The Longest Shortest Time

We Can’t Stop: Tails and Blowholes Edition

Ever since we went to the American Museum of Natural History Sasha has been obsessed with dinosaur tails and whales’ blowholes. She draws them with markers, with bath crayons, on her chalkboard. Really, wherever she can. And she loves a book that gives her the opportunity to talk about those parts of an animal’s anatomy, even if the tail in question does not belong to a dinosaur.

For this reason, as well as the peek-a-boo element I mentioned last week, The Cat at Night shot to the top of our We Can’t Stop Reading list this week. Sasha’s favorite part of the book has become the end, when the cat finds all of the other cats in town, and she can count all of their tails. I count five tails in all but she gets all the way to eleven.

Some of Dahlov Ipcar’s illustrations from The Cat at Night also made it into her Farmyard Alphabet. Sasha likes to point out the pictures she recognizes, especially the ones of the cat, and this seems to be her go-to second book for story time.

The tried and true Corduroy still always gets worked into the mix, as does another classic, Little Blue and Little Yellow. Sasha actually has the copy that my mom bought for me, used, when I was a kid.

Another one of her favorites, which I can’t link to, because it’s Japanese and it is not available as far as I can tell in this country, is one that my sister-in-law found for us in Japan.

It’s a foldout panorama-style book with little flaps on the windows and doors.

Each page represents a different country and the people behind the windows say hello in their native language. Sasha loves finding the people and even announces who will be back there before opening the flaps. She is always right, too. Her favorite guy to find is a dude in America flipping burgers and dogs, who she says looks like our landlord. She is right about that, too.

Since I can’t link to that book for our list, I will add one more. I actually think she’s drawn to this one because it it’s also a world travel foldout book. Panorama by Fani Marceau, with illustrations by Joelle Jolivet, is stunningly beautiful, with daytime scenes on one side of the pages and nighttime on the other. And, to bring it back around, there are a couple illustrations of whales (yay, blowholes!)—one of them on the same page as a snail, which reminds Sasha of an old library favorite, The Snail and the Whale.

What can’t YOU stop reading these days?