Can you trade them in?

Everywhere Babies
By Susan Meyers
Illustrated by Marla Frazee
2001, Harcourt

From start to finish, Rosie's day could only be described as naughty.

She did not care to get out of bed in the first place, and perhaps we should have bowed to her authority on that point. Because from then on, nothing suited her. She did not want a diaper, nor clothes. She absolutely did not want her hair brushed. Nor a jacket, nor to be pried from her stroller, which she had climbed into in a last-minute ploy to avoid leaving the house.

As she arrived, sobbing, at the daycare door, she refused to relinquish her blanket and pacifier. All day, she played mean, refused to share toys and demanded attention. And when I came to pick her up, she gave an older, larger boy one last hard shove, just to make her feelings clear.

By the time we were finally settled in for bedtime reading, both of us glad to be putting the day behind us.

For awhile, Rosie ignored the stories, preferring to amuse herself by stuffing Fisher Price Little People down my bra. But eventually, she snuggled in, pulling the covers to her chin and demanding, "The baby book, mommy. I wanna the baby book."

There's something so soothing, for both of us, about "Everywhere Babies."

I take comfort in the simple narrative, a gentle reminder that millions of other parents endure this same daily struggle. And I adore the drawings, a diverse universe of cheerful, proud, exhausted caregivers, doing their best to meet an infant's demands. (One mommy has clearly dozed off mid-breastfeeding, a book splayed open in her hand -- how's that for real life?)

Rosie, too, finds much to look at among the intricate illustrations. Tonight she leaned forward, one extended finger tracing the images as I read rhymes about little ones learning and growing, making plenty of mistakes along the way.

Today, especially today, we both needed to hear the book's sentimental final stanza:

Every day, everywhere, babies are loved --
for trying so hard,
for traveling so far,
for being so wonderful...

...Just as they are!

An era that's slipping away...

The Paperboy
By Dav Pilkey
1996, Orchard Books
Paperback edition by Scholastic
Winner, 1997 Caldecott Honor Award.

Midway through reading this book to my daughter at bedtime, I choked up. There's nothing particularly sad about the text -- it was more that Pilkey's spare, evocative writing suddenly felt like a eulogy for the business that has shaped most of my adult life, newspaper journalism.

It's been three weeks since I packed up my desk in the newsroom, and nearly each day since has brought another round of bad news for the business. Once central to community life, our daily papers now seem to going the way of the bowling alley. Was it just a dozen years ago that young boys woke before dawn, climbed on their bikes and pedaled the morning edition around their neighborhoods?

In any case, this lovely picture book seemed like a fitting starting point for a project I suddenly have time for, cataloging titles that beg for inclusion in any family's storytime rotation.

Even if you're not a journalist, you'll love the dim, sleepy illustrations in "The Paperboy," and the way the story unfurls like a poem, lingering over the wonderful secret moments that children appreciate best.

The paperboy knows his route by heart,
so he doesn't ever think about
which house to pedal to.

Instead he is thinking about other things.
Big Things.
And small things.
And sometimes he is thinking about
nothing at all. ...