First of all: Would the person who misplaced every book I own and simply cannot find please step forward?  Thank you. I promise I will be merciful, I would just like my books to be returned where I can find them.

See, it goes like this: the Changeling and I get really into a book and read it all the time.  It’s usually left out on the sofa or side table because we’re probably just going to read it in another five minutes, anyway.  Then… it disappears.  Then the Changeling really wants to find the Arctic hare in Arctic Dreams by Carol Gerber, illustrated by Marty Husted, and the book is nowhere to be found.  Her lip jumps.  I quickly explain that the book will come back and can she be a brave girl and choose another book until it comes back?  She stiffens her upper lip and nods and says that there’s an Arctic hare in her animal book.  What a brave girl, thank you!  I breathe a private sigh of relief.  And then, a week later, Arctic Dreams is back, and I have no idea how or where it was.

So, I know someone out there’s playing tricks in here, and it’s driving me up the wall.  Oooh, that’s what you want, isn’t it?  Well, the bad news is that you let me find Arctic Dreams again, and so long as I’m reading this book, it’s impossible to feel anything other than perfect serenity.  This is, I’m positive, the Buddha’s favourite book.  If we could just give every world leader a copy of this book and persuade them to read it every morning, we’d have world peace by next Tuesday at noon.  This is the book Gandhi read before he decided on his personal Credo of nonviolence.  This is, in a word, serenity encapsulated between the covers of one of the best bedtime books I really hope lots of parents know about, because, seriously, it will relax your kids, I promise.  Or, if it doesn’t?  You won’t care, because your blood pressure will have relaxed, at least.

Now, my previous standard for “super-relaxing bedtime book” was Goodnight Moon, that basic staple of the children’s bookshelf.  I wasn’t even looking for other “bedtime books” because, c’mon, I have Goodnight Moon.  This makes about as much sense as not trying lemon-strawberry sorbet because you already have a really good vanilla ice cream.  They’re both delicious, both frozen desserts, but sometimes you’re in the mood for rich and creamy, sometimes for lighter and tangier.  This book is, at one and the same time, more complex and simpler than Goodnight Moon.  Goodnight Moon is vanilla ice cream: rich and deeply loved and lovable, you always love it, you had it when you were a child and you know your grandchildren will have it, too.  It’s reliable, a little old-fashioned.  And then you stumble across lemon-strawberry sorbet on a day you need a bit more of a change, and it’s also lovely on a hot day, also wonderful for chilling you out, but there’s a bit more variety going on, and it really hits the spot.

Or at least that’s how I felt when I found Arctic Dreams.  It’s not that recent (published in 1999), but it was new to me, and it may likewise be new to you.  The text of the book is very simple, lilting and rhythmic, but the vocabulary is a bit more complex than in Goodnight Moon, partly because it draws on a particular cultural background, the Inuit culture (well, so Canadians would say– the book says Eskimos, but I was brought up Not To Do That in the Canadian school system).  And so you have a mixture of the simple, repetitive “Snuggle deep, my little one. / Snuggle deep. […]  Dream in peace, my little one. /  Dream in peace,” and textured, occasionally surprising passages such as, “Let sleep surround you as silently as a snowdrift… and cover you as softly as the fur of nanook, the large white bear.”  The gentle, soothing rhythm is still there, but I find my brain suddenly feels that soft, warm blanket of fur in a quiet snowfall.  (Fate?  Please note: I do not actually wish to be flumped on by a hungry polar bear in an Arctic snowstorm.  That sounds like a terrible, if memorable, way to die.  Memorable for everyone else, that is.  I’d be dead.)

Marty Husted’s pencil and watercolour illustrations, however, take this book from lovely and relaxing, to utter serenity.  We begin with the mother murmuring to the child in his bed, and then enter the child’s mental dreamscape, where his mother’s words and his dreaming imagination take us to world’s we couldn’t really inhabit awake.  See my above memo re: death by polar bear in a snowstorm.  However, who doesn’t want to, in some absurd, dreamy level of their mind, snuggle with a polar bear in a gentle snowfall?  How lovely!… in the dreaming imagination.

That dreaming imagination is what we see in these warm yet dreamy images (the precision of the pencils is offset by the softness of the watercolour), and it pulls your mind halfway into sleep, just like cuddling a kitty taking her nap: that sleepy serenity is contagious.  We none of us are really going to snuggle up with a group of walruses (or at least I hope we aren’t), but wouldn’t you sort of like to be on a wild rock, surrounded by the sea, roaring with the walrus?  No, you wouldn’t, says your logical mind: that would be smelly, uncomfortable, and deadly.  Yes! screams your idiot imagination. What a breathtaking experience.  “Exactly,” says your logic, dryly. “Breathtaking, indeed.”  [Huh, apparently we don’t write “drily” any longer.  It’s “dryly” now.– Ed.]  I’m not even going to go into my favourite page: diving down deep in the blue ocean on the back of a bluer whale, surrounded by orangey-gold squid and seals, and schools of silvery fish.  How gloriously impossible!

This book is dreamy in every sense of the word: it conveys dreams, draws you into dreams, and is a dream to read with a droopy, dreamy child.  Also, pipes up the Changeling, “it has so many animals!”  Yeah, that’s the only issue: you may be headed into dreamland– but then your toddler may pop up her eyes again to say, “That’s a tern!  And a puffin!  A puffin!”  Go to sleep, my little one.  Go to sleep.

While keenly aware that if I run this right after my Little Red Riding Hood post I run the risk of being “one of those cat blogs” (so sorry, Daddy), this Sunday I went to my favourite store in the entire universe again: The Children’s Book Shop.  What that means is that I came back with new material for you all.  And yet here I am writing about a book I got last time I went there.  It goes like this: when I go into a shop like that and casually pick up another copy of that book I got last time because I need to give it to someone for a gift, honestly, I do, no, it’s not just because I want to hold it in my hands at all times… well, isn’t that a sign it’s a book I need to talk about here?

Those who know me may say that any book called A Castle Full of Cats, written and illustrated by Ruth Sanderson gets its own post here on the basis of the title alone, but those people are wrong for the following reasons: a) If it didn’t work for me and fell flat I’d be too angry to write about it, and, anyway, I intend only to write about books I like (what’s the point of writing about books you hate?); b) Did you know there are cat books I don’t like?  Oh, there are plenty; c) Shut up, Daddy, I do so like books that aren’t about cats– I wrote about Madlenka’s Dog once.  I run my selection process here by a complex and most stringent algorithm written up in Python using processes too technical to share with you, but, to simplify it for the plebes, it can roughly be translated as such: Do I love this book oh so very much that I have got to write about it right now so help me God?  And with this book, well, when I went right into that store, ran over to the appropriate spot on the shelf and yanked it off?  “It’s… for a present,” I muttered, hugging it.  (“Maybe I should get two,” I thought.  But I resisted.  Because there was only one on the shelf and I was embarrassed to ask for a second.)  Well, when that happened I knew there was more to it than “contains cats.”  “Contains cats” will get a look from me.  It won’t get love.

What got love?  I’ll admit one thing up front: this is still a bit too old for the Changeling.  It’s not that she doesn’t sit through it or like it.  On the contrary, she really loves the pictures, poking through and naming the cats and finding the ones that look most like the ones she knows.  She enjoys it.  But there are elements of the story and illustrations which are just over her head and make this more of a book for me than for her for the moment, whereas a book like The Tea Party in the Wood spoke to both of us differently and more-or-less equally.  This one is here for both of us to enjoy, but is waiting patiently for the Changeling to grow and find certain jokes and plot points click as the months go by.  I can tell that’s going to happen.  So, we both do enjoy it, but this is largely my perspective right now.

The basic story goes as follows: A king and queen live together in a charming castle.  The year appears to be, perhaps, 1779.  I think we can assume we’re living in a parallel universe France where the tiers état is happy and satisfied and we needn’t worry about what would happen to aristocratic cats come the Revolution.  This is a calm, lovely, happy, watercolour Baroque world, one where you just want to fall in through the pages of the book, stroke the cats, and run loving fingers across the soft damasked upholstery.

But I digress: the king and queen are living happily, and the king presents the queen with a pair of charming kittens.  She is delighted, and, when you turn the page, you see the whole castle swarming with cats.  The cats know the queen adores them, and she provides them with fish for every meal, right at the table with her and the king (who would maybe appreciate a filet mignon from time to time).  She paints portraits of them, she cuddles them, and they’re happy, except… except they’re concerned that the king might not love them.  They leave him gifts, play games and frolic, but somehow they don’t seem to be able to win him over– until one day the king loses patience: “That’s it! I’ve had enough! / He dropped his spoon. / He grabbed his cane. / He marched off in a huff!”  Allow me to relieve you of your terror: He does return, but what can he do to make all well and resolve the problem in the castle so that he, the queen, and the cats can all live happily together?  Dare I tell you?

Oh, I’m awful at keeping secrets!  He brings them all presents: flowers for the queen and a big, beautiful, cuddly dog for the cats.  They’re all thrilled, and the cats are so busy playing with their new friend that the king and queen are even seen to be dining (on chicken– he must be thrilled!) by themselves.  And they all live happily ever after.

The story itself is, in a word, charming.  The cats’ behaviour is generally catlike: it’s not falsely sweet (as in every silly boardbook), and it’s not falsely evil (as in every adult book).  It’s true, and real, and translated for human readers so that we can chuckle along and sympathize as kittens investigate instruments, knock over books, and leave mice in the king’s shoes.  It’s not so ploddingly realistic as to be boring, I hasten to add, anticipating cat-lovers’ corrections: has anyone seen dozens of cats gathered at a table eating out of bowls?  Right.  But it’s realistic enough to give you that chuckle of recognition: two of the kittens hop right up  on the table to help themselves from a platter or nibble from another cat’s bowl.

All of this is rendered in gorgeous watercolour, with sufficient authentic Baroque detail to make the adult reader’s heart go pitter-pat, but with enough kittenish antics to make pet-lovers of all ages smile and laugh.  As I said, the Changeling can excitedly pore over the pictures with for ages, pointing out who “looks like Remy” and who “looks like Penny” and declaring “let’s find Guinness!”  She also enjoys the gentle, rhyming rhythm of the text.  I, for my part, secretly analyze the furniture and clothes and admire the lush textures Ruth Sanderson manages to get across with her glorious watercolours (I didn’t see any prints from this book for sale on her website, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be later– this book is pretty new).  And, of course, I love the cats’ antics and the gentle, joyous surprise of the dog’s arrival.

And for everyone, cat-lover or not, adult or child, I think the story is valuable: without didactic baggage or getting too heavy, here’s a gentle story of love, friendship, and how compromise can lead to greater happiness for all, not lesser happiness for some.  As the Changeling grows to click with more and more of the little jokes in the book, I hope that’s another note that will click.

OK, husband of mine: Now can I have another cat, and also a dog?  It works so well in the book…

“Remy has big eyes!”

“The better to see you with, my dear.”

“Woofy has big ears!”

“The better to hear you with, my dear.” (transcribed from a conversation with the Changeling)

Yes, Little Red Riding Hood: it’s become automatic, hasn’t it?  It’s as much a part of our language as the King James translation of the Bible: “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,” “Be strong and of good courage,” and so on.  The way we use them might be, shall we say, frequently divorced from the original context, but, Lord Almighty, the Bible has permeated our daily speech to the point that we talk about our “daily bread” even when we’re on a carbs-free or gluten-free diet.

Fairy tales have also made their way into the collective fabric of our thought (sorry about the grandiose language there), but more through tropes than through language: everything comes in groups of threes; if you lose a shoe, it’s made of glass; if you kill a giant, your name’s probably Jack.  And (shhh… don’t tell God) I think I’m even crazier about fairy tale infiltration of our word-world than the Bible’s, pretty as that often is (try this: “Many waters cannot quench love,” from Song of Songs– lovely, right?).  As I said, however, what fascinates me is that while both literature groups have become so familiar to us, the Bible’s language seems to have had a profound effect on the words we use, whereas in folk and fairy tales it’s the tropes which have achieved that level of familiarity.   What I mean here is that, in fairy tales, tropes remain consistent from tale to tale, whereas language can change radically between retellings.  To put it as plainly as possible: three sons are familiar to us, but the precise words they use are not.

Let me stop you right now: Yes, I am generalizing so badly that they’re going to call me up any minute now and revoke my academic permit, I know this, so bear with me a while longer.  Also, I want to put in a few caveats here: a) I’m just musing here based on what I’ve noticed and strikes me as curious, so forgive me for the lack of footnotes or proper research; b) My credentials?  Um… well, I read a lot of fairy tales and have spent many years doing so.  By no means am I an Opie or Zipes or Ziolkowski, and I by no means claim to be anywhere near their level here.  I humbly bow to anyone else’s greater knowledge or experience.  (If you are Jan Ziolkowski?  Hey, call me, let’s talk fairy tales!)

See, I told you it wouldn’t take long, because right here is where I am immediately going to overturn what I just said about tropes vs. language by referring you upwards: Little Red Riding Hood.  Generally, I stand by what I said: there are certain patterns from fairy tales which you can casually reference almost anywhere and your audience will get you (three sons, where the youngest succeeds).  But Little Red Riding Hood is a bit different.  First of all, by no means are wolves generally bad or little old ladies generally innocent in fairy tales.  By no means is there even a clear, consistent lesson between all tellings of Red Riding Hood except, probably, “don’t trust strangers.”  Is the wolf representing creepy, predatory men you should avoid?  Or is the message to listen to your mother’s instructions?  That part isn’t so consistent.  Well, what is consistent in this story from version to version?  Or, to put it another way: What has endured in the collective Western memory of this story?*  I’d answer: the very conversation I started you out with, and the wording it came from: “Grandmother!  What big, hairy ears you have grown!”

Now, I want to point something out to you.  What edition or version of Little Red Riding Hood did I just quote?  Anyone, anyone?  You in the back?  Oh, you were just scratching your ear.  You don’t know, do you?  That said, everyone recognized the line, right?  Yes, you did.  In other words, the words have made it into our memories.  Wolves could mean a lot of things: in some stories, wolves save the hero, but in this story, the wolf is dangerous.  What rings comfortable familiarity for us in this case is the wording, of all things, despite the fact that I just conclusively and exhaustively proved that the familiarity of fairy tales comes from tropes, not languages.**  OK, let me spare you the suspense and, at the same time, clear my own head of excitement: I’m quoting, and plan to discuss, Little Red Riding Hood retold and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.  I am here to tell you that it gets across both the weird and wonderful richness of fairy tale trope and the familiarity of language we know and expect.  These are woven together in both text and illustration as only Trina Schart Hyman is capable of.

Right here, right now, I’m going to apologize to my father.  He is probably reading along saying, “Hmmm, clever enough.  I wish you’d actually cite something, Deborah, but you’re doing quite well… wait, now you’re going to talk about cats?  For crying out loud, Deb, still with the cats?”  Yes, I’m sorry.  I’m really sorry, but we’re switching gears from high criticism to… cats.  Why?  Because I firmly believe that Trina Schart Hyman, in her endless genius, uses cats to excellent effect in her illustrations here: they tumble playfully, kittens and cats together, at her mother’s home; one sleek, black creature follows Red Riding Hood through the woods, just to the side of her encounter with the wolf; the grandmother has a cat who observes the wolf, while Red Riding Hood’s cat pursues the huntsman until he finally goes to check on the grandmother; and both cats joyfully greet the grandmother and Red Riding Hood once they are saved.

These cats never turn up in the text.  They are wild, walk by themselves, unacknowledged by the author, but intimate with the illustrator.  They add immensely to our understanding of the story, but never, ever in the text.  Well, I ask you: Is the wolf a creepy man or a beast?  Is a wolf bad or good?  Is an old woman in a cottage an innocent or a witch?  Is Red Riding Hood a child or on the verge of womanhood?  Is sex involved or not?***  With all these unanswered questions about this story, why not add: Are there any cats in this story?  And are the cats signs of domesticity and comfort, or of an element of wildness half-tamed?  To me, they are like words that are as familiar as our daily bread, and yet make our skin prickle ever so slightly with discomfort.

If there is one woman out there it guts me to think I will never meet, it’s Trina Schart Hyman.  She died in 2004, as I found out two years ago, and I cried when I read that.  I wanted so badly to be able to say “thank you” to her, and now I knew I never could.  It was her Snow White and Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins I knew growing up, and I only saw Little Red Riding Hood recently when my sister gave me this book for my birthday (she knows me well).  When I read it, it felt like someone had pulled the story out of my brain and put it on paper.  Familiar and strange, knowing more than I’d known I knew, it glowed with shadows on the page (sorry, sorry, I’ll cut out the grandiloquence).

Do yourself a favour, and get yourself a loaf of new bread, some sweet butter, and a glass of wine.  Then shut the doors to strangers and friends, and quietly read this book with your cat winking at you from the shadows.

*Jeepers, can you tell I’ve got my academic coat on today?  Get me talking about language, tropes, versions, retellings, etc. and I suddenly start getting very choosy with my language!  I could have just said, “What’s familiar to us?” but I had to go all fancy and precise.

**OK, I can’t help it.  There is one other case I can think of where the wording in a fairy tale means familiarity: Hansel and Gretel, when the witch says, “Nibble, nibble, little mouse. Who is nibbling at my house?”  If you can think of anything else, let me know, but these are the only two instances which occur to me.

***The Opies say there ain’t no sex involved, absolutely not, and I’m going with them because the thought creeps me out just a bit too much.  On the other hand, a part of me suspects they’re probably wrong.  Oh God, I hope they’re right….

I have a friend.  Not just any friend; I hope we all have a fair few friends.  But I hope everyone also has a friend like my friend: when I was pregnant, this friend brought me a baby present.  This present was a book, which is already a good start.  The book was called Extra Yarn, by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen.  What this demonstrates is that my friend Knows Me, with those uppercase letters used consciously.  It’s wonderful when people provide you with good and useful things before you have a baby– soft blankets, sturdy burp cloths, pretty clothes.  It’s lovely, and I’m touched and grateful.  But when someone looks around and says, “Deborah would not want to bring her baby into a house without a charming new book about yarn and knitting for that child,” then?  Then you know that you should make that person the executor of your will (thanks, lady!).

Have you ever knit something?  Let me tell you: there’s nothing quite so terrifying as the moment when you’ve been knitting merrily along, feel your ball of yarn, and get an “uh oh…” feeling, as in, “That feels a bit… small?”  Maybe you weigh it to see if you have enough left.  Maybe you knit faster, trying to outrun the yarn.  Maybe you knit more slowly, on the basis that “haste makes waste.”  But there’s nothing like the sinking feeling when you’re sure, oh so sure, your yarn is going to run out!  But way on the other side of the spectrum is the placid security that comes with an assurance that you’ve got Extra Yarn.  Maybe enough for a matching hat?  Or matching socks for your baby?  You feel peaceful, at ease, even a little smug.  And that’s the peace we see in Annabelle, one of the most confident protagonists I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet in a book.  Let me tell you: I want to be Annabelle when I grow up.

The story is one of the most engaging I’ve written about here: Annabelle lives in a colourless town, but one day she finds a box filled with yarn of every colour.  She knits herself a sweater, but has extra yarn.  So she ends up knitting sweaters for everyone she knows.  Then for the animals, then for buildings and cars, and, through it all, she never runs out of yarn, she just carries on placidly knitting.  It’s a knitter’s fantasy.  Then an evil Archduke comes and steals the box!  Only, when he gets to his castle, he opens the box… and it’s empty.  He throws it out the window with a curse, but the box ignores the curse and goes back where it was always meant to be– with Annabelle.

I think this marks the first time I’ve written here about a book where the plot and character were the driving force in what made me fall in love.  (OK, yes, and the yarn.)  Annabelle, throughout the book, runs into mild to forceful opposition.  And yet she never talks back.  She never whines.  She never raises her voice.  She never caves.  She just carries on knitting.  You can see in Jon Klassen’s wonderful drawings: her face maintains a slight smile, and perfect repose.  To put it in a somewhat more blunt fashion, she shares John Scalzi’s Christmas gift from this year (I promise you want to click the link).  When her friend Nate laughs at her sweater, she says, “You’re just jealous,” and knits him one, too.  That shuts him up.  At school, her teacher scolds her for distracting the other students with her colourful sweater, so she just knits them all sweaters, too (and, I hope, teaches Mr. Norman a lesson– dude, don’t tell your students “You can’t.”).  And when the Archduke tries to buy her beloved yarn, she just calmly turns him down, over and over again, and sends him away.  As my sister would have said when she was little, Annabelle is a “big strong girl.”  More than that, she’s tough.  She’s resilient.

And that’s where I truly love this book.  Annabelle is the model here.  The adults don’t teach her; she teaches them, if they care to learn.  Some of the adults she meets are fun and give you a good chuckle (“Mr. Crabtree […] never wore sweaters or even long pants, and […] would stand in his shorts with the snow up to his knees.  ‘No sweater for me, thanks,’ said Mr. Crabtree.  So she made Mr. Crabtree a hat.”), but more often they’re minor obstacles.  I’ve mentioned Mr. Norman, the teacher who tells her off for distracting the class by quietly wearing her sweater, and who, when she proposes to rectify the situation by knitting everyone sweaters, expostulates, “Impossible!  […]  You can’t.”  Annabelle doesn’t answer back; she just does it.  And as for the spoiled, petulant, domineering Archduke?  Annabelle quietly carries on doing her own thing, sticking up for herself, and the yarn chooses her in the end.  He throws a temper tantrum, but she just carries on carrying on, and is happy.

This is just a story about a girl doing her knitting.  From Annabelle’s perspective, I think the world around her is just full of big opportunities and minor nuisances.  I picture her, if the book were turned into a movie (Oh my God, Mac and Jon?  Can you make that happen???  This would be such a good animated short!), occasionally sighing, or flashing that slight smile at Mr. Norman as she casts on a new sweater.  Perhaps the Archduke would elicit so much as a little shrug, as thought to say, “Dude, just leave me alone, OK?”  But her focus is on what makes life fun for her, not on the nuisances, and, in the end, she gets more of what she pays attention to: knitting.

The Changeling took to this book immediately.  “Read me Extra Yarn,” she’ll beg.  Or she’ll add it to the pile of books to take with us when we travel.  One of my very favourite moments was when she took it over to my friend, now her friend, too, and clambered onto her lap.  “Read it to me, please?”  And, as they went through the book, the Changeling did what she always does: “And she knit a sweater for the doggie!  And that’s a cat!  I see a bunny, and a bird, and is that the birdie’s house?  They all have sweaters!”  It’s enthralling.

I love seeing her admire Annabelle’s handiwork.  I hope, as she grows up with Annabelle, she’ll also learn just to do, and keep on doing, awesome things, no matter who tries to persuade her that she can’t or shouldn’t.  Just go for it, kiddo!

Do you ever get something in your head and end up chanting or singing and dancing your way around your empty house, possibly scooping up your poor, defenseless kitty in the process?  Don’t worry, I won’t make you answer that.  But I will reveal the full depths of my own embarrassment: for me, this morning, it was Jamberry, written and illustrated by Bruce Degen (I link to Porter Square Books, the marvellous, well-curated store where I bought my copy).  After reading it to the Changeling a few times this weekend, I couldn’t get it out of my head and spent the morning dancing around the living room, stumbling over Calico Critters, and swinging my patient cat through the air while chanting: “One berry/ Two Berry/ Pick me a blueberry!”

This was when I had a “click” moment.  I should know by now never to doubt my mother when she makes a remark about a children’s book, but when she compared Here Babies, There Babies to Jamberry I confess that my thought was, “Really?  I mean, they’re both rhyming stories, but so is Jillian Jiggs, for example, and, well, I just don’t see it.”  But after I read Here Babies, There Babies to the Changeling last week we spent a few days, as usual, chanting about babies in the most random places.  “I see a baby!” the Changeling would call from her stroller.  “Here babies, there babies…” and off she’d go.  That’s when Jamberry ever so gently started to nudge my brain again.

Then the Changeling started to play “going under the bridge” as she ducked under her stroller handlebar.  “And over the dam,” I went on, “Looking for berries, berries for jam!”  Next thing you know, we’re in full-on Jamberry mode: we read it a few times, and our natural mode of discourse seamlessly moved from Here Babies, There Babies to Jamberry.  We speak in berry rhymes (Merry rhymes, fairy rhymes, prattle in berry rhymes!  Sorry, folks, that one wasn’t even any good, was it?), we sing strawberries, we dance in meadows of strawberry jam… um, I mean in the living room.  It’s jubilantly moved in and taken over.

What is it about these books?  Why do they take over in a way that other charmingly rhyming books don’t?  There are lovely rhyming books, such as Each, Peach, Pear, Plum or Jillian Jiggs, books I desperately want to write about here.  They entertain when you read them, and then nestle nicely back onto the shelf when you’re through.  They don’t take over your tongue and make you dance in your sheepy pyjamas for the next day.

Partly, of course, it may be a question of metre: Jamberry‘s initial dactyls (“One berry/ Two berry/ Pick me a blueberry.”) rumble along like a folk dance to a drum, but then swap out for longer lines, most of which end with a bouncy stressed syllable: “Under the bridge/ And over the dam/ Looking for berries/ Berries for jam.”  This slight shift sweeps you along with the canoe in the picture, and if you don’t find yourself swinging your child on your knees?  Well, that probably means you decided to swing your child in your arms instead, right?  Right?  You’ve gotta move with this one, you really have.

And that’s because this little story here isn’t about the story.  Like Here Babies, There Babies where the emphasis is on the babies around you, not on a specific tale, Jamberry does have characters and a plot of sorts, but the emphasis is elsewhere: on jammy jubilation.  I don’t think I’ve ever read it without laughing at least a little at one point or another.  The beat and the song of it, the increasingly zany pictures, the berry-stained fingers and mouths, and the sudden urge to grab a pail and find some berries… well, that’s what this is about.  You read it and feel celebratory.  You read it and feel warm sun and sweet berries.  You read it and sing.  You read it and dance.

Oh, and there’s also a boy in there, and he meets a bear and they pick some berries.  Not really sure about how the bear has a hat, but he seems like a nice bear.  And I think that maybe CPS should check on the kid’s family because he seems to be seeing elephants skating on raspberry jam, which is, in my experience, unusual.

You see?  This is not a book where you should, as it were, focus on the story.  Sing it, move to it, dance your kid around to it– but, for the love of God, check your logic at the door.  (Which is, of course, where it differs from Here Babies, There Babies, initially leading me to doubt the wisdom of my mother.  That book feels intensely real, leading its own singsong verses to blend into the world around it.)

I’d add one last note here: Jamberry‘s fantastical celebration of berries is so very zany, so ebullient, and so jubilant that it really has a tendency to break through barriers and take over.  As I said, it takes over language and makes you hum it over and over.  It makes you use words like “ebullient.”  It also takes over seasons.  It might be February (albeit a very warm February), but it feels like June when you read Jamberry.  It’s really the polar opposite of Moominland Midwinter, which, as I noted feels like the epitome of winter.  Moominland Midwinter I only ever feel like reading when it’s starkly, icily, snowily cold.  Jamberry?  It makes February into June and has me wondering where I can get strawberries that taste like something.

What does the Changeling think?  “Berries for jam!” she cries, flinging her hands up.  Does she eat jam?  No, absolutely not.  Never, ever, ever.  (She won’t touch ice cream or candy, either.  I’m thinking of asking the doctor if she’s OK, and what else we can use as bribery.)  But she does love the pictures, and she does love the words, and the animals, and berries.

So, what can I say?  Even if you don’t have a kid handy, get out your copy, and start dancing at your own Jamberry bacchanal!