On Story Bent

So... I fully know it's heretical in some circles, but I can cheerfully admit I'm not always the biggest fan of Margaret Wise Brown. (That being said, there's a place for most everything and there is an endearing anthology of some of her little known children's poems that I'd like to find. And I may, may even slowly be coming round to start thinking about appreciating a certain astronomical rhyming bedtime book on which I've had strong feelings for years. ;-)) But we're here to talk about Little Fur Family, which is also a classic, and charming, and wistfully, enchantingly sweet. The funny thing is it's one of those that goes waaaaaaaaay back into my very earliest memories, checking piles out from the library (or rather, digging through the library basket) as a wee thing, but my parents never actually purchased it, so when I hunted it up for Princess E, I was flabbergasted to find out it was by MWB! (I honestly don't know why I was surprised,...

In the interest of waking up and revitalizing this blog, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet, but the long and the short of it is, the little princess has recently Come of Story Time Age (I know, I know, that can start waaaaaaay earlier, so more on that at another time in another place), but as I was saying, come story time, she always seems to grab this one and it generally appears near the top of the stack. The text is fairly prosaic, though does nicely build tension and has some fun onomatopoeia (ha! I've tried to work out a way to use that word for a long time ;D), but as always, the pictures are deeply worth reveling in and alive with action. And we love studying our African animals around here and it's so fun to see Princess E enjoy and go through naming them all as we read. So yes, all in all a winner!