the philharmonic gets dressed

“It is almost Friday night.  Outside, the dark is getting darker and the cold is getting colder.  Inside, lights are coming on in houses and apartment buildings.  And here and there, uptown and downtown and across the bridges of the city, one hundred and five people are getting dressed to go to work.”

The Philharmonic Gets Dressed is a unique and detailed account of how the members of an orchestra get ready for a show, if you ever wondered.  A perfect read if you’re taking your kids to their first instrumental performance!  Written by Karla Kuskin and illustrated by Marc Simont (illustrator of many Nate the Great books).

spunky tells all

“I could tell you everything about the Bates family—things you’ll never hear from anybody else.  Then this book could be titled ‘Spunky Tells Everything.’  But it’s not fair for a Dog to tell everything about his family.  A family deserves at least some privacy and loyalty.  So I will only tell all.  Almost all.”

Written by Ann Cameron and illustrated by Lauren Castillo, Spunky Tells All is a humorous and insightful story told from a dog’s perspective.  He gets somewhat frustrated trying to get his humans to understand his habits, but things get worse when an arrogant Balinese cat by the name of Fiona moves in.  Will they *ever* become friends?  Spunky Tells All is part of the Huey and Julian series.  Also just a note—if your kids happen to be working on social cognition or social thinking, this book is an excellent exercise in perspective-taking, or putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

who built that? modern houses

Who Built That? Modern Houses, by Didier Cornille, is a fantastic intro to some of the most significant architects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Gerrit Rietveld, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles & Ray Eames, Mies Van Der Rohe, Jean Prouvé, Frank Gehry, Shigeru Ban, Rem Koolhaas and Sara Wiggelsworth & Jeremy Till.  The design of the book evokes a sense of modernity with its spare and minimalist illustrations and layout.  Published by Princeton Architectural Press.

We have a short list of architectural books that we want to buy eventually, but does anyone have any favorites to share?

the midnight library

Nate has been into listening to and retelling The Midnight Library lately, Kazuno Kohara’s quirky tale about a little librarian, her three owl assistants and the menagerie of animals that visit their nocturnal library.  We're working on retelling stories, which is an essential language skill for when he starts school.  I try to choose simple storylines--The Midnight Library fits the bill, and it's funny, to boot.