Pip reads (or, world book day)

even at 10 months old, one of our favourite things to do with Pip is read. we have a box of books next to her box of toys in the sitting room, and she can often be found rummaging through them and examining them intently. the books in the box that she has free access to are mostly board books, or small books. some of her current favourites this week are The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle), The Elephant and the Bad Baby (Elfrida Vipont) and Peepo (Janet Ahlberg) but she also loves her Pantone Mini Board Books (6 small books, one each of red, blue, green, orange, yellow and purple) which have colours, shapes and holes in the page.

and then there are the books that we read to Pip. every night before bed, we settle down in her nursery and whilst she drinks her milk, we read. It’s usually me, doing the reading, occasionally Marto. such is the popularity of this reading that the other person generally hangs around to listen. so far, we have read Winnie-the-Pooh (A A Milne) and we are almost finished with The House at Pooh Corner. We have also read quite a lot of our Madeline compendium Mad about Madeline: The Complete Tales (Ludwig Bemelmans) during the period before an afternoon nap. It’s been an absolute pleasure rediscovering these books which used to be favourites of my own childhood. we plan to work our way through our entire library (which is quite extensive as my baby shower was library themed and Pip also received some beautiful editions at her naming party). I’d forgotten how abstract A A Milne’s writing is, how adult it is really; Marto and I frequently find ourselves laughing and each of the characters quite clearly reminds me of people we know. each chapter feels new until suddenly, one sentence will be the turning point and it all comes flooding back. tonight we read about playing pooh sticks and I had totally forgotten that Eeyore comes floating down the river and that Pooh then hooshes him to the side…

I’m really looking forward to reading some longer books to her as well. aside from the beautiful folio editions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Charlotte’s Web (E B White) and others that we were given at her naming party, I have also been collecting old favourites from charity shops. old favourites both in terms of childhood memories as well as old penguin and puffin editions. Stig of the Dump (Clive King) is my most recent addition.

Photo from Lola’s Room