Taste in books is a funny thing. As a mom and a writer, we had a good selection of award winning picture books available to share with our kids as they were growing up. We went to the library often. I scanned their preschool book orders and picked the books I thought were best...
It turned out that the book the youngest, Will, wanted read most every night was a garage sale Golden Book, "Tommy's New Bed"-- a simple story about a little boy who, as you guessed, gets a new bed. The climax of the story includes Tommy climbing out in the middle of the night. The parents solve the problem the next night by tucking Tommy in more thoroughly. Hmmm...That's it. He also cherished another Golden Book, "Doctor Dan, the Bandaid Man". This story was about a little boy that goes around putting band-aids on people and animals. It came with band-aids, which disappeared after the first reading. When Adam (oldest) was 4, he was enamored with "Gremlins", a scratchy read-along record I again got at a garage sale. (Why did I buy this?) He'd sit next to the record player, listen for the beeps and turn the page right on cue to this creepy story. Hanna's favorite was "Corduroy", a book we appreciated, too. But oh, rue the day if you skipped a word, a page, embellished or summarized any tiny section of this story. There's a hilarious comic by Matt Groening entitled "The Return of the Dinosaur Pop-Up Book". In this comic, a young bunny asks his dad to read him a book. The dad tells him to go get him one, anything BUT the Dinosaur Pop-Up book. Of course, the bunny comes back with the well-loved, very used Dinosaur Pop-Up book. The dad sighs and begrudgingly begins reading it for the one millionth time. The book has only dinosaur parts left in it, since they've all been torn off and ripped up. Still, the young bunny asks "Whazzat?" when each page is turned and the dad says, "That's not a dinosaur. It's glue from where the dinosaur was." "Whazzat?" the bunny asks again. And the father says, "Again. More glue."
Does this scene sound familiar to anyone else?