Sunday, December 14, 2008

Let me tell you about Edwina and how she should be extinct.

I'm lucky enough to live less than 5 minutes away from a Scholastic Books warehouse. During the year, they have about three or four warehouse sales where books and other items are ridiculously marked down. (They are having one now, in fact, but I'm too poor to go and that makes me very sad.)

If you're a mom who likes to read books to her kid(s) (and if you don't, shame, shame on YOU), then you may have heard of this kid's author named Mo Willems. Mr. Mo (as I'm going to keep calling him) wrote a book about Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct.

I love Mo Willems. I think his books are fantastic both for the content and the illustrations. He's great. I picked up a copy of Edwina at one of the warehouse sales probably when Mateo was four months old and could care less about books or dinosaurs or Mr. Mo or that I can be pretty dang animated when I read out loud.

A few weeks ago, I read Edwina to Mateo. I had read it before then, many times in fact, but for whatever reason, as I've been told will happen, Mateo took a liking to Edwina and horseshoes. And when I say horseshoes, I really mean dinosaurs, but the way Mateo pronounces dinosaurs sounds just like horseshoes. It's all very complicated. Especially when one forgets that horseshoes means dinosaurs and one can't fathom why one's son is repeating horseshoes over and over.

So now every time he's going to take a nap or go to bed, he immediately starts repeating horseshoes over and over and over and over, and no matter how many times I try to suggest another book, we end up having to read Edwina. Don't get me wrong; I like Edwina. But reading it 50 bazillion times has really taking the "wow" factor out of the whole plot.

Mateo happens to have another horseshoe book, How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?, another one I bought at the warehouse sale. I never really wanted to buy him books about specific things until I knew what he was interested in, so yes, he's only got two horseshoe books at this point, and I'm only allowed to read the second one on occasion because Edwina is "it" as far as horseshoes go.

As I mentioned, I am animated when I read books to Mateo, so he now expects me to pull out all the stops when we get to certain parts in Edwina. Which means he knows the book as well as I do. Which means I can't try to trick him and skip to the end. Which means I wish Edwina was extinct. Or that Mr. Mo would make a stuffed Edwina so I could buy it and give it to Mateo, but alas, he does not, which truly is a shame because while I think it's nuts to spend a lot of money of stuffed animals, Edwina is definitely one I would buy if she was priced high.

2 comments:

Kmommy said...

Oh that sounds like an awesome book! My little D just discovered Dinosaurs, so I'm sure he would love it!

Christie said...

I love Mo Willems! And will definitely grab this book. We were just reading 'The Pigeon Wants a Puppy' the other night and apparently our reading was a little too realistic for our nearly 14-month old boy because he started to cry when the dog shows up toward the end. Then he sat patiently while we read it about six more times and he had us go over and over and over the ending until he was no longer bothered by the pup. Have you seen his potty book? It's awesome!