there? Do you know about chapter books too??

Why Do So Many Children’s Librarians Hate Children?

“Don’t worry. The children will never find us back here.”

Tell me: is this a New York City thing? Because it’s true that libraries here are different breed than those shushy places I grew up with – our dim little branches vibrate with screamy computer games, noisy kids (often mine), homeless-ish eccentrics waiting for their computer time and sharing theories on where the anti-Christ lives. (Brooklyn, I heard recently.) And oddest of all: the child-averse children’s librarians. What gives?

I love the library. I always have. I used to work in a library, for goodness’s sakes. I think they are so super duper important to civilized society and for that matter life in general. I go to the library several times a week; Harper shrieks and claps with delight at each fresh stack of new reading material. I’m writing all this so I don’t seem like a library curmudgeon. Because really, I’m annoyed with my local library right now, for there a grumpy librarian hath committed an act most foul: she snubbed my son.

Ollie’s obsessed with trains lately, so because I am attentive mother who wants to encourage my kids’ interests, the other morning while Harper was at school, I took him to the library. On the train! We took the train there. See, it relates. We took this most-fun-transportation-ever-invented to the shiny new Kensington library branch at 18^th Ave, which I will take a moment here to recommend, in theory, because it’s actually the most gorgeous branch library I’ve ever seen. Two stories, a lovely atrium, eco-friendly tables and chairs in the kids’ section and an amazing selection of all brand-new books, plus a special kids’ activity room with bright, friendly Marimekko-esque wallpaper and an assortment of wooden toys – it’s a dream of a library. So I was excited when we got there for tot storytime. And I was greeted by the children’s librarian who said, “Welcome to you and your beautiful child!” JK, she said, “You’re late.”

“Oh!” I said, smiling, super pleasant, making nice, sending the brain message, Don’t be mad at me, lady. I am your people. I am bookish. I am the most bookish. We are allies. “I’m sorry. I thought the website said it was at 11?”

“That one is for babies.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it said up to 18 months.”

“It does. How old is your – is that a boy or girl?” (ed note: Ollie is dressed in blue jeans, black and white sneakers, a blue button-down shirt, and is holding a train toy. Yes, he has luxurious curls, it’s true, but give me a break.)

“My son is 18 months old.”

“Sure, sure he is. That’s what everyone says. You may stay if you understand it is for one time only.” This, leaning close, a touch menacingly.

What a welcome! So I thanked her and told her it was a really beautiful space and we were excited about it. She sniffed and mumbled something about trying to keep it that way and then scurried around kicking families out of the room, because that storyplaytime was over and the next storyplaytime was about to begin. A few parents asked if they could stay and she assured them they could not, and that they didn’t want to anyway, because it would be the same stories again. I think this was probably an oblique, playful reference to the classic novel Catch-22, because similarly to that novel’s central catch-22 (war is insane, you’d have to be insane to want to go to war, but if you’re insane you can’t go to war, etc), it didn’t make a lick of sense. Why did it matter what age anyone was, if both programs were the same? Why couldn’t people stay? Why couldn’t the toys stay out? Because the room had to be cleared for the 2 babies who were reluctantly approved to stay for storyplaytime 2. One of which was Ollie.

Now the babies were told to sit on tiny chairs, and scolded when they moved, which makes for a very enriching educational experience according to the most up-to-date parenting trends of 1840, I’m sure. They weren’t even making any noise, these wee people, I swear! Just moving around. The librarian said to me that if Ollie couldn’t sit still, “There’s a beautiful park – Prospect Park – nearby, and luckily we don’t live in the arctic!”

So I screamed, “Are you kidding me? There’s a PARK?! How come no one told me?!!!” JK, I creepily-calmly said, “So you’re saying that because my 18 month old doesn’t want to sit in a chair while you mumble-read a picture book about planting bulbs that’s clearly for 6-year-olds, I ought not to take him to the library at all, but belong only in the park on a freezing winter day? Lady, do your job and I’ll do mine!” JK, I mumbled, “Hm, yeah.” Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I didn’t stalk out until 5 minutes later, when finally Ollie started protesting the banishment of all those delightful toys.

Anyway, if anyone is still reading this, thank you for indulging my therapy session, whew, and my point is: WTF. Why be a children’s librarian, why be the storytime lady, if you clearly are disinterested in kids, in the funny squirmy ridiculous kidness of them? If you clearly have nothing but disdain for parents? I recall one storytime when Harper was a baby when a hilariously misanthropic librarian visibly shuddered at a toddler’s touch. Why?

My real question ought to be why I keep dragging my kids to these things. Harper flat out refuses library storytimes of any kind. “I don’t think that lady likes doing storytime,” she said after a particularly lackluster session at a different branch this summer. This is a kid who loves books and stories and telling stories more than any kid in the world. She just got a storytelling medal at playschool! A medal, I tell you! And she hates storytime. Poor thing.

Okay, so I guess I don’t completely un-get it, now that I’ve had some time to cool down from the horrific outrage of subpar toddler storyplaytime. I mean, these people have the jobs they have because they love children’s literature, not children. It seems to me that these ought to be connected, but I understand that they might not be. I loved reading Gone Girl and that doesn’t mean I want to hang out with sociopaths. Fair enough.

PS: 3 notable exceptions to the child-hating librarian rule: the storytime ladies at the Central Library and the Cortelyou branch were pretty baller last I checked, and Miss Cindy at our own Windsor Terrace branch is completely amazing, what with her ukelele and all. So I probably shouldn’t complain so much.

But I’m just so good at it.

“Mama, not only are you going to get chided for taking this picture, I don’t even want to be here. When do we get back on the damn TRAIN ALREADY?”

The Read Balloon: Virginia Woolf for Little Wolves

Virginia Wolf, written by Kyo Maclear, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, just especially for me. Wasn’t that nice of them?

I fell in love with this book the moment I saw its title: Virginia Wolf. Never before has a picture book seemed so obviously created specifically for me. I had this crazy friend in high school who did too many drugs and, worse, read too much philosophy and became convinced that the he was the only person who was actually real, and that the world he knew was an elaborately designed set (this preceded The Matrix, mind you), and every once in a while something would happened that, due to some strange serendipity, would seem to him to be proof that this was so. Anyway, I thought of him, the dear fruitcake, when I happened upon this book in the library – I actually looked around, like, really? This book is happening to me? I love Virginia Woolf. No, like, LOVE love. I love the Bloomsbury Group, the art, the thinkers, its shocking sexy-bookishness back when that had the ability to shock, all of it.  I love pretty picture books with extravagantly colorful illustrations, particularly if they concern strange little girls, especially siblings. Hello, book! Thank you for existing!

This book is a loose interpretation of the relationship between Virginia Woolf, grumpy writer, and her sister, Vanessa Bell, painter and proponent of the everything-beautiful life way before Pinterest. So I would probably like it anyway, but I am particularly charmed by the poetic text – I love kids’ books that don’t talk down to kids – and its portrait of sisterhood, and the idea that connecting with things that make you happy can lift you out of a wolfish funk. (And I’m so pleased and not at all surprised to see that this beautiful book has just won some fancy-shmancy Canadian literary award.)

That said, I couldn’t really get Harper to comment on this book. She very much enjoyed the trick of Virginia’s wolfish ears transforming into a point hair bow (we all have those days), but other than that I have to admit she wasn’t as in love with the book as I was. When pressed, she said only, “She says too many mean things.” So I said, “Honey, you don’t have to be nice and happy all the time just because you’re a girl, you know. It’s okay to have wolfish feelings, to need help dealing with them.” JK, I sighed and said, “Fine, you don’t have to help me write my blog post. We can play with Photo Booth instead.”

But the book is, in truth, not only more fun than playing with Photo Booth, it’s also led me to the other works of Kyo Maclear and Isabelle Arsenault. Don’t you love that buzzy feeling when you’ve discovered some new (to you) artists?

Here, a lovely book trailer that doubles as some good advice for wolfish moods.

Fun for Shut-Ins: Entertaining Toddlers Indoors With A Minimum of TV. And Tears (Yours, Theirs, Whatever)

Given the recent hurricane, Nor’easter, and then weeks of lingering colds, we’ve really gotten back into touch with our playing-indoors-skills. Now,if she could help it, Harper would always be inside, walking in a circle and telling herself a story. No, she is not insane, she’s creative and that is totally different. But Ollie wants to be outside, bouncing a ball and screaming “WHOA!” every moment of his life. So the inside thing is a bit of a challenge. But sometimes you just have to, and in case this should happen to you, here are some things that have helped me to avoid the “holy crap there’s still 9 hours until bedtime” terror-shakes.

4:30am: Up and attem, early birds! Just because daylight saving’s ended doesn’t mean we have to squander those delicious mornings of freezing pitch black when there is no one to play with and nothing to do! On an inside day, the savvy mom makes everything way more difficult for herself than usual, so breakfast should be Fun, like waffle faces, or green scrambled eggs. Drink as much coffee as possible as you eat the kids’ leftovers- you’re going to need it!

The rest of the day, think of yourself as an adhoc preschool. I like to alternate periods of freeplay (until someone is injured or a significant amount of Harper’s hair has been yanked out of her head), arts and crafts, manipulatives, and frequent snack times. The challenge for me is to find things that both the 3 year old girl with the fine motor skills and enormous attention span AND the 1.5 year old boy with the wild thing mentality and tendency toward flinging can do together.

Here’s what works for us:

Edible Crafts. Because let’s face it, the crafts get eaten whether they are edible or not. Peanut Butter Playdough is a favorite around here and about 40% of Harper’s total nutritional intake. Finger painting with jello and/or dyed yogurt are also big hits. ( I never imagined food dye would be such a crucial ingredient in the rearing of human young. ) Same for colored spaghetti, with, which a selection of cups, entertained Ollie for almost 20 minutes- a record! Painting with water on the chalkboard is also always a winner. Yes this is filed under edible. Yes, chalky water is apparently quite refreshing. And this one is – bonus – not messy!

Playing in the Sink. A classic around here. As a bonus, the floor gets a thorough soaking which I think counts as mopping, right?

Dolly Birthdays. We got lucky and it just so happened that Special Baby’s birthday coincided with a day of freakish snowstorming. We printed out dolly invitations (from MrPrintables.com, just scaled them smaller) and made decorations and goodie bags during baby-nap. Tiny cupcakes are a crucial part of this.

Movie Night. As a very special treat (because a random birthday party isn't enough), we had an unprecedented afternoon movie night, complete with popcorn (which a friend later told me is a huge choking hazard so really it's amazing we survived!!), cuddling up, and an episode of Wonder Pets. I try to do as little tv as possible, especially for Ollie, but I figure every once in a while it's ok, and by that I mean Mama was starting to twitch.

Dance Party. Always. Our favorite is Jackie Wilson. Though I have been told I am a better singer than Jackie Wilson! I can't say by whom.

What didn't work: I won't go into details because it's too traumatic to relive, but regular finger paints were a disaster. And as many times as I've tried to convince Harper that sorting dried beans is fun, she does not believe me. Trying an obstacle course for burning off energy didn't work either, devolving immediately into a scene reminiscent of The Hunger Games, with couch-jumping.

End the day with smiley-face monster pizzas, shaving-cream-painting and/or colored ice cubes in the bathtub, and by the time your spouse comes home there will be no food in the house, a huge mess in every room, and you will be asleep in your child's bed unable to even form sentences! Charming.

But just imagine the relief when the weather lets up and your pale blinking shut-ins can leave, and you get to take them to an indoor playspace where they can bounce off padded walls while you ignore them and write a blog post on your phone!

Good luck this winter. We're all going to need it.

PS: Sorry for the random placement of photos. Like I said, on the phone. Modern, I know.

When The Tragedy Isn’t Yours

Jane’s Carousel, beacon of light in the storm. Harper has vowed to try a horse that goes up and down next summer and by gum those horses better be ready.

A little ago Harper asked me “Are there mean people in real life?” I debated for an instant before admitting, “Yes. Yes there are.” There was a long pause and then she said, “But not in New York.” “That’s right,” I told her.

When you think about having kids you say things like “Oh, how can people bring an innocent little baby into this world,” but it’s usually just something you’re saying because you think you should at least entertain the thought, when really your mind is whirring with tiny chub-thighs and screen-printed onesies and that intoxicating baby smell. Then you have the kids and then you know what that statement means, you know your crazy love for them, you know the chilling dread of something bad ever happening to them. Because it probably will.

In the past two weeks, the world, the news, and my brain have been churning with terribleness. First there was the horrifying, haunting Krim family tragedy, which was none of my business, none of anyone’s business but that poor broken family, that mother who lived through every mother’s nightmare – the very story seemed custom-made to torture every parent who has ever had to leave their child with someone and felt uneasy — the senselessness, the horrible imagery.

Then a few days later came Hurricane Sandy (excuse me, Super-Storm Sandy), which hit the city worse than I think any of us really believed possible. Yes, we heard on the news about the evacuation zones and the potential for floods and all that, but we also heard a lot of that last year circa Irene and nothing much happened, and besides, hurricane damage just isn’t the kind of story we’re used to around here. And even here in good old KWT it feels abstract. It was windy and ominous feeling the days before the storm, but in our big tank of an apartment building we scarcely heard a thing. I slept soundly the night of the storm (I always do, the benefit of exhaustion). The kids hardly noticed anything. On Halloween, playschool had a party, we trick-or-treated. I worried that Ollie had too much sugar. And yet here, just miles away, in our own city, in our own borough, people are suffering. People have suffered unimaginable losses. Their homes, everything. A friend’s friend was killed by a falling tree. In another specially-designed-mother-torture story, a woman in Staten Island saw her two young sons swept out of her arms by flood waters. It’s a cliche to say you don’t have words but…I don’t have words.

So, probably because stories are too much for me to really comprehend, I find myself fixating on the aquarium, Coney Island, ruined books, the trees in the park – these losses are significant, but on a scale I understand. These things make me really, really sad – but not despairing.

Then today I found out a dear friend’s brother was murdered – senselessly, narrativelessly. She is drowning in sorrow and shock. I just never thought murder had anything to do with my family, she said, and I knew exactly what she meant. That’s why all three of these horror stories (one encompassing so many others, an anthology of destruction and mess and sorrow) have me feeling adrift – none of them makes any sense. This one aches particularly, because one of my best friends in the world — a bright, creative, compassionate, completely unique and hilarious and kind person — has had her life blown apart.

But I also feel like I don’t actually have any right to be shaken up, to feel sorrow. None of these stories is actually mine. In each instant I think, selfishly, awfully, I’m so glad that wasn’t my family, my kid, and then I feel disgusting, like that’s exactly what I would think people were thinking and hate them for if it really were happening to me. In each case, there is an initial thought to be fought, that urge to prove to yourself that it couldn’t actually happen to you, because of… because of nothing, there is no protecting your own family by somehow finding a way to blame others for the blameless act of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How do you deal with tragedies that aren’t really yours? It’s a privileged question to ask, and possibly a silly one. But I still feel so sad. I guess I should just feel lucky that I have the luxury of a dull, thick-headed sympathy pain. I’m going to go help make food for an evacuation shelter tomorrow morning. I feel like this is a lame effort, a bandaid flung into a river of blood. And I know it’s mostly for me to feel a little better, but okay, I’ll take it. I want to be around New Yorkers who are trying to help, to feel like I’m a part of something, I guess, or trying to be anyway. That’s probably not the right reason, I realize this.I want to live in Harper’s world, where mean people seem imaginary. Where nothing bad B-A-D bad happens to us, or people we know, because it’s just not part of the story we know, so how could it?

Sorry to be such a bummer. Everything else seems lame to write about right now. And it’s daylight savings time, FML, which means the kids will be up at 4 am, and they are my cherished loves-of-my-lives but fuck if I love anything at 4 am. File under non-problem problems, I know.

PS: The week before the storm, Adam happened to take the kids to the Aquarium:

Guest Post: The Perfect Mommy Steps In

Hi all! So, Amy has been totally neglecting this blog, and today she’s all distracted by the HUGE SCARY FRANKENSTORM that she thinks she’s prepared for because she bought some water and snack bars – she’s so funny! Anyway, so she asked me (hi! It’s me, of The Perfect Mommy Blog!) to step in. Don’t let my blog’s silly name fool you, though. I’m soooo not perfect! Oh that reminds me, I wanted to show you the cutest picture:

Lunchtime! We do a different classical composer everyday. So silly, I know, but it’s just fun! Man, do my kids love their veggies — and their Mozart. Those goofs!

Poor Amy has been so overwhelmed lately. Every night I text her to see why she hasn’t posted anything – I just think those Brooklyn moms are a hoot – and she’s like, “So tired. Stop texting me.” I get it – I update my blog every day, so I know it’s no joke time-wise, plus I have 9 children under the age of 10 (4 sets of twins, what are the chances?? Lol) who I homeschool in a carefully researched Waldorf-inspired style. Amy’s always like, “You seem so productive and super-happy, Perfect Mom, what’s your secret?” I tell her, there’s no secret, silly, just good graphic design, dreamy photo filters, and some careful planning.

Just a candid shot of us lazing around the house. Excuse the mess! So embarrassing!

For one thing, as my husband, my best friend who I am madly in love with, will tell you, I’m a little bit of a neat freak. But I stay organized with a simple chore chart — the little ones LOVE pitching in! I don’t know what it is, but my kids just adore chores.

I make mealtime super-duper easy by growing all my own organic fruits and vegetables in our garden – the kids love to help, and outdo each other by eating the most vegetables. Whatever works, you know? This allows me to keep my monthly grocery shopping budget under $150. Really, all it takes is some planning – here’s my PDF of all the essentials you need for a month of feeding 11 hungry people on a budget – so easy!  Then one weekend a month my girlfriends and I get together and cook 90 meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – from scratch to freeze. It’s so easy and fun! Here’s one of our favorites – my kids all love it. 

Homeschooling is really such a snap, too – I keep the younger ones busy with a cardboard box and some lids, which they will play with quietly for hours and hours, I promise you. I keep costs down by making all our books out of handmade paper from our own mulched logs. You see what I mean? Easy! I’m just lucky that my older girls teach the younger kids Latin while I make everyone’s clothes from scratch every morning. And they are so not perfect! Just look at this messy little romper I threw together in two seconds — sorry for the bad cellphone pic!

The suitcase is full of toys she insists she’s ready to donate to poor children in Africa. Where does she get these ideas? Haha

Sure, with so many little ones it’s hard to stay sane. We keep things simple by naming all the girls Kendra and all the boys Wyatt. Then we can reuse the letterpressed birthday party invites and personalized bunting. And you can’t forget about “me” time, so one night a week I make my hubby’s favorite dinner, set the table with fresh flowers and candles, get all dressed up, and put the kids to bed early, so that I can focus on my sweet guy. I know what you’re thinking – look out, or soon we’ll be seeing numbers 10 and 11! Lol! Really, those kids hardly even let me create a downloadable PDF of my favorite recipes or jam jar labels or paper dolls. Maybe I’ll get a TV one of these days.

I made this fully-functioning space ship in like two seconds with some old boxes and tin foil. Seriously, so easy!

Anyway, I’m just saying, moms out there, I totally get it. I don’t judge moms like Amy for their love of yoga pants, frozen chicken nuggets, and toddler iPad apps. It’s not easy being a Perfect Mommy Blogger ™! Just ask, well, me! Lol!

OMG, so embarrassing – my hubby snapped these candid pics of me just shlubbing around on a Saturday morning on the way home from the farmer’s market. Eek! Sorry about that. Ok, time to go make some Eggs Benedict for the little monsters!

The Read Balloon: Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, and Harper’s first serious crush

A Map of Prospect Park.

Tonight at dinner-time I read the kids the last installment of The House at Pooh Corner, Chapter 10, in which “Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There,” which really ought to be subtitled, “Fuck You, Mama’s Mascara.” Ollie has not been privy to most of the Pooh-readings (for this concludes our first reading of the entire series) but for some reason I felt he should be there for this story, snortling into his macaroni, maybe to protect me, the way Harper always squeezes his hand and tells him she’s helping him to be brave when she’s afraid of something. “Christopher Robin was going away,” the story begins. That was about when I started crying.

This all started because of a bookmark. Harper and I were whiling away an Ollie-nap by going crazy on Mr. Printables, an amazing site full of adorable (free!) paper dolls, coloring pages, and lo, bookmarks. Harper wanted to know what they were, these mysterious bookmarks, and what kind of book you would need to keep a place in, and I explained, and she asked if we had any chapter books, and I said that we did, and that we could read a chapter of one if she wanted and then hold our place with the bookmark, and she felt extreme enthusiasm about this concept. She’s very into accessories.

So that night at bedtime we began reading the first Winnie-the-Pooh story. I approached the familiar stories with some cautious optimism, not quite sure she was ready to listen to so very many pages with so very few little scratchy pictures. But man, was she. She is now obsessed, with the wonderful, all-consuming Harper-passion that has previously been directed toward The Ballerinas, Charlie and Lola, Special Baby, Murray, and other luminaries. I do believe she is in love with Christopher Robin.

I’m so glad she wants to read the stories all again, as she has announced, but there was something really special, like Special Baby special, about that first time, about hearing her crack up at the funny parts, and furrow her brow and ask for clarification regarding all the spelling jokes, and exclaim, “Oh, Christopher Robin!” when he’d do something terribly kind and wise, as he tends to. I keep catching her poring over the illustrations, studying Christopher Robin in particular. In the middle of nowhere she’ll say, “I think Christopher Robin might be a tiny bit older than me,” or, “Wasn’t that so funny when Christopher Robin said x?” She’s been wandering around the apartment or community garden or park or wherever we are, whispering to Christopher Robin about this or that, and singing Pooh-inspired “Tiddly-Pom”s as she goes.

Look, the real, original Pooh, Piglet, Kanga, Tigger, and Eeyore! Guess where they live? THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY! Even though this is, as Harper says, “very far away in Manhattan,” I’m thinking field trip.

First we read through Winnie-The-Pooh, and then one day last week I got The House at Pooh Corner from the library when Harper was at school. She walked into the living room, saw the book lying on the couch, screamed, clapped her hands, and did a somersault. I’m not kidding. We’ve since gone on Winnie the Pooh-themed picnics in the park. (I asked Harper if she could find the Hundred Acre Wood and she assured me it would be easy, and it turned out it was.) Actually, everything has been Winnie the Pooh-themed.

My point is, this child lives in an enchanted world, in which she is most happy when play-acting some private story. So this last Pooh story, about Christopher Robin leaving the forest, seems custom-built for stabbing me in the heart. How long do we have? How long can she play, completely unself-consciously, in these elaborate worlds, populated by imaginary people and her “cubbies”?

Christopher Robin, according to Ernest Shepard

Toward the end of the last story, Christopher Robin and Pooh are lazing about in the enchanted place when Christopher Robin says, “’I’m not going to do Nothing any more.’

‘Never again?’

‘Well, not so much. They won’t let you.’”

Directly beneath this is an illustration of Christopher Robin lying on his stomach, kicking his legs in the air, studying something on the grass in front of him: that pose of relaxed, busy, focused nothing that is I think the essence of childhood. It’s just such a heartbreaker. And even though Harper’s not setting off for English boarding school anytime soon, it’s inevitable, the Growing Up.

Ugh, so what I’m saying is, read these stories to your magical little preschooler. Read them on a day when you’re so tired from all the early waking and tantrums about shoes and sticky floors and more tantrums about other shoes that you have been praying for the era of Full Day Kindergarten or even fantasizing about English boarding school, when the drudgery of all the work that comes along with them has momentarily clouded the sheer ridiculous shiny glory of their mysterious, curious beings. Read them to your children while they eat dinner so that you can get all weepy and when they both refuse to eat the macaroni and cheese they demanded and request little cups of applesauce instead you won’t even care and you’ll uncharacteristically let them have them and it will seem suddenly beautiful and not maddening the way they shriek with excitement and set about smearing the applesauce across the table like adorable monsters, and you’ll think, Yes, cups of applesauce are totally completely the most thrilling things on earth! Read them before they’ve seen the cartoon versions. Read them in an enchanted place, if you can find one. And then read them again.

Christopher Robin, according to Harper.