{"id":1220,"date":"2012-06-27T06:27:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T06:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/?p=1220"},"modified":"2012-06-27T22:41:15","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T22:41:15","slug":"picture-books-stateside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/2012\/06\/picture-books-stateside\/","title":{"rendered":"Picture books stateside"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We had a fabulous weeks holiday in Chicago which included a pleasant mooch around a small <a href=\"http:\/\/semcoop.com\/about-57th-street-books\">independent bookshop<\/a> as well as a trip to the public library.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233505.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233505.jpg\" alt=\"20120627-233505.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nIt was great to see the large selection of picture books in both places although I was surprised how few paperback editions they had. At both the bookshop &#038; library the books were all lined up along the shelf, spine facing out, which wasn&#8217;t the easiest for browsing. This did not however curb my enjoyment of combing the shelves and discovering different illustrators &#038; authors. If there were no limits on funds or luggage space I could have happily bought a stack of new books but in the end I chose the following.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233622.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233622.jpg\" alt=\"20120627-233622.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI was pleased to find the board book edition of Paperbag Princess, while I am looking forward to reading the full edition to the kids I thought this would be a great first introduction to the world of princesses for Freya. A story of an intelligent princess outwitting a fearsome dragon &#038; forging her own path, whats not to like. I also love the line<strong> &#8216;you look like a prince, but you are a BUM&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For Bryn, knowing that he was beginning to enjoy longer stories &#038; that we had an 8hr plane journey ahead I opted for a couple of early chapter books. I choose &#8216;Happy Birthday Bad Kitty&#8217; by Nick Bruel which is a great mixture of humour &#038; fact. I think Bryn was taken with Kitty&#8217;s bad behaviour &#038; after a few a readings he was confident enough to pick out his favourite parts of the story. There was also a good balance of illustrations and text allowing him to easily follow the story. This book was such a success we even tracked down another in the series at the local library.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233701.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233701.jpg\" alt=\"20120627-233701.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nMy second choice was a book from the Mercy Watson series, also featuring a mischievous animal, a pig. The main reasons for choosing &#8216;Mercy Watson, something wonky this way comes&#8217; by Kate DiCamillo were because of the illustrations and that it provides a slice of American life (although from around the 50&#8217;s) In this story Mercy is taken to an outdoor cinema where she causes havoc eating everyone&#8217;s popcorn until the firemen come to the rescue. I love the bold vibrant illustrations which help the story leap out from the pages into a fun rollicking read.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the books that I was also keen to buy<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233026.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120627-233026.jpg\" alt=\"20120627-233026.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had a fabulous weeks holiday in Chicago which included a pleasant mooch around a small independent bookshop as well as a trip to the public library. It was great to see the large selection of picture books in both places although I was surprised how few paperback editions they had. At both the bookshop [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,8],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bryn","tag-freya"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}