Hi there.

So I’ve been reviewing some more of our gifts from the deluge last week and it seems I’ve a litany of books that I’ll need to read through once or twice prior to performing them aloud for a live suckling audience.  Particularly “The Book With No Pictures” (see “illustrated” below), as there are some voices that will need to be ironed out and rehearsed beforehand.

Robot monkey voice?  Challenge accepted.

We’ve also gotten “Goodnight, Moon” and “Guess How Much I Love You” and “The Runaway Bunny” and quite a few Baby Einstein books.  The thing is, I never read a single one of these as a kid.  Although it certainly seems like I’m alone in that respect.  Did everyone read these?

Mercer Mayer,  Value Tales, and Sweet Pickles were more my bag.

40 Years later, and the Trollusk is still awesome.

Which got me to thinking about all the necessary reading that Daphne will have to undertake in order to maintain Shaw cultural literacy.  (At least on her father’s side.  Jen will undoubtedly have a much better list of titles for our little girl.)  Collections like the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, Terry Pratchett’s Bromeliad Trilogy, and the Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean collaborations “The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish” and “Wolves in the Walls.”

Come to think of it, “Wolves in the Walls” might have to come a bit later…

j.s.