Adelaide's favourite local bookshops and news agencies

Petra Starke makes a rundown of Adelaide's wonderful bookshops and news agencies. I have to say though that this list is just the tip of the iceberg. Adelaide has more of these gems waiting to be explored!

Happy New Year!

It's been a three-year hiatus from blogging. Mr. Gaiman, I do hope to write more this year!

Counting Kisses by Karen Katz (2001)

Our new favorite bedtime book. It starts with a tired baby who is in need of a kiss. I love this book not only because it gives my son the needed quiet transition from play to bedtime but also how it teaches counting and identifying body parts - tiny toes, wriggly feet, yummy knees, pretty belly button, dimpled chin, itty bitty nose, baby hands, sweet little ears, closing eyes, and dreamy head.

And now it's time for baby's bed...

Anton Lee's top 12 board book picks!

My son recently turned one year and one month and he’s ready to have a change in his reading materials. Before we shelve these books, here’s a rundown of his favourite ones in his first year:

1. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star / Old MacDonald had a Farm / Wheels on the Bus

I’ve been reading to my son since he was in utero but I can say that these three spin-a-song board books firmly started my son’s reading adventure at 2.5 months. He would be alert and focused every time we start reading to him these books.  All three books are beautifully, brightly coloured and sceneries change by spinning the wheels on the right hand side of the books.  Happy singing!

 2.       My Little Noisy Book of Ducklings / Kittens /Puppies (2008)
These interactive board books have buttons which when pressed, make quite realistic sounds of a duck, kitten and a puppy!  By 9 months, my son knew when to make the animals quack, meow, or go woof-woof! Not only entertaining but helps babies’ motor skills too!

 

 

 

3.       Oh Baby, Go Baby! (2004)

An adaptation from Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”, this pop-up book has fluff, foil,  banners flapping, and even has a lever to set the baby off  on his adventures! We loved this so much, we decided to use the book as the theme for my son’s first birthday party.

4.       Bedtime Bugs by David A. Carter (1998)
This pop-up book started us on the path of having a “bedtime book” to signal lights off when we  close the last page.  The bugs play a bit, they have a bath, and then a little song. This pop-up book even has a lullabug within the book of the pop-up book!

5.       Goodnight, Thumper by Disney Bunnies (2007)
When my son started having fun pulling the flaps in Bedtime Bugs, we felt it was time to change his bedtime book.  Goodnight, Thumper, a board book (no flaps, Mommy!), has provided us hilarious moments before falling asleep.

 

  

6.       Otis Loves to Play by Loren Long (2012)

Otis is a tractor who loves playing with his farm friends -- the duck, the calf, and the horse.  Otis is a very active tractor who can zoom and even do handstands! This board book has shown us how we can extend reading into play.  My son loves playing now ring around the rosy (and falling down!).

 

 

 

7.       Touch and Feel Baby Animals by Nadeem Zaidi (2011)

A Baby Einstein book, this hard book has different textures to interest your baby.  There’s the chick’s fluffy down; the puppy’s soft, long ears; the kitten’s soft, orange fur; the turtle’s smooth, hard shell; and the hedgehog’s brown quills!  

8.       Peekaboo, Baby! by Susan Amerikaner (2009)
This is another Baby Einstein board book with flaps which we still love. It teaches the baby not only to play peek-a-book but also positional concepts – behind, underneath, in, and beside.

9.       Say Boo! By Lynda Graham-Barber (2002)

This board book is so fun! We do sounds of the cow, the owl, and the dove.  Around Halloween time, like Ben the Ghost, my son and I started to practice to say “Boo!” And like the bat in the book, I got amazed when I finally heard my son say “Boo!” in his Ben the Ghost costume.

 

 

 

10.   Chicka Chicka ABC by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault (2009)

All the letters of the alphabet clamber up the coconut tree! Will there be enough room? We’ll find out that all the alphabets fell off the coconut tree. Oh no (this is the part wherein my son puts his hands over his ears and shakes his head)!!! This board book vividly shows the letters of the alphabet both in upper and lower cases.

11.   The Real Mother Goose Board Book (1998)
This board book will develop reading endurance (on Mommy’s/Daddy’s part).  It has 15 popular nursery rhymes which include Humpty Dumpty, The Cat and the Fiddle, and The Mouse and the Clock. Try to imagine your baby asking you to read this book to him three times before going to bed.

12.   Baby Animals (2010)
I had doubts at first with this board book as the pictures looked cluttered on the pages. My son, however, loved this the moment we started reading it.  The animals are arranged alphabetically and the name of the baby the animal is identified on each page (example: A is for angelfish. A baby angelfish is called a fry.).  This is a book we can grow up with.  As my son’s attention span increases, we can move on to reading other information about these animals such as where we can find them.  As of now, we are doing the letters, the animals, and the name of their babies. 

We also enjoy the information we’re picking up from this book. Do you know that a baby monkey is called an infant and a baby vulture is called a chick?

Goodnight, Thumper by Disney Bunnies (2007)

Thumper’s Rule: If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all. 

Thumper is a rabbit (we found out much later that he came from the Disney film, “Bambi”).  Thumper does not want to sleep.   Everyone is preparing for bed – the mouse, the duckies, the chipmunk, and the squirrel. Then Thumper heard his mama calling and he knew he had to go home.  Papa told a bedtime story. Still, Thumper wouldn’t go to sleep!

Papa and Mama kissed him and Thumper at last went to sleep.

This was our bedtime reading until my son turned one year. We would read several books but our finale would always be “Thumper”. We used to read this lying down but when he became mobile at five months, he would either sit on my lap or move about while I read to him.  When Papa and Mama kiss Thumper, my son would know it was time for bed (but of course not before he got a good dose of tickling when Thumper’s sisters cry, “Thumper! We missed you!”)

You can be sure we never went out of town without bringing Thumper with us.

Ssssshhhhh.

Say Boo by Lynda Graham-Barber (2002)

Ben is a little ghost who still has to be able to say “Boo!” on the eve of Halloween. 

He went to a forest, a meadow, and a long stone bridge, to practice to say “Boo!”.  Ben would encounter an owl, a cow, and a dove who told Ben that ghosts do not say “whoo!”, “moo!”, or “coo!” and that the little ghost must say, “boo!”

My son and I have been reading together this book since he was about seven months old.  It’s a small hard book that’s perfect for little hands. 

There's also a nice little lesson at the end of the story: Practice makes the scariest “boo!”

The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (2009)

Allan Karlsson, a resident of the Old People’s Home, is about to celebrate his 100^th year birthday.  It is an event of some importance considering that the Mayor himself will be attending.  Karlsson, however, has other ideas.  He is going to absent himself from his own party.

Karlsson jumps out of his bedroom window in his slippers and his great adventure begins. Before long, he is running around with a luggage filled with 50 million cash and  involved in several reported murders.  Soon, the police is in hot pursuit.

It turns out that Karlsson is not a stranger to adventures.  In his Life-Before-The Old People’s Home, he was an explosives expert and has been in and out of the big events of the past 100 years. He had a hand in exploding the first nuclear bomb, he’s met with Stalin, Truman, Mao Tse-tung, and even with Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung! For somebody who does not care for politics, he has gotten himself enmeshed in the political infightings in Spain, Iran, and Indonesia.

The book has two threads running parallel – one thread with the 100 year-old Karlsson and his newfound friends being hounded by the police and the other thread with the much younger Karlsson going around the world, drinking tequila with Truman and crossing the Himalayas, among other things.

The book is witty, hilarious, and downright irreverent. The recounting of how Russia attempted to kidnap Albert Einstein shows Jonasson’s absolutely brilliant dry humour.

The book is also a beautiful lesson on how to traverse 100 years of living: Be ready to take in stride both setbacks and successes. Banished to spend time at the Gulag? No problem. Karlsson, however, one day, says to himself that he’s had enough of it (there's no vodka in this part of Russia!) and walks out. Similar to how he jumped out of his bedroom window the day he turned 100 years old.

I've ranked this book as no. 1 among the books I've read in the first half of 2013.