Books, books, books.

Books are one reason I wish I had had time to keep this up more often the last few months. We've gone through many favorites and it's been a fascinating journey. If for no other reason, I'd like to preserve a list of these books for Sava--so he can look back some day and try to reconstruct what being two and three might have felt like to him.
His current favorite is one called "Boy" by James Mayhew. It's about a little cave boy who wakes up cold one morning but turns down his parents' request to join them in bed and share their blanket. Instead, he goes looking for warmth elsewhere--in the jungle, in the tall yellow grass, on a volcano--and of course ends up coming back and asking his parents if he can share their bed. The illustrations are beautiful, and Sava especially likes the part where the volcano on which the little boy has been sleeping erupts. No surprise there, since he is obsessed with fires and firetrucks, and a volcano is the closest to fire trucks you can come in a story about a cave boy.
Other recent favorites include:
* The "I love...!" series by Philemon Sturges; Sava especially likes "I love tools!"
* "Caillou watches Rosie" and "Caillou: new shoes" (Caillou wins our family award for most adorable boy in literature)
* "The Line Up Book," "Under the Table," and "Swim!", all by Marisabina Russo; Sava loves the sense of order these books represent, with their clear-cut illustrations and very detailed descriptions of objects, thoughts, and actions.
* The Stella Blackstone books about bears, especially "Bear on a Bike" and "Can You See the Red Balloon?"
* an oldie called "Now I am Three!" by Jane Belk Moncure, which made the third birthday much more meaningful to him
* a current favorite, "Ten Play Hide-and-Seek" by Penny Dale
* a recent and long-lasting favorite, "Grandma's House" by Elaine Moore, which I mistakenly must have gotten from the library, because I would have thought it was for a much older child if I had actually looked at it; but despite the fact that it takes about 15 minutes to read, has way too much text, and has to do with a girl's summer with her Grandma and the garden they help cultivate--both subjects quite distant to our lives--Sava loves it and will sit patiently through the whole thing; he's also, like many other books, memorized it, and if I ever omit a word or say the wrong word, he is quick to correct me (as in: I read, "the birds sat on their favorite branch," and Sava corrects me, "No, mommy, the birds sat on their favorite low branch!"
* what seems like an everlasting classic, "Alphabeep" by Debora Pearson
* a really great story about a boy and his dad flying a kite, called "Someone Bigger," by Jonathan Emmett & Adrian Reynolds
* the Anne Rockwell books: "Big Machines," "At the Firehouse" (which we seemed to be reading forever at one point), "Fire Engines"
* everything by Byron Barton, that god of vehicles: Planes, Boats, Trains, Airport, Building a House, Machines at Work
* I Spy Little Wheels
* the Lois Lenski books about Small: Fireman Small, Policeman Small, Captain Small, etc.

There are many others, including all Mtn View Public Library about fire engines which we've had to return because way overdue (my card was recently blocked because of our overdue fines), but my memory can't recover many of them. Sava remembers a lot more than we do, and every now and again will ask us whether we still have a particular book at home. We almost never buy books these days--using mostly the great resources of the library--and it sometimes saddens me that the books he likes come and go; on the other hand, he's gotten to read so many things that we might otherwise never have come across. Long live public libraries.