I is for Inconspicuous Hippopotamus

Blogging through the Alphabet time again.

And today, I is for Inconspicuous Hippopotamus.   And all those other great picture books that <sob> my children are starting too think they are too old for.

Why do I love picture books?  Let me count the ways.

A good picture book, like Veronica by Roger Duvoisin, can introduce little kids to some amazing vocabulary.  All of my children, as toddlers, easily learned the word "inconspicuous" after having this book read to them a couple of times.

If you have never read Veronica, go to your library, check it out, and grab the youngest child you can.  It is delightful.  Duvoisin also wrote Petunia, an equally wonderful story about a silly goose who decides that because she found a book she has gained wisdom.  Petunia doesn't have an amazingly fun-to-say little catch-phrase like "inconspicuous hippopotamus" but she does give a great message about actually reading the book if you want to be smarter.

That's the thing with picture books.  The good ones, anyway.  Brilliant authors can pack some amazing vocabulary and a fabulous message into a few short pages, and there is usually lots of fun stuff to look at and talk about besides.

I love the books I remember reading as a child, like the ones mentioned above.  Or Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Or Make Way for Ducklings.  Or George and Martha. 

I love so many of the newer books too.  Goodnight Moon.  If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.  Click, Clack Moo.

What are your favorite picture books?  Do you still have someone to read them to?



Go, check out Marcy's blog, where other people have posted about far more normal I things -- mostly with a small i -- as in iPad, iPhone, iEducation...  all of which would have been totally perfect things for me to blog about too.