I love the theme song from the BBC Beatrix Potter cartons.

g’morning to all, hopeing we had a great 4th

sitting here, panera bread, spinach artichoke soufle and enjoying some chess

believe it or not I have to work today too…bummer

When MiniRieszette was about that age I rented “The Wizard of Oz” video and she just loved it. She watched it over and over. I was a little worried it would be too scary, with the flying monkeys and the mean witch, but she was O.K. with it.

I wish I had something to add, but I didn’t have that kind of childhood :(

We had perfect weather for the Forth.
My Sister’s family and a neighbor family came over for grilled arancharras and carne adobada tacos, and the kids all ate the spicy carne as well as the skirt steaks.
Our neighbors’ youngest is six, but is developmentally about 2.
This was the first extended visit with them, and while we were previously aware of the burden of their responsibilities, it was lovely to get to know the child some. The family has been working on elementary sign language and this is helping enormously.
The skies in our Northwest Side Chicago neighborhood lite up with illegal fireworks (set off by mostly police and fire department employees ;)
A perfect day.

My comfort movies were always a little dark, even with their happy endings. The Dark Crystal and The Last Unicorn. The Last Unicorn especially, since i saw that when i was at least the Peanut’s age or a little bit older. I still love that movie to this day. The one way you make me smile is to play that theme done by America for that movie. (Or any of the other songs they did for that soundtrack)

Reading the book it was based on years later made it even more beloved to me, because they got it RIGHT. But Beagle himself had a hand in the movie, much less the group of voice actors Rankin and Bass brought in. It was my first experience with Christopher Lee when he played King Haggard and his voice stayed with me forever. *grin* It was all perfect to me at that age, and although the music parts of it haven’t aged well, the story is timeless.

Morning all — Deb, it’s never too late. I introduced Mr. ReddHedd to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe after we got married — he’d never read them. And to the A. A. Milne books, which he’s discovered since The Peanut was born. (He only knew the Disney version of Pooh, which isn’t nearly as funny.)

And hugs…

We just bought The Last Unicorn in the last two weeks and she looooooves it. I don’t ever remember seeing that one as a kid, honestly. But Dark Crystal has been a fave at our house for a while…

Riesz — We haven’t tried Wizard of Oz here, yet. Perhaps it is time — for that one and for Willy Wonka.

My childhood fave was Charlotte’s Web. I was really saddenned when they made it a movie. I thought it would deprive all future kids from reading that wonderful book. As a pre-teen I loved the ‘Trixie Belden’ series (a lesser known Nancy Drew). I must have had 20 of them. Whenever we would vacation my mother would be sure I had a new one to read. I guess I had a blessed childhood.

I hadn’t realized at her age that it was a very well hidden satire of many of the old legends out there. Especially the characters of Schmendrick and Molly Grue, but when i read it i realized that when i was a teenager. The fact that it worked so well was something that made the story stick with me.

I’m glad she likes it. ^_^ That movie corrupted swathes of young girls in the 80s, glad to see the tradition continues. heh. Now i’ve gotta run, i’ve got my own work to head off to.

*waves and runs off*

I do remember that as a kid—1st & 2nd grade— I would go to the school library and the librarian had put aside, at my request, whatever books she had with mice in the story. So I read Stuart Little and lots of others. I also remember the Trolly Car Family which seemed like so much fun.

MiniRieszette loved The Last Unicorn. My ex-wife hated it, she thought it was too dark. One night I was putting her to bed and she mimicked a line by the narrator, something about “The red bull chased them all down the road long ago”. It was hilarious.

One of my favorite books from my later childhood (after I had read every Uncle Wiggily book my mother could find) was the Wind in the Willows. I have the 1954 edition, and the illustrations were a big part of my pleasure, so much so that I don’t really want any other version.

Good morning, folks. My mom wouldn’t have a TV in the house when I was a kid so it was books and music and recorded stories. Christopher Robin and Pooh were certainly well loved, and I still have a special affection for “The Sword in the Stone,” (the rest of the “Once and Future King” books came later), “The Secret Garden,” and “A Little Princess.” We had a record of Boris Karloff reading some of “The Just So Stories,” and I still hear his voice when I read them today.

Christy, I find it difficult at times to listen to the Winnie the Pooh theme song, because it brings me back to the days of my son’s early years and I will suddenly feel a sense of longing to be back there with him in more innocent times. Makes me sad sometimes.

My daughter’s first “real” movie was Pigglet’s Big Adventure. The theater showing it had a section of round sunken seating in the lobby. Naturally, after watching a few minutes of the movie she wanted to go back out and play in the lobby, especially walking around inside the sunken seating. After 30 minutes of that, we went home :)

Nice thread: For cheer my mother would break out in “yes We have no bananas” and roll her eyes. We would sing together after I caught on.

We also loved the Curious George books, probably when they were pretty new. And have been delighted that my grandson has let me share that silly monkey with him. Some of those memories really stick.

Have you read Tale of Desperaux, yet? We saw yesterday where they are making it into a movie to come out at the holidays. It’s beautifully written — and about a lovely little mouse who refuses to be afraid.

We love Wind In the WIllows here. Along with Frog and Toad Are Friends, which is also a lovely one. BBC did versions of Wind In The WIllows and Willows In Winter that we love — but we only had them on VHS. When our player broke, we decided not to get another one and switched to DVDs, which we were already buying anyway. Donated all our great kids tapes to the library and a local preschool. Have to see if I can find that on DVD now…thanks for the reminder. :)

Little Mack loved Desperaux.
It is a tad dark, but our household tends that way.
DeCamillo’s others are recommended as well, for similar reasons.
My nephew arrived yesterday with his nose stuck in Carl Hiasson’s Flushed (Hoot was his favorite book last year). Coincidentally, I am in the middle of Nature Girl, Hiassons recent grownup book, which mad for a nice bonding moment.

btw, I should probably let folks know we have two treats coming up next week:

On Monday, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick will be here to talk law with us for the next installment of First Monday at 3 pm ET/noon PT.

On Tuesday, we have a special book salon with David Iglesias regarding In Justice at 3:00 pm ET/noon PT.

Thought folks might like to mark their calendars. *g*

Never heard of it. I think I moved on from mouse stories in about 3rd or 4th grade. But I’ll check it out.

Most of the classics—even Pooh— I read as an adult.

Man, looks like it is going to be another dreary day here today. What is up with our weather this summer? Although the trees are loving it, so perhaps we’ll have a gorgeous Fall…

Other childhood favorites came from the Goderich Ontario small town library where I spent rainy summer days with Walter Brooks’ Freddie the Pig books.
The 1940s vocabulary is a bit further out of date today, buy little Mack loves Freddie the pig, Jinx the cat and the overproud Charles the rooster as much as I did.
Laughter is the key to her growing love of reading, which now includes Judy Moody and Shel Silverstein’s nonsense.
When I ran out of those (at age 12 or so) I checked out Animal Farm, which had been misfiled in the Children’s section.
Orwell has proved timeless (unfortunately)

The server hiccuped there a bit I think

I was reading at the Peanut’s age, and my favorite was the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales. This was before TV, and I understand that the Grimm’s tales were very violent, but I didn’t think of them that way then. They absorbed me for hours.

Glad to see the Lake is back!

In case this has not been posted, courtesy of BBC—ENJOY!

“President Bush was interrupted on several occasions by protesters who called him a fascist and war criminal during a 4 July celebration.”

“Speaking at the home of former president Thomas Jefferson, Bush was heckled during a ceremony where people from 30 countries lined up to be sworn in as US citizens.”

video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7491278.stm

What a fun vid. I’ll always be a Loggins and Messina fan. I want another feel good period. And I want it to last forever this time. Dream on, dream on, teenage queen.

I find myself quoting Pooh and Piglet often. I know I’ve found a kindred spirit when someone knows how to play PoohSticks.

My daughter loved Winnie the Pooh and so did her daughter. Must be in the DNA. I have read those stories so many times and I enjoyed them as much as the kids.

Sorry about the server hiccup there, gang…

Sorry about the server hiccup there, gang…

every time this site goes down I check the libreal blogs on other servers, when they all go down at the same time I will know something scary is about to happen

whew, wipes sweat from forehead

Tigger pounce on the sever?

Ooh, I saw the Wizard of Oz as a child, and the flying monkeys scared the bejebus out of me - I wouldn’t watch the rest of it, and I insisted on sleeping with the lights on for a week.

I would refuse to watch it for years after that. I was about a junior in college when I finally saw it all the way through for the first time. Luckily for me, that was in a theater, and it was magical and lovely and I finally understood what I had been missing all those years.

Oh, lordy. Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames. And the wonderful dog books of Albert Payson Terhune. I didn’t even have a dog!

My mom wouldn’t have a TV in the house when I was a kid so it was books and music and recorded stories.

TV was banned at my house too, and to be honest I still resent it. I felt so left out of the popular culture.

But the books. . .they were great. I vividly remember my mom reading Sherlock Holmes books. Also the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

James and the Giant Peach was a favorite too.

Another bear I grew up with in childhood was Paddington Bear.

Orange marmalade sandwich, anyone?

Missed hanging out here! Took my brother (he is an adult with mental retardation) to see Wall-E yesterday. Talk about a deep sub-story. Remember the movie line, “Stay the course,” Christy. *g*

Then last night David, Garry and I watched “Forrest Gump.” Was shocked to see it came out in 1994. Holy chocolates and feathers!

Phoenix Woman has a new thread upstairs…

Anyone remember the poem, “The Little Peach”? It started sorta like this:

A little peach in the orchard grew,
A little peach of emerald hue,
Warmed by the sun and damped by the dew,
It grew.
One day, passing the orchard through,
Came Johnny Jones and his sister Sue
(can’t remember the rest)

Yes please

Good morning, Christy, I posted a link to Jewel’s “Life Uncommon” as something to keep the faith and the fires of inspiration burning. But today, I wanted to share an excerpt from “Fairies at Work and Play,” but loaned it to a friend.

So, today, here’s a sampling of “Gifts of Unknown Things.” The author and a young girl are walking down a beach on an island in Indonesia.

“We walked together down the beach, and a small and mottled heron flew up at our feet…Every time it took flight it uttered a sharp, broken “kew” sound on a descending tone…Tia, laughing gently, says he sings a green song…
Why green? I asked her. That is his color. His voice is sharp like a new leaf or a thorn…The idea was beginning to grow on me. What makes a black sound?
Buffalo and thunder.
White?
The sea when it touches the sand.
How can you listen to talk or music without color? Her eyes were full of pity. When the drums talk, they lay a carpet of brown, like soft sand on the ground. A dancer stands on this. Then the gongs call in green and yellow, building forests through which we move and turn. And if we lose our way, there is always the white thread of the flute or the song to guide us home.”

Hope everyone’s day is splendid.

Am trying to dig up scheduling details on the Obama event scheduled for Charlotte, NC on Monday. Anyone have time/place information they can send me? ReddHedd AT firedoglake DOT com. I want to pop it into the scheduling tool so folks in the area have access to the info. Thanks!

“Speaking at the home of former president Thomas Jefferson, Bush was heckled during a ceremony where people from 30 countries lined up to be sworn in as US citizens.”

where do they keep coming up with all of those people such as the ones who gave him a standing O at the end of the speech? My guess is that most of that crowd at Monticello wouldn’t have a clue as to what Thomas Jefferson stood for and believed.

And how did the Code Pink lady make it all the way up the aisle, to within a very few feet of the stage without the Secret Service hauling her down - or worse? (It was on another video where the woman can be seen running all the way up the aisle, unmolested).

My most favorite book (that I chose) was Taffy of Torpedo Junction — about a girl growing up on NC’s Outer Banks during WWII during the height of the offshore U-Boat activity.(Guess you could have figured back then I’d be a history major.)

Have always loved historical fiction. Others must have liked that book also as there was a grassroots movement here in NC a few years back to have it reissued.

As a note about books/memories. My daughter worked in a NYC children’s bookstore while in HS and on college vacations. The traditional children’s booklists are being heavily trimmed (often in favor of current celebrity authors). She began collecting her favorites.

Can we get Iglesias to talk Winnie the Pooh?

Oh, and sheetsies!

Late to the thread but for the record, we were a Kipling family, with an emphasis on The Just So Stories, The Jungle Book and Riki Tiki Tavi.

This was for the reading or being read to times, prior to the Disneyfication of the stories.

Oh, and The Wind In The Willows (and in pre-PC times The Song of The South with all the stories about Bre’r Rabbit gettin’ over on Bre’r Fox and Bre’r Bear)

you might try contacting the editor of the charlotte observer:

rthames@charlotteobserver.com

I loved The Maltese Cat as a kid.

WHEN TEEN WAS A LITTLE, WE READ oops, sorry for caps–the series that starts with Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. The books are utterly magical–about children doing independent things, and honor and courage and nature. And in each book, Ransome slips in somewhere a window into someone’s inner life while experiencing a moment of solitude; each time, an unexpected jewel on the path. Ransome was a reporter in the 30’s, before he turned his craft into timeless streams….

One of my favorites: “Children and Art” Sunday in the Park with George Stephen Sondheim

I think you can rent Sondheim’s Into the Woods which culls from fairy tales. Bernadette Peters is wonderful. Stephen Sondheim is in a class by himself as far as musical theater. Highly recommended.

Forgot the link for “Children and Art”

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7czFexZnjWE

It’s a Satudray morning, grandma’s gotta work a little OT, and papa’s gotta watch both grandkids, having a cup of coffee and enjoying the greatness of FDL. Thanks to all……please continue.

When my son was a baby, I started reading him T.S. Eliot’s Ol Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (the basis of the musical Cats). To make it work, you have to sing it or speak it as close to singing as you can. I didn’t know if he was absorbing it until one day when he was barely two, he looked at me and said “The naming of cats is a difficult matter.” It was his favorite book for many years and we still read it together now that he is 11. For viewing I introduced him to H.M.S. Pinafore when he was five. He didn’t think that he would like it, so I got him to agree to watch until half-time, then we could turn it off. By the time it got to the break, he was so captivated that he could hardly wait through the break. Gilbert and Sullivan’s work can be enjoyed by all ages. When he was six I took him to see a live performance of Pinafore in NYC and he was not the youngest enjoying it.

Don’t any of you blink. My baby girl turned 18 yesterday.

She loved Dr. Seuss and Milne’s poems (”When We Were Very Young” is actually even better than Pooh as far as I’m concerned), not to mention Berke Breathed’s books.

Now she’s reading Orwell and Conrad.

She spent her birthday sick, curled up in her flannel jammies with a mug of Throat Coat tea. I fed her red-white-and-blueberry shortcake for her Fourth of July birthday, and thought about how fast eighteen years can pass. I know I was looking the whole time, but it’s amazing how little of it I seem to remember.

When my baby sister was seven, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Those first dark days in the hospital as the staff struggled to keep her from succumbing to pneumonia, I’d sit in her hospital room, reading her Winnie the Pooh. She was so exhausted but the book took us both to a place where we could share a smile.

She turned 40 last year!

“Out there
There’s a world outside of Yonkers
Way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby
There’s a slick town, Barnaby
Out there
Full of shine and full of sparkle
Close your eyes and see it glisten, Barnaby
Listen, Barnaby…
Put on your Sunday clothes,
There’s lots of world out there
Get out the brillantine and dime cigars
We’re gonna find adventure in the evening air
Girls in white in a perfumed night
Where the lights are bright as the stars!
Put on your Sunday clothes, we’re gonna ride through town
In one of those new horsedrawn open cars
We’ll see the shows at Delmonicos
And we’ll close the town in a whirl
And we won’t come until we’ve kissed a girl!

Put on your Sunday clothes when you feel down and out
Strut down the street and have your picture took
Dressed like a dream your spirits seem to turn about
That Sunday shine is a certain sign
That you feel as fine as you look!
Beneath your parasol, the world is all a smile
That makes you feel brand new down to your toes
Get out your feathers, your patent leathers
Your beads and buckles and bows
For there’s no blue Monday in your Sunday…
No Monday in your Sunday…
No Monday in your Sunday clothes!

Put on your Sunday clothes when you feel down and out
Strut down the street and have your picture took
Dressed like a dream your spirits seem to turn about
That Sunday shine is a certain sign
That you feel as fine as you look!
Beneath your parasol, the world is all a smile
That makes you feel brand new down to your toes
Get out your feathers
Your patent leathers
Your beads and buckles and bows
For there’s no blue Monday in your Sunday clothes!
Put on your Sunday clothes when you feel down and out
Strut down the street and have your picture took
Dressed like a dream your spirits seem to turn about
That Sunday shine is a certain sign
That you feel as fine as you look!
Beneath your bowler brim the world’s a simple song
A lovely lilt that makes you tilt your nose
Get out your slickers, your flannel knickers
Your red suspenders and hose
For there’s no blue Monday in your Sunday clothes!
All Aboard!
All Aboard!
All Aboard!
All Aboard!
Aboaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!
All Aboard! All Aboard! All Aboard! All Aboard!

Put on your Sunday clothes there’s lots of world out there
Put on your silk cravat and patent shoes
We’re gonna find adventure in the evening air
To town we’ll trot to a smokey spot
Where the girls are hot as a fuse!
WOW
Put on your silk high hat and at the turned up cuff
We’ll wear a hand made gray suede buttoned glove
We wanna take New York by Storm!
We’ll join the Astors
At Tony Pastor’s
And this I’m positive of
That we won’t come home
No we won’t come home
No we won’t come home until we fall in love!”

Late to the table as usual. let’s see now…all of my kids adored any book that rhymed. Two big favorites: “So Many Cats”
http://search.barnesandnoble.c.....05/?itm=10
and A Peaceable Kingdom, a Quaker Acebedarious(abc book). This book demands that you read it out loud..it does not work any other way. The first line is: “Alligator, Beetle, Porcupine, Whale” My kids can still, twenty years later, recite large bits of this from memory.
http://search.barnesandnoble.c.....708/?itm=5

Oh great thread. The six pines and hundred acre wood were our favorite too, back when my son was small. We watched that same Pooh movie many times, actually it’s on my Netflix queue, though my kid is 13.

The land of Poo and piglet is a wonderful safe place. Funny too.

And a P.S.: the children’s classic “night night moon” has been redone as “night night bush” - hilarious. The same illustrations, slightly tweaked. The first page shows little bush , tucked up in bed, coyboy boots parked alongside, smoking nuclear power plants outside the window. Is this a Vermont thing or are other people seeing this around?