Oh no. I am thinking about defacing a library book.

We have a brand new Breyer Stablemates book called Lucky that I checked out of the library a few days ago.  My two year old and I started reading it the other night. I told him the title of the story is Lucky, and when we turned to the first page that showed a picture of the horse Lucky on it, he became excited and said, "THAT YUCKY!!" (he's still learning how to make the L sound) -- it was adorable. We have not finished reading Lucky yet, but I was thoroughly enjoying it and I'm becoming a big fan of the Breyer Stablemates books.  I love horses, always have, and the stories are nice and have lots of great horsey language in them and nice illustrations.  The books we've seen have featured all girl characters but that doesn't matter to the boys right now. 

Lucky

So here's the problem. I was sitting in my son's room browsing the rest of Lucky and admiring the illustrations, and I see the last page of the book is an advertisement for Breyer products. Talk about YUCKY!  I used to work in marketing, but seeing an ad in a children's book is almost revolting.  My first thought was to rip that ad out.  It seems that it could be torn or cut easily without damaging the book's content or cover. (The ad is double sided.)  So, I could wipe out this ad without anyone really knowing (except me, and well, you!)  

But... it's not my book.  I am thinking of getting some Breyer Stablemates books for our own collection and I will definitely cut ads out of them.  The other Breyer book we read, Snowflake, did not contain an ad.  Lucky has one of the library's new stickers on it, so this must be a new thing.  

So.... should I do other library patrons a favor by slicing out this ad?  Or should I be more respectful of the library's public property?  Maybe other patrons actually would benefit from the advertising message? (Look mom! A free catalog!)  How do you feel about advertising in children's books?  It makes me gag, even in this case, where I have a great deal of affection for the brand promoted. Most children's books don't have advertising.  At most, I have seen cross-promotion for other titles (the back covers of our Sandra Boynton books come to mind). I would generally say it is an awful and disgusting thing to damage or mess with library property, but...I don't know!  It might be good to keep the commercials out of kids' books, or at least, this particular copy of Lucky.

Leave your thoughts in the comments, and vote in the poll!  We'll have this title checked out for at least 3 weeks, and I'm interested in your advice whether or not to actually alter the book.  It feels right and wrong at the same time.

Lunchtime Reading - Mouse Tales

Here is a little gem of a chapter book we found at our last library trip - Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel. The book has seven short stories about the adventures of little mice, and they read like old-fashioned folk tales. The stories are simple, with cute and colorful drawings on every page (and often interspersed among the text). The beginning of the book sets up the stories -- seven young mice are nestled in bed and their Papa will tell one story for each little mouse.

We are experimenting with lunchtime reading. On days when I am well-organized, the boys will sit at lunch and I will read to them. It works well, although if I hold the book so both boys can see the pictures, I end up reading upside down and/or sideways. Lunch reading is nice bonding and the boys seem to enjoy it too. It's a good opportunity for us to get more reading in besides bedtime.

Exploring Chapter Books

After making two recent trips to the library to explore children's reading materials (and ease up on my Amazon.com spending), my oldest son (just turned 4 in Oct.) and I have given more early readers and chapter books a try, and I have a better sense of what he likes.

The most important observation is that at this time, he prefers books to have pictures on every page. He also grows impatient if there is a longer paragraph with only a small picture. I was wondering and possibly dreaming that my young-four-year-old could listen using only his imagination but we're not there yet. However, he is very much interested in longer stories (as long as we start early enough -- and we need to work on that and giving ourselves more time in the bedtime routine).

He enjoyed a Breyer Stablemates book called Snowflake -- although he urged me to skip the text-only pages, the illustrations held his interest well and we got a pretty good sense of the story anyway. (I love horses and although the story has all female characters, I think my son enjoyed it too!) Snowflake is a level 3 reader and now we'll be exploring more 2's and 3's before moving up. We did a level 4 last night that was much too much text and not enough images.

I was surprised that A did not enjoy the picture only books we've tried so far. He instructs me to read the words and seems disappointed there are none. We'll try again when he's a little older.

I've got my copy of The Read-Aloud Handbook
ready and hope to use it next time as a trusty guide for future library adventures.