holiday themed books for pups & kits

cecil's new year eve tail(2007) by marie fritz perry. cecil is invited to a new year's eve ball and finds friendship and acceptance when he leasts expects it.






for christmas: wonderful adaptation of dickens classic featuring mice (of course!) by british writer toby forward and illustrated by ruth brown.

for eid (an ever moving muslin holiday) which just happened to have occurred earlier this month is a new book (2007) by ohio based physician-author asma mobin-uddin and illustrated by laura jacobsen. a beautiful story that transcends dogma and addresses the universal joy found by the simple act of giving to others.


a thanksgiving time I ran across this delightful book at the library's thanksgiving display in the children's section. it is a story of ann and ed who after burning their own thanksgiving dinner wander next door to the new world cafe thinking the restaurant is open for business as usual they soon find themselves in the midst of a very unique private holiday celebration. written and illustrated in 2003 by debby atwell the thanksgiving door tells about unexpected gifts that can come when cultures come together and what can happen when the hearts and doors are opened "big and wide."

convergence

if you are looking for a rollicking good read check out special topics in calamity physics (2006) by marisha pessl. I don't know how I missed this book when it debuted last year as I'm sure it was on all sorts of 'best of lists.' blogging bud salty jill mentioned special topics a while back in one of her posts. whatever she said was enough to tweak my interest and send me off to the library to check it out. boy, am I glad I did. coincidentally the other day while I was on catching up with pam, a friend in nyc, we got to the usual 'so what are you reading now' question; and what do you know were both reading special topics. we thought that was pretty far out and I expect in itself may have been a special topic in calamity physics!

excerpt from liesl schillinger august 13 2006 nytimes review:

Like Alan Bennett’s delectable and brilliant play “The History Boys,” now on Broadway, “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” tells the story of a wise newcomer who joins a circle of students who orbit a charismatic teacher with a tragic secret. The newcomer, a motherless waif named Blue van Meer, spent most of her life driving between college towns with her genius poli-sci professor father, Gareth. To kill time on their drives, they discuss radical class warfare, riff on Homer and Steinbeck, recite movie dialogue and poems by Blake, Neruda and Shakespeare and read Hollywood biographies — from a tell-all by Louis B. Mayer’s maid to blow-by-blows on Howard Hughes and Cary Grant. Gareth is fond of making oracular statements, which his daughter laps up as if they were Churchill’s: “Everyone is responsible for the page-turning tempo of his or her Life Story,” he tells her. And, he cautions, “never try to change the narrative structure of someone else’s story.” Tightly swaddled in her daughter-dad duad, Blue does not know that her story is someone else’s. Only gradually does she learn that the frantic tempo of her life has been conducted by forces she does not suspect.

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