The southernmost LAPL branch is all the way down in San Pedro – near the Port of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is huge, people. If you ever want to know just how vast this amazing city is, drive to all of the libraries. Thankfully there were three of us in the car this time.
The first book we saw was The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg. We had to get it. Who doesn’t like a dark alphabet book about strange things happening to letters?
The San Pedro library is a cool building. The windows reminded me of a ship. Riley tried to invite a kid to read with her, but he seemed more interested in exploring the library on his own. Who could blame him?
Riley recruited her dad to pick books and read to her.
Which was great, until she was inspired to explore around like the other kid. She was determined to win him over. . . and practice her walking skills.
Choosing books is still the most challenging part of our journey. Sometimes we are in the mood to read — sometimes we are not. And that’s ok. We can take some of them home!
I love Feast For 10 by Cathryn Falwell. Riley does too. Counting, family and food are great for any age.
We got The Three Little Kittens by Anna Alter to continue our counting and rhyming skills.
One Word From Sophia by Jim Averbeck and Yasmeen Ismail made me and my husband laugh out loud when I read it to Riley in our living room. John even stopped me and asked, Is that really what it says? Family reading is a really fun way to spend time together.
And, sometimes we prefer the books that dad checked out! Riley Bean loved listening to John read aloud Asterix by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo. John read these comics as a kid growing up in Germany and England. Now, he gets to share them with our daughter by rereading them to her. Hearing him laugh out loud and our daughter imitating him makes me so happy.
Even my mom Gail, Riley’s “G”, gets to enjoy all the books we bring home. My mom was the one who instilled my love of books in the first place. . . she was and still is an avid reader. My sister and I were lucky to have her as our elementary school’s librarian when we were kids. Now, John and I are lucky to have her spend so much time with Riley when I’m at work.
One of the books G and Riley shared was Molly Bang’s Yellow Ball. What a beautiful, simple story of a ball traveling from one beach to another.
What’s better than reading books together?
Of course we got board books too. Caroline Arnold’s A Polar Bear’s World was so sweet. The Caldecott Medal Winner, Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola – about a magical pasta pot – made us laugh out loud, again. Riley spent most of the time her dad was reading out loud to us, wandering around the living room half naked and laughing. Babies, am I right?
And you know what? All of this love and laughter was brought to us by the public library. Thank you, libraries.
Loved the connection of the books going from john at the library to home with mom to G–the handling process from here to there, library to library.