Johann has recently really enjoyed a series of books by Laura Numeroff , one of which we own – If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. Another book in the “series” is If You Take A Mouse To The Movies, which we currently have checked out from the local library. For the past week and a half both of those books have been daily (if not twice daily) reads. These are fun whimsical books full of chain of events. Cookie -> Milk -> Milk Moustache -> Hair Trim -> … -> Milk -> Cookie. Johann loves them and has memorized both books already.
Another favorite book, heavy in the current rotation, is On Noah’s Ark by Jan Brett, which is brilliantly illustrated. We have all enjoyed both the story and rich illustrations from one of her other books, The Mitten: A Ukrainian Folktale and Johann loves the Noah’s Ark story (go figure, with his love of animals) so it is no wonder that this one became an instant hit. We have collected a number of books (and a fine video or two) that include the story of Noah. By far the one with the best illustrations and the most varied animals is Ms. Brett’s. Today we finally tracked down the identity one of the animals from the book in Johann’s Dinosaur Encyclopedia – the now extinct Thylacinus. Thylacinus was a carnivorous Australian marsupial which resembled a modern canine. It had a rusty tan coat with black stripes on its back, hind quarter and tail. Johann was jumping up and down for joy when we stumbled upon it in the Dinosaur book, and instantly recognized it from the Noah’s Ark book. Sure enough it was a perfect match.
For anyone who needs gift ideas for Johann, today we setup an Amazon Wishlist for him. You can find it in the left-hand column under “Wishlists” as “Johann’s Wishlist.” He personally picked out most of the books and video’s in the list and we added one or two others by authors he currently enjoys a great deal, books we would pick up if we saw them at the local bookstore (which we haven’t).