Beauty to Share

To kick off March, I’ve got a quartet of beautiful books to share with your kids (who may be climbing the walls of their pandemic prison) and a couple more for you to breeze through if you need to reassess where your time is going and why.

First up, If I Had a Little Dream by Nina Laden and Melissa Castrillon was lovely, quirky, and whimsical. All my favorite things. And I will die forever for this line, “If I had a little book, I would name it Friend. Friend would go wherever I went, our story would never end.” And only partially because I never go anywhere without a book… I’m not sure the kids managed to love this book anywhere near as much as I did, not because they didn’t like it, but because I loved it. And I wanted my own copy. The idea of naming our reality so that we can better understand and treasure it was incredibly poignant…and fed my fantasy of naming our house if we ever stop moving around, buy one, and settle down in it.

I already posted the below picture from Cynthia Rylant and Brendan Wenzel’s Life on Instagram, with a caption more specific to that page than to the book as a whole. I adored this book. It was beautiful (proof below) and touching and funny at just the right places. I really wish I had gotten more pictures of it before I returned to the library…or just not returned it at all, but I didn’t want to deprive whoever was in line for it next. I also think this book could spark some great discussions with our littles about what life truly is and why it matters. Especially during this year, these are conversations many of us need to be having with our kids, big and little, and also possibly with ourselves. As I read to Twinkles, I slowed down long enough to ask myself: what am I waking up for in the morning? What might happen tomorrow that could be a surprise?

I snagged The Language of Flowers by Odessa Begay for my eldest daughter, Bee. She is flower obsessed right now and consistently lugs around a battered copy of Rodale’s Successful Organic Gardening: Houseplants and Container Gardens that she got at a second hand bookstore in St. Augustine (on the end papers she has written, “For Bee. Enter and Die. No Tiny.” which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about her). The Language of Flowers was ten times more beautifully done than Rodale’s (no judgement) and had lovely background information on the traditional meanings of each flower. She loved it. I loved it. I was sad when it went back to the library.

The last children’s book that we all fell in love with was This Is How We Do It by Matt LeMothe. It follows the everyday life of seven children from seven different countries around the world. Bee, especially, was obsessed with it, but I just loved the conversations the kids and I had about the book. We talked about what foods we would like to try, what games were similar to ours, how our lives compared. And even though none of the families lived in Indonesia, it helped me feel like my kids were a little closer to understanding the way I grew up, if only because it showed them that not everyone is growing up the way they are.

One of my favorite friends told me last summer to read The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work by Dr. Christine Carter. It took the library that long to get it to me, and I’m not done with it yet, but so far…so excellent. Also, I have trusted this friend with my children, which essentially means I trust her with my life and, in consequence, also trust her when it comes to reading material. It’s been a fascinating look at busyness and the choices that we make and why. I’ve loved the statistics she’s included as well as the quotes she’s shared, and I’ve been texting my husband little snippets as I go, always a sign that I’ve found a good book. If you need to take a little time to look at where your day is going, this book might be a good pick for you. It’s the intelligent older sister the next book on my list.

The Sweet Spot’s, goofy but accessible little sister might just be The Lazy Genius Way. I posted on IG about Kendra Adachi’s entertaining and simultaneously practical book a week or so ago. Another assessment of where our time is going (and why), it was light and quick and didn’t necessarily teach me much that I didn’t already know, but that was oddly comforting. Also, full disclosure, a lot of the material Adachi presented was stuff that I had to learn the hard way over twelve years as we added five kids back when it was figure it out or die trying. If you don’t want to learn stuff the hard way, read Adachi’s book before you add a small herd of children. There’s a lot of sound, easily applied advice there, and it was a fun read, one that made me double check my priorities and put a finger on why I’m making the choices I’m making in my day to day. And it made me laugh. Which is always a win in my book.

So, spring is on its way. Soon, we all hope. Stock up your library holds list and partake of some good books. Look at this list as a jumping off point, and go from there.