Book Review: A lovely story for bedtime...

Weeknights are . . . what's the word I'm looking for . . . frustrating for me. I constantly find myself wishing for more hours. Although I get home at a reasonable time each day (4:45), our hours at home do not go far when you consider exercise, dinner, evening activities, homework, and bedtime all needs to happen by 8. My youngest child, Isla, often plays by me while I exercise, visits with me when I am distracted with cooking, rides with us to take her older siblings to classes, and whines all through dinner, but none of this time is both quality and pleasant, which is really what we both need. So our saving grace is evening story time.

Now story time isn't always perfect. Sometimes I'm too tired to make the most of it. Sometimes Isla is too spent to care. And sometimes story time is poisoned by books like this. (I'm sorry, I just do not care to look for a rhyming list of objects with eyes that have stared at a screen all day.)

But tonight, story time was nothing less than lovely, and a big part of that was because we read Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. Have you read this book? It is so funny and has a sweet ending, and it is all about a moose who just wants a shot at his spot in the alphabet.

Like many parents, I tend to hear this list of all the things I want to accomplish running though my head, even while I'm reading. But a hearty four-year-old laugh will snap it out of me. And the page below is where that giggle came...what a lovely sound!

Just how big is that cone?!

And finally here is where both of our laughs always pick up: (Incidentally, this illustration also is a strong representation of how things look at our house on an average weeknight. When I say life is a lovely place, please do not assume that it is not a messy place, too.)

What are your favorite books for a lovely story time?

A LOVELY MOMENT FROM YESTERDAY: My nine-ear-old daughter has been biking up and down the street a lot recently. Yesterday, I took a good look at her grinning, energized face as she climbed off her bike. Her smile reached into her eyes and beyond. It made me pause and think how exercise is just as important for one's soul as it is for one's body.