New Year makeover

Dear Annie,

Happy New Year to you and to all.

I love your daughters' often very personal reactions to the books you read.  Isabel pointing out that she puts on a diaper while the members of the orchestra in The Philharmonic Gets Dressed are struggling into their girdles and garters is so cheering.

I had a lovely discussion of The Philharmonic about two months ago when author Mo Willems dropped in at our store.  He signed a number of books and chatted for a bit.  On his way out he picked up Karla Kuskin's book and effused over it.  He opened it more  or less randomly -- I think this was the page:

"He's so brave," Willems said.  "I wish I had the courage to draw like that."  The reference was to illustrator Marc Simont, but I didn't understand the bravery.  Drawing adults in underwear in a kids' book?  No, not that.  Willems' finger drummed on the woman in the lower left putting on her bra, then on the legs stepping into red underwear on the upper right.  The courageous act was to cut these people's bodies off: to draw just half a person going off the edge of the page. Willems was expressing his admiration as an artist for Simont's originality.  A lovely moment.

Christmas is over, but life remains busy in the book and toy business.  For the last two days, we've closed the store and had it freshly carpeted, and contractors have knocked a ten foot-wide opening in one wall where we're going to expand into a space next door.  The book section won't be moving to the new space, but we will get more room to display what we have.   Carpeting in a store loaded with heavy shelves turns out to be a major adventure.  Everything must go while old ratty carpet gets pulled up and the new stuff goes down.

Here's a photo of the book section from about six months ago, but it looked basically like this yesterday morning:

One can't quite appreciate the many imperfections of the green carpeting, but it was definitely ready to go.  An incredibly nice work crew came in, took lots of photos with an iPhone, then started sliding all those shelves to the front of the store.  See that white fixture partly covered by the Wimpy Kid's hand?  Fifteen minutes later, it was almost all that was left, and the guy in the blue shirt is sliding it out of there:

They pulled up the rug, prepped the floor, covered it with thick blue glue, and -- poof! -- by 2 in the afternoon the book section was beautifully carpeted, still empty, and appearing huuuge.  The guys brought all the fixtures back, checking the placement against the iPhone pictures and my somewhat spatially challenged memory (no, I think it was more to the left...).  The store was carpeted in four stages, and the following three stages involved fixtures and lots of stuff being moved into the book section while sections of floor closer to the front of the store were worked on.

Today was spent cleaning shelves, scraping off years' accumulation of scotch tape for signs, and reorganizing a bit. There's more to be done, and I look forward to an island of Star Wars lightsabers and action figures returning to its non-book section home: right now it's parked directly in front of the hardcover picture books.  One of the nice things about this sort of disruption is looking at the space in new ways, and reminding myself of books that have been quietly hiding in corners (and in a few cases, have fallen behind shelves).  Getting re-acquainted with the neighborhood.

I'm looking forward to the expansion, which will probably get in gear a few weeks from now.  Will keep you posted.

Love,

Deborah

Back to the beat

Dear Annie,

Doonesbury: what a great idea.

I know I did an about-face in my last post: from jazz and rhythm for toddlers to war for pre-teens.  Sorry about that (to use a Vietnam War-coined phrase).  So now that I've scanned a few pictures from music books into my computer, I'll lurch back to little ones and music.

You hit the two of the best books on rhythm, so I want to move on to more classical fare.  Starting with the delightfully illustrated
Zin! Zin! a Violin by Lloyd Moss. It introduces ten instruments, one page at a time, starting with the trombone:

With mournful moan and silken tone,

Itself along comes ONE TROMBONE.

Gliding, sliding, high notes go low;

ONE TROMBONE is playing SOLO.

I can imagine your household, with your talent for accents and singing.  Next, the trumpet, giving the enthusiastic feel of Marjorie Priceman's pictures:

It goes on through cello, harp, clarinet and more.  Then they file onto a stage, and play:

The STRINGS all soar, the REEDS implore,

The BRASSES roar with notes galore.

It's music that we all adore.

It's what we go to concerts for.

A happy line of hand-holding cats, dog, and a mouse boogie across the bottom of the page.

And speaking of concerts, I'm ending with my favorite book for young concert-goers:
 
The Philharmonic Gets Dressed
by Karla Kuskin.  It fits into the tradition of Ramona wondering about Mike Mulligan going to the bathroom.  In this one, we follow the getting-ready rituals of many of the 105 members of an orchestra:

First they get washed.  There are ninety-two men and thirteen women.  Many take showers.  A few take baths.  Two men and three women run bubblebaths, and one man reads in the tub while the cat watches. One woman sits in the bubbles and sings.

They dry off, put on underwear (boxers and briefs for the men, and an array of early '80s underwear for the women), each step with Marc Simont's  illustrations of six or more people, each doing things slightly differently:

There are ties and overcoats and saying goodbye and getting transportation to the concert hall.  The book ends with "the man with the black and white wavy hair" (we've been following him too) stepping onto the podium, raising his baton, and starting the music.

What I love about this book is that it takes seriously all those little steps which can dominate parts of the day for small children, and which adults tend not to mention much (see Miss Binney, in Ramona quote referenced above).  And it turns a somewhat confusing crowd of grown-ups into people who put on their pants (mostly) one leg at a time.

Love,
Deborah