Right near Dodger Stadium in Echo Park, well, more like Historic Filipinotown, is a nice library. You should go there sometime.
I saw that the Dodgers have a great reading program to inspire kids to read (I signed up). And if you’re missing Vin Scully announcing the games over the radio like I am, you can still hear his voice.
Riley is now walking like a small, lost person, and still squeals with delight when she finds a stuffed animal in the children’s section.
The librarians were so nice and helped us try and find a book that had been recommended to me by our friend Erik (an area local who co-writes with Kelly at Root Simple) called – A Cat Called Room 8 by Virginia Finley & Beverly Mason and illustrated by Valerie Martin. It’s a local lore story about a cat who wandered into a school classroom at Elysian Heights Elementary School. I’ll have to go to the Central Library to get a copy, but just knowing this story exists makes me happy. I always like having an excuse to go back to the main Central Library anyway.
We found some great books. As always! We got a fun book by Neil Gaiman called Chu’s Day, illustrated by Adam Rex.
I always love books that mention libraries in them too. . . Riley loved the illustrations, and the sneezing.
The board books we picked up were Peck, Peck, Peck by Lucy Cousins and Digger, Dozer, Dumper by Hope Vestergaard and illustrated by David Slonim.
She read about the woodpecker while putting her finger through the holes of course.
She liked the holes and I liked the rhymes. We have woodpeckers who peck in the trees at our house so it was fun to read about them. Riley also had fun with the trucks –
and hearing the machine inspired poetry. I loved both of these books. We then read Underground by Shane Evans, which was quite powerful. Beautiful drawings and minimal words.
Another powerful book was The Librarian of Basra – a true story from Iraq by Jeanette Winter.
Between saving human lives through the Underground Railroad and saving books by hiding them from war; I was again humbled by the power of picture books.
The last book we got was Panda Bear, Panda Bear, what do you see? by Bill Martin and illustrated by Eric Carle. She loves colorful books with repetition. I do too.
There are so many different kinds of books in the children’s section. Anything we pick off the shelf seems to be a story I want to read over and over again. . . And with summer coming up, kids can be part of a reading challenge! Kids can even eat lunch at a bunch of Los Angeles Public Libraries during the summer.
Thanks for making our lives better, LAPL. My daughter is having so much fun visiting L.A.’s libraries. Now, if only there was a library train that connected all of the branches. . . we could call it the Library Tree Train and the train cars could look like tree houses. . .
Let’s make it happen.