It's Party Time

Isaac and I went to the bookstore to buy a birthday gift for his classmate this afternoon. Yes, I am that parent.

I really wanted Isaac to choose which one we would buy. I pulled a few off of the shelves that I thought would be fun and we sat in the children's section and read them. Isaac picked his favorites from my selections, but then he did take some initiative and began pulling books that caught his attention. So we sat and read those, too.

Here are a few we considered:

Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy by Jacky Davis. Isaac loves Ladybug Girl and this is a cute story about compromise and imaginative play. I though it would make a cute gift since it was going to a girl, but in the end it did not make the cut.

Edwina: The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems. It's Mo Willems, and we all know how I feel about Mo Willems. The humor is too understated for kids to really get it, but it is still a good story about self-acceptance. I pushed it hard, but it was cut from the short-list.

City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems. Do you see the trend? This is one that Willems did not illustrate himself, and it has a completely different tone that his other books. It is a story of friendship, but the frog dies (or so I assumed) in the end. Isaac said he was hibernating. It, too, was set aside.

Knufflebunny Free by Mo Willems. Okay, so I obviously had an agenda. This is the third, and last, "Knufflebunny" book. It is more for parents than for kids and I cry every time I read it. Isaac does like this book, but we wanted something funnier for his school friend.

No David! by David Shannon. Isaac just wanted to read this one. It wasn't really under consideration.

So what did we get? I am sure you will be surprised to learn that we bought two "Elephant and Piggie" books by Mo Willems. Our choices were We Are In A Book! and I am Invited to a Party!

We thought they were both very appropriate for the occasion.