Bookworm Bambini

Birdie, in the stacks.

Lately, after swimming class, Julie has been routinely swinging by the library with the bambini. Usually something we have placed on hold is in, and the bambini are permitted to pick out a number of books that is equal to their age.  Although they are not always returned at the same rate, we usually do also have books to return, which will sometimes prompt Clara to bellow charmingly as they are swept off down the conveyor belt, "Bye bye books!"

Birdie likes to do as Joe does, so they both usually make a beeline for the pre-readers. Right now she gravitates toward the Barbie series, her favorite one of which features Barbie battling a fairy queen who thinks she is in love with Barbie's Ken, whom she forces to propose to her. The spell is broken when Barbie makes up with her frenemy, Racquelle, which turns them both into fairies--a fairy secret!  Fans, we're not making up that storyline (we use the term loosely).  The Witch of Blackbird Pond and such awaits, but for now, we have Barbie and Racquelle, the dopey Ken, and their fairy secret!

Last week, Joe got some more books from the Fly Guy series to which Sara introduced him at Christmas in Julie and Sara's annual holiday book swap.  These are quality pre-readers: simple but clever.  Nary a fairy secret--or weapon--in sight.  Joe's version of the above Barbie pre-readers feature plot lines that devolve into a fight of some sort on page three.  Later that same weekend, Joe made himself a pair of fly eyes (i.e. compound) out of crumpled balls of paper and one of Birdie's tiaras.  (They were fly.)

This weekend, Julie decided to check out Little House in the Big Woods, the first in the Little House on the Prairie series, which is basically a primer on how to be a pioneer. So far, we have learned about how to slaughter various animals and store their meat for the winter, how to make butter, and how to make bullets and clean a gun.  It's winter in the little house in the big woods and frankly, Fans, it all seems rather grim in spite of the toasty fire over which Pa is making bullets before entertaining the family with the fiddle.  But Christmas is coming and fingers crossed, four-year-old Laura will be able to retire her corn cob doll for a rag doll like her older sister, Mary. Naturally, the bambini are riveted by all this romantic seeming deprivation: bears, panthers, guns, and fiddling.

All of this happened not far from here, too, of course.  We are in historic Laura Ingals Wilder territory up here along the Minnesota-Wisonsin and Minnesota-Iowa borders. We told the bambini perhaps we would take a tour of some historic Little House sites this summer and Joe gasped in anticipation.  We better tell him there won't be panthers, and that we won't be salting and smoking our lunch.

Fly Guy--looking so very fly.