We do this occasionally, simply because I’ve got twenty years of book-reading to children under my belt, with no sign of stopping in the near future, thank God. And we just returned from the library.

First, a helpful hint, of which most of you are probably already aware:

If you’re like me, you have very few specific titles in mind when you hit the children’s section, so you just wander. Since we’re still pre-readers here, mostly, we go the picture book section and hunt. Once in a while I remember the name of an author we’ve not finished with yet, but mostly I just pull books out, study them, and put them back.

(My criteria? Color, not too much text, texts that rhyme are always best, NO PRESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE [that is…Matt and the Sandbox: A Sharing Story.} )

So, we wander the picture books while Michael the Baby climbs up into the little two-story playhouse in which he mercifully now no longer gets stuck.

But there are other places aside from the "JE" section to find good story/picture books:

The 200’s – religion, mythology, Bible stories

The 390’s – folklore and fairy tales.

The 500’s – science. We checked out a nifty picture book on earthworms today, for example.

The 790’s – puzzle books, like I Spy and such.

The 800’s – especially 810-20’s – poetry.

The 900’s – history and geography. Every time we go, we have to find a "Rome book."

There are lots of nuggets hidden away in those call numbers, books that pre-readers will even enjoy.

Today’s author is Rosemary Wells – Max and Ruby are marvelous, and I recently wrote on her really charming Tale of Two Maries – her take on a traditional French story of some young saints. Today we checked out a slew of McDuff books – McDuff being a Westhighland White Terrier who lives with Fred and Lucy (and eventually a baby) somewhere in 1930’s America. The illustrations by Susan Jeffers (who perhaps I should be praising more, since it’s the pictures that grab me in these books) warmly envelop you in a nostalgic past of cherry-printed fabric, jaunty tams, cathedral radios,  and mary jane pumps, where in the end, McDuff and the baby finally become friends, sitting on the Andirondack chairs with Fred and Lucy, listening to "Music From the Stars" one crisp fall night.

For some reason, even Joseph, who goes for Power Rangers any day, is mesmerized by these simple stories – probably because they have such a clear sense of where they’re going, they’re short, and the illustrations are clear and bold.

"Woof!" said the baby.