First in a random series on great Canadian authors.
Phoebe Gilman did not start out as Canadian, nor did she start out as an author. In fact, she was born in New York, and traveled to a few different countries before settling in Toronto to teach at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD) while she tried to get her first book published. Fifteen years after she started out, she found success, and The Balloon Tree has become something of a modern Canadian classic.
Originally posted last December, these suggestions remain great gift ideas for baby, toddler, preschooler, school-ager, and teens
On The Getting of Gifts
Brace yourself – it’s holiday season. Or more to the point, prepare yourself to get busy with the gifting and then the writing of thank you cards for tacky socks and stinky candles. Unless. Unless! Unless you plan ahead – and there’s still time.
It might seem like this should come after the gifts, but if you want to launch a preemptive strike against the gloppy, unwanted preserves, awful recall-pending toys, and regifted needlepoint bookmarks, you have to do it before the shopping starts for the others. Tell them what you want before they buy you what you don’t!
Continue reading "Holiday Gifting Edition: Early Advice on Getting and Giving" »
Children love their grandparents. Grandparents are, after all, a wonderful part of a child's life. Who else can spoil and love thm without having to be the disciplinarians and taskmasters? It's a wonderful thing for them to be able to have a close bond. My grandmother was one of my favourite people, just as it should be, and memories of grandparents can be some of the best ones even half a lifetime later.
But how to explain when things start to become harder? If the wonderful person that is grandma starts to fade from view a little, if grandpa becomes a little strange or forgets who his own beloved grandchild is? It is a difficult thing for an adult to understand and accept when the person they know and love starts to disappear while their physical self is still here, the disconnect heart-wrenching. For a child, it is confusing and a little scary. Helping them to appreciate what is left, to continue to show their love for the person that was, and to become more comfortable around the new reality is perhaps the best we can hope for. A little help in discussing such a difficult thing is out there, though. Here are a few titles to get you started on that tricky path.
I wasn't going to do a Pumpkinpie's Picks post for a while - I had posts ready! With themes and stuff! But I am about to overstep my parenting ethics, and I bet I'm not alone, so I'm here to share my pain, people.
You remember how in the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, Calvin always wanted to read Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooey, every. single. night? Much to his parents teeeth-gnashing horror? Yeah. Pumpkinpie has a Huey, and my head is about to explode in a gooey kablooey.
What kid doesn't love dinosaurs? After all, they are fascinating. Gigantic, fierce, and deliciously scary, without ever being any real threat at all, thanks to the vast separation of time. Best of all, we know enough to dig up immense bones and create museum exhibits to fuel a child's imagination, enough to study them and learn about their lives and eating habits, yet they retain a sense of mystery, because there are still plenty of things we don't know and probably never will. If that doesn't get your sense of wonder stirring, I don't know what would. So it is that they are also a favourite theme in kindergarten classes, and your child may well come home telling you all about which have long necks and eat plants.
it will come as no shock to any of you to hear someone suggest that Hollywood is looking just about anywhere for ideas these days. I know! Heck, for teens, they have in the past few years, even come out with movies based on great teen novels! Written for teens! And for the younger kids? Well, often enough we are seeing rehashes of things already done - Disney, I'm looking at you here, with your Cinderella II and you Lion King III. But we've also been getting a handful of movies based on perfectly good picture books.
Basing a movie for kids on a picture books for kids seems like a good idea, right? I mean, great literature, brought to life? What's not to like?
I first wore glasses when I was a mere three years old. Having had a three-year-old now, I'm not sure how my mother ever kept them on me. In fact, I would guess that a lot of children have some difficulty adjusting to glasses. They are, let's face it, a sort of weird thing to have on. You see them and feel them on your face, and for someone accustomed to being unencumbered by them, not so great. Now, of course, there are extremely cute specs for little kids, far removed from the ugly plastic things of the 19mumblemumbles, but still, hard to get used to for some.
So we parents, we emphasize the need for them, we keep after them, and all the things that parents must do. But putting a positive spin on them is something that we can turn to authors for a little help with. Need some books to help put things in perspective or help the bespectacled future look a little brighter? Here you go. You're welcome.
Ah, potty training. Feared by parents who haven't been there yet, subject of parenting books galore, and known to drive grown men to the very brink. I was lucky in this regard - Pumpkinpie was on the case before I was really even worried about it. Even so, I employed a book or two, in my usual manner, to help explain things to her, to show her other kids in action, and to give us a talking point. Now I can't tell you how to go about potty training your child (sorry), but I can tell you about a few good titles to help put forth the suggestion.
kitten kitten bo bitten, fee fi fo fitten, mee my mo mitten, kitten...
By now, my own bundle, so far known as The Bun, should have arrived. And hopefully, been named. I say hopefully because, well, around our house, the naming of babies is a long, arduous process. And other bloggers I know say it was tough for them, too. So how do you explain this to the sibling-to-be who may, as Pumpkinpie did, have her own ideas about being involved in the naming? How do you explain why a name is so important? Well, if you're me... you rely on someone else. Someone more articulate. Someone published.
Here are a few good stories about how we get and adapt to the names our parents choose for use.
Misterpie and I really haven't discussed how we will approach the topic of faith with Pumpkinpie. I was raised with no religious education at all, while his family were church-goers, but he did not continue on his own steam, so it is not something that we make part of our daily life, by any stretch.
Still, it is an important part of the lives of many, a major force in the world today and in the past, and something that I think speaks to a child's wonder about the world around them. It's not something I want to ignore or dismiss, however awkward I find my own unplumbed feelings. Being without a real denomination of my own, though, I am interested in talking in broader terms about the aspects of religion that I think are common across a number of major faiths, and that seek to make us better people. This is about the depth that I am comfortable with myself, and I think it leaves the topic open for further exploration as she grows older.
