Our recent reading is Pamela Allen’s “Are your grandmother a gonna?” and “Grandpa and Thomas and the green Umbrella”. V seems never get enough of them, especially the Thomas series. Now she can pretty much recite the grandma story herself. She could say “Chuffa…chuffa…chuffa…”, then “Thoo Thoo…off they went”, which is so cute.

When we firstly got these two books, I found the pages were quite intimidating. They are full of massive animals, like gonnas, hippos, walruses, gorillas… To me they are not cutest or adorable animals at all. But they worked for a young reader’s heart. Now, they are growing on me as well. I found myself attracted to them more and more, and began to search all the interesting children’s books in the library.

Sitting in a quiet corner to spend 5 minutes reading a children’s picture book is such a relaxing thing. Have you ever tried it?

In the last two days I was in a boring training sessions at the work and I almost have gone insane. I pulled out these books to read when having a break (despite people’s strange look as if I have some intellectual disability), it worked like a wonder to me to take the stress away. I tell you it is much more effective than having a cuppa or a piece of cake. I love the colourful pictures and all whimsical shapes, colours which are far beyond normal adults’ perception towards the real world. I wish I could draw like that, or have the imagination like that.

I found V has her own preference, despite my own opinions about which book is better drawn or more suitable. She has the famous “where is the green sheep” and “A very hungry caterpillar” books pretty much since she was born. Though they are all very well known and popular, she prefers the sheep more than caterpillar, but she has never been super crazy about them. I tried some other books with her as well from time to time, she sometimes would tell me straight away “I don’t like this one”, like last night, I read her the story of “A bed of your own” (Cute Suzy Sue, a chubby little girl), she frowned her eyebrows and showed not much interest. She did remember the word “squashed” from the book though.

Now I have a new Pam Allen’s book in hand, a little challenging reading “Where’s the gold?” and the collection of Dr. Seuss’ 4 books. I love Dr. Seuss myself very much. It’s so inspiring and I think I am kind of in the transforming stage to change my drawing style to his

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind” – Dr. Seuss

I hope V would like them just as much as I do.