Review #44: Oliver Finds His Way

Dad:  Guess what is coming up this week?
Lily (age 6):  Fall, Fall, Fall, Fall.  I see a tree out the window that has already changed colors.
Dad:  Are you glad or sad that Fall is here?
Gracie (age 9):  I don't want Fall to be here.  I have to do Math and it's hard.  You have to do Math in the Fall.
Isaac (age 11):  I'm happy.
Gracie:  I do want it to be cold so I can wear long sleeves again.  It's pleasant wearing long sleeves.
Lily:  I'm filled with joy because I can jump in big piles of leaves.
Dad:  Do you like raking leaves too?
Lily:  NO!  It's hard work.
Dad:  So Dad does the hard work, and you guys get to do the fun part?
Lily:  Yep.
Isaac:  Leaves are my favorite part of Fall.  I like to make a big, big pile of leaves, and I can crawl under them without anyone knowing I'm there.  But once Lily jumped on me.
Dad:  Oh, that does sound like fun.  I want to jump on you too.
Gracie:  I like eating cranberries, ham, and potatoes.
Isaac:  Oo!  Carmel Apples!
Dad:  So in honor of the first week of fall, we're looking at one of my favorite books, "Oliver Finds His Way."  It's written by Phyllis Root and illustrated by Christopher Denise.
Gracie:  It's got really, really cool pictures.
Lily:  The little bear is so cute.
Dad:  Do you remember when we reviewed "Flip, Flap, Fly"?  I told you Phyllis Root gets the best illustrators.  This is another great example.
Gracie:  The bear has such small legs.  He doesn't even have legs!  Just feet!  (Gracie begins waddling around the room)  It's hard walking like a midget...
Dad:  Alright, tell me about the book...
Isaac:  It's about a bear named Oliver.  Oliver sees this yellow leaf, and he chases it around a clumpy bush and a twisty tree.
Gracie:  It's a big, big yellow leaf that is practically the size of his head.  Oliver gets lost in the woods while he's chasing the leaf.  So then he starts to cry.  But crying doesn't help nuttin'.
Lily:  And I learned something from this book.  I learned that I shall not cry.  When you are in trouble, you have to use your head and think, think, think.
Dad:  Crying doesn't fix problems?
Lily:  No way, no, no, no.
Gracie:  Unless you are having a Who-can-cry-the-longest Contest.
Dad:  I've never heard of any such thing.
Gracie:  Well, I would certainly win.
Dad:  So how did Oliver solve his problem?
Isaac:  Oliver thinks, and he figures out what to do.
Gracie:  His idea was to communicate.
Lily:  He found his way back home by roaring.  He roared, and then his mom and dad roared back, and he found his way home.
Gracie:  He used his mouth.  And his ears.  And his pink, squishy, little brain.
Dad:  Do any of you ever remember getting lost?
Gracie:  I remember one time.  Grammy, Mommy, and I were at the store.  I was hiding in the clothes hangers.  Then I got out and they were still there.  But then I turned around -- because I took one of the shirts off the hanger, and I put it against me, and I looked in one of those mirrors, and I was like "Oooooo," and kept looking at myself.  And when I turned around they weren't there anymore.
Dad:  Vanity.  Will get you in trouble every time...
Gracie:  Momma taught me not to run around.  She taught me to stay where I am, then call for her and look for the colors she is wearing.  But that was a little difficult because we were in the clothes section.
Dad:  Christopher Denise is one of my favorite illustrators.  Do you think he goes out into the woods and looks at nature?  Or do you think he can draw trees like that out of his head?
Gracie:  To draw like that, he definitely would have to do observation.
Lily:  Oliver is little and cute.  But the mom and dad are fat so they can be snug in their fur.
Dad:  That's good for bears.  Especially if winter is coming up.
Lily:  But they have clothes and blankets.
Dad:  Yeah, so these guys aren't quite like real bears, are they?  I don't think they will necessarily hibernate.
Isaac:  The pictures are all made out of very rich colors like browns, yellow, reds.  Mostly orangey-reds and greens.
Gracie:  I think he uses pastel.
Dad:  Let's see if the book tells us...  Um...  Yep, it says that the illustrations were done in pastels and charcoal.
Gracie:  Yea!  Let's use pastels to do our pictures today!  WOO!  Yes!  Let's do it!
Isaac:  I love using pastels.
Gracie:  Let's go do it!  WOO!  We're using pastels, baby!

Oliver, by Gracie

Oliver and friend playing baseball, by Lily

Oliver in the woods, by Isaac

Author: Phyllis Root
Illustrator: Christopher Denise
Published, 2002: Candlewick Press
Like it?  Find it

Review #43: The Hiccupotamus

"The Hiccupotamus" was my first book and was released by a teeny, tiny publisher in 2005.  The book itself sold great, but the publisher went out of business the following year.  Fast-forward to September 2009, and "The Hiccupotamus" is now being re-released by Marshall Cavendish!  Hooray!  To celebrate, Bookie Woogie is kicking off the Hiccupotamus '09 Blog Tour with a review...


Lily (age 6):  The Hiccupotamus by Aaron Zenz my Daddy.
Gracie (age 9):  We have a special guest here again!  Woohoo!
Dad:  I'm wondering if we are even capable of reviewing The Hiccupotamus because we know it so well.
Isaac (age 10):  Gracie has memorized the whole book.
Gracie:  I can quote it.
Dad:  When you were little Gracie, I had to tell you not to beat me to my sound effects when we went to library readings.
Gracie:  Now I tell everybody everywhere about it.
Dad:  Gracie is my publicist.
Gracie:  At the post office I talk their heads off.
Dad:  So much of our life revolves around this book.  Can we even review it?  I mean, it would be like trying to review... trying to review Lily.  The Hiccupotamus is practically like a member of our family, isn't it.
Gracie:  Yes.
Dad:  Are we too close to it?
Gracie:  Marry me, book!
Dad:  You can't marry a family member.  Or purple hippos.
Gracie:  Why not?
Dad:  Alright, we'll give this review a shot.  Who wants to describe the book?
Lily:  The Hiccupotamus has the hiccups.  And Daddy, you do drawing stuff and then you have a puppet that looks like the Hiccupotamus and he always makes you spill drinks on yourself!
Dad:  You're talking about when I do school and library visits...
Lily:  Yes.  Yes.
Dad:  But tell people about the story itself first.  The book.
Gracie:  The book is about a hippo that has the hiccups, obviously.  And it's got very bright colors.  And the hippopotamus is easy to draw -- he's practically made out of ovals.  Just ovals!
Dad:  Now you've slipped into giving my Author Visits talk, haven't you...
Gracie:  Yep.
Isaac:  Throughout the story the hippo keeps getting into trouble after trouble after trouble.  Because he's a hippo.  And he shakes the ground when he hiccups and falls.
Gracie:  He always makes something bad happen.
Isaac:  He gets in the way.
Lily:  He went by an elephant, and he tried to say hello, but he hiccupped.  And the elephant got splattered with the frosting from her cupcakes and cake.
Gracie:  He always makes a mess when he gets the hiccups.
Lily:  And then the hippo went by the centipede that was pouring cement.  And they got splattered with the cement.
Isaac:  He hiccups, and he jumps, and he falls, and he makes everyone trip.
Lily:  And then they went by a rhinoceros, and they got all tied up with dental floss, except for the hippopotamus.  The dental floss twirled and spinned and tied them all up when he hiccupped.
Isaac:  So then all the animals try to cure the hiccups.  They get all these how-to-cure-the-hiccups books.  And there's all these different cures.
Gracie:  They did this crazy stuff like spinning him in licorice and tying him to a buffalo.
Lily:  He blowed into a paper bag.  And they scared him.  And they spun him lots and lots of times, but he kept hic'ing and hic'ing and hic'ing.
Dad:  So, did the story eventually have a happy ending?
Isaac:  Yes.  No.  Sort-of-ish.  Happy for the hippo!
Dad:  People will have to read and see.  And what's at the very end of the book?
Isaac:  At the end of the book are "Cast Bios."  Those are funny!  You've got to read them.  I haven't memorized that part yet.
Gracie:  It tells about the characters.
Dad:  All the characters are just actors.
Gracie:  Like the buffalo -- he is really just a ground squirrel in makeup.
Isaac:  That was a lot of makeup on the ground squirrel.  And he had to stay 14 hours in the makeup chair to get ready!
Dad:  It's kind of an accident that the "Cast Bios" were in this book at all.  The original publisher - not the new publisher - the original publisher wanted me to cut the book down from 32 pages to 24 pages.  Then after I chopped out a whole bunch of the story and created all the illustrations they said, "Um... actually we we changed our mind and want it 32 pages."  Now I had to figure out how to stretch it 8 pages longer, this time without changing the story -- because all the pictures were already finished.  So one of the things I did to help stretch it was to add the "Cast Bio" page at the end of the book.
Isaac:  It's so funny!
Dad:  I was just trying to find ways to fill up more pages.  And now that's everyone's favorite part!
Isaac:  It's my favorite part.  The new publisher almost took out the Bios.
Dad:  They did take them out.  But we convinced them to put them back in, didn't we.
Gracie:  Yea!  Bi-os!  Bi-os!  We love you!  Bi-os!
Dad:  Does anyone actually remember me working on this book?  Let me try to figure out how old you were...  I would have started illustrating this in 2004, five years ago, so you would have been 5, Isaac!
Isaac:  I remember posing for this page.
Dad:  Yeah, you posed for the elephant when he spun the hippo around with licorice.  So you remember that?
Isaac:  I remember it.  I used your belt.  I had to hook your belt to the doorknob and pretend like I was pulling it.
Dad:  I have a story you probably don't remember...  One day, I went up to my room to work on The Hiccupotamus.  I had this lovely preliminary pencil sketch of the hippo in my sketchbook.  I looked down, and he had bright - florescent - orange - nostrils.
Isaac:  Ha ha ha!
Dad:  Somebody had snuck into my room...
Gracie:  Ha ha! Ha ha!
Dad: ...and colored his nose-holes bright, florescent orange!
Gracie:  HA HA HA HA HA HAHA!
Dad:  Lily was a one-year-old, so it wasn't her.  And Isaac didn't do those kind of things.  So guess who it was?
Gracie:  It was me!
Dad:  I freaked out - but I didn't freak out in front of you.  I needed you to talk, so I was very calm.  I wanted to make sure you hadn't colored on anything else that I didn't know about.  So I called you up to my room and showed you the sketch and asked, "Did you color on anything else?"  And Gracie showed me another picture...
Isaac:  Oh no!
Dad:  That first one was just in the sketchbook.  But you had also colored bright orange all over the twisty purple tree trunk on an actual final illustration.
Isaac:  Oh no.
Dad:  I was able to cover it up pretty well, so I didn't have to start over.  And fortunately those were the only two things you colored on.  You can still see the one in my sketchbook.  If you look -- he's got orange nostrils.
Gracie:  Sweet!
Dad:  But I was very upset, and I said sternly, "Gracie. You do not come in here and color on Daddy's pictures.  Why did you do that?"  And you said in a tiny little 4-year-old voice, "I just wanted to be like you, Daddy."  ...So do you think I was still upset after you said that?
Gracie:  Nope!
Dad:  It melted my little heart into a puddle.  And I gave you a big hug and kiss and said, "Okay.  But don't do it again."
Gracie:  Hee hee!  I love you Daddy.
Dad:  Aww - I love you too!  (Kiss!)  I bet you don't remember any of that, do you.
Gracie:  No.  I only remember that you hung dental floss in your room.
Dad:  You just remember that because it's still there.  To see what a dental floss container might look like hanging from a tree, I hung some from a nail in my ceiling.  And I've left it hanging there still 5 years later.
Gracie:  Would it still be okay to use it?
Dad:  Does anyone know where the idea for the book came from?
Gracie:  I think this is how you thought of it: You were walking around thinking of books and then all of a sudden you thought in your crazy artist mind, "What in the world would it be like for a hippo to have the hiccups?"  And then you made it into a book.
Dad:  What about the poem that tells the story...
Gracie:  It's got a lot of fun words like "yellowphant" and "cementipede" and "criss-crosserous."  Really, really fun words.
Dad:  How did I make the pictures?
Gracie:  Colored pencils.
Dad:  Do you like to use colored pencils?
Kids:  YEAH!
Gracie:  Colored pencils rock.
Lily:  Because they are colorful.  And they are pencils.
Dad:  That is a good description of colored pencils.
Lily:  They are better than markers.
Gracie:  The book has very bright colors.  Not very realistic though.  The elephant is yellow.  The hippo is purple and pink.  The centipede is red and pink.  And the rhinoceros is orange.  But I like it that way.
Isaac:  I remember that you hated drawing the centipede because it had so many legs.  It drove you nuts.
Dad:  I never knew where to put all the legs or which way they should be pointing.  It was the hardest part about making the book.
Isaac:  Did it haunt your dreams?
Dad:  When I was done I said I was never drawing another centipede ever again.
Isaac:  But you do!
Dad:  Yep, when I sign books, sometimes I draw a little centipede in there.
Isaac:  But you only put like three or four of his arms.
Dad:  I kind of let him fade off before it gets to the legs.  I don't mind drawing his face though...
Lily:  I have a question to ask you!  How many colors are in this book?
Dad:  Good question.  I don't know how many colors.  But I do know the number of pencils I used.  From a great big tall pencil that went down to a little bitty stub, I used up 119 entire pencils.
Isaac:  Oh for the love.
Lily:  I'm glad I asked that question!
Isaac:  How many purples did you use?
Dad:  For that I don't know the total number of pencils.  But for each color in the book, I usually used 3 different shades.  I start with a middle tone.  Then I'll do the shadows with a darker color and the highlights with white.  Like here: a middle red first, dark red for shadows, and white for highlights.  And the elephant: a middle yellow first, darker orange for shadows, and white for highlights.
Isaac:  You never use black?
Dad:  Nope.  I never shade with black.  The only black in this whole book is the pupils in the eyeballs.
Isaac:  I never knew that.
Lily:  Are there any secrets in this book?
Dad:  Wow, no one has ever asked me that.  Hmmm... let me think.  In the Cast Bios, I named some of the characters after your friends.  Like Katie McMurphy is named after Gracie's best friend Katie.  And Samu Ti is after Isaac's best friend Sammy.  I bet Sam didn't even know that, did he?
Isaac:  I didn't even know that.
Gracie:  This picture is really funny - the elephant has an octopus on her head.
Dad:  That's my favorite picture.
Isaac:  YES!  Me too.  The whole page.  I like this little centipede dude holding the mask.
Dad:  This page was tricky.  I had to figure out how to illustrate a character behind glass... and a character behind glass underwater... and also water splashing.  All three things I had never done before.  And all with colored pencil.
Isaac:  The animals stuck the hippo in a fish tub.
Dad:  Fish tub?
Isaac:  Uhhh...
Dad:  Aquarium?
Isaac:  Aquarium!
Dad:  I like "fish tub" better...
Isaac:  And that's when one of the stunt doubles had to step in.  Because the guy who was playing the Hiccupotamus is scared of fish.
Dad: ...information from the Cast Bios.
Isaac:  I think he saw "Jaws" and now he's terrified of fish.
Dad:  What's your favorite picture Gracie?
Gracie:  It's got lots and lots of bright colors.  It's the picture of when the hippo hics, and all the floss goes everywhere.  It's got the angry centipede and the angry rhinoceros all tied up, and then the hippo is down there like he's scared.  They are all looking at him with evil glares.
Dad:  Poor little guy.  So, is the hippo bad?
Gracie:  Noooo...
Dad:  Does he try to cause trouble?
Gracie:  Nooooooo....
Dad:  He can't help it, can he?
Isaac:  He just wanted to say hello.
Gracie: (tears coming to her eyes)  Now you're going to make me cry!  (tears falling)  I'm very sensitive!
Dad:  Don't cry.  He's just acting, remember?  He's an actor.  Actually... he's not even an actor.
Isaac:  He's flat!
Dad:  He's flat on paper.  Uh-oh, hopefully that doesn't make you cry too.  Does he seem like a real guy?
Gracie:  He's a cutie...
Dad:  He is a cutie.  He's a cute little member of our family, isn't he.  And I like that picture too, Gracie.  It's one of the few places you see all four characters all in one image.  Alright, is there anything else anyone wants to say before we quit?
Isaac:  Oh yeah, the book is coming out again on September something...
Gracie:  Special edition!
Dad:  This month -- pretty soon!  Bookstores all over the land...
Lily:  Yea!
Gracie:  People should get this book.  You made it!
Dad:  Then you guys can eat.
Gracie:  Yea!
Isaac:  What do you mean?
Dad:  If we get money, then we can buy food.
Gracie:  Our lives depend on it!
Dad:  Such drama.  Let's close with this: Who's your favorite character.
Gracie:  The rhino.  Because he's orange.
Dad:  That's why?  So if I would have made the elephant orange, would the elephant have been your favorite?
Gracie:  Yes.
Dad:  Actually I did almost make the elephant orange.  The whole time I was working on the dummy, I was envisioning an orange elephant.
Lily:  I like the elephant best.  Because it's a girl.  And I have another reason.  It's yellow and yellow is the color of a duck.
Isaac:  Mine is the centipede.  I just really like him.
Dad:  My favorite is probably the hippo.  He's the star.  Hey, between the lot of us, we have the four main characters covered!

colorful hippos, by Lilycast of characters, by Gracieground squirrel in his makeup chair getting ready to play the part of the buffalo, by Isaac

Author/Illustrator:  Aaron Zenz
Re-released, 2009:  Marshall Cavendish
Like it?  Please find it!


A host of wonderful blogs are kindly highlighting "The Hiccupotamus" over the next nine days for the Hiccupotamus '09 Blog Tour!  I'm so very thankful for the time these folks have put into crafting their posts!  I encourage you to visit them and leave nice thoughtful comments.  Here's a list of stops on the tour:

Monday Sept 7:  right here at Bookie Woogie
Tuesday Sept 8:  Fuse #8
Wednesday Sept 9:  Five Minutes for Books
Thursday Sept 10:  Mother Reader
Friday Sept 11:  Reading to Know
Saturday Sept 12:  Book Scoops: (here and here)
Sunday Sept 13:  7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Monday Sept 14:  Jumping the Candlestick
Tuesday Sept 15:  Thing 1 and Thing 2: (here and here)

And for anyone who is interested, here are some older reviews and interviews from the first release of "The Hiccupotamus":  The Just One More Book Podcast,  Writing For Kids: Part 1 and Part 2,  The Kacey Kowars Show,  Jo's Journal,  Kids Lit


Also, The Hiccupotamus has a fan page on Facebook now too, for any Facebookers out there!


And how about a Giveaway?  To celebrate the return of "The Hiccupotamus," and to thank our Bookie Woogie readers, we're giving away a prize pack consisting of all 10 books I've had the pleasure of working on thus far.  Yep, all 10!  The prize pack includes:

The Hiccupotamus
Nugget on the Flight Deck
Nascar ABCs
Nascar 123s
Howie Wants to Play
Howie Goes Shopping
Howie's Tea Party
Howie Finds a Hug
Autumn's First Leaf
Beware the Tickle Monster
 
That's a value of $93!  And I'd be happy to sign them too, which raises the value to, oh lands, at least $94...
 
To enter, simply leave a comment below!  We'll keep going until September 20, the book's official release date.  Good luck!  Spread the word!

Review #42: Anne of Green Gables

Dad:  What book did we finish reading the other day?
Lily (age 6):  Anne of Green Gables!
Dad:  Can you tell me how Anne came to live at Green Gables?
Gracie (age 9):  Matthew and Marilla wanted to adopt a little boy.
Lily:  Anne was supposed to be a boy, but things got mixed up and someone brought a girl from the orphanage instead.
Isaac (age 10):  When Matthew came to pick up the person he thought was a boy, Matthew couldn't figure out what was going on.  The train had come a while ago, and there was no boy waiting there.  Only a girl.
Gracie:  Matthew doesn't usually talk to girls.  In the book it says, Matthew had to walk up to a girl and demand of her why she wasn't a boy!  Matthew is not good at talking to girls at all.
Isaac:  That would be impossible for him.
Gracie:  So he just took her!
Isaac:  He took her all the way back home from the train station.
Gracie:  He was planning to just let Marilla take care of it at home.
Lily:  They were going to give her back.
Gracie:  On the trip home Anne started talking way too much.  But it made Matthew like her, and he wanted to keep her.
Dad:  Let's talk about the characters one by one.  Tell me more about Matthew...
Gracie:  Matthew and Anne are kindred spirits.
Isaac:  Matthew always starts his sentences with "Well now..."  And he's very, very, very, very shy.  Matthew doesn't talk much at all.
Lily:  He is quiet.  And he is nice.  And he is a grown man.
Isaac:  Also he's a farmer.
Gracie:  Matthew loves to work.  There's this one part in the book that says, to tell Matthew not to work was like to tell Matthew not to breathe.
Isaac:  And Matthew is nervous when he goes by girls, except his sister Marilla.
Gracie:  He can NOT talk to girls.  One time he went to the store to buy a dress with puffed sleeves for Anne, but then he found out that a girl worked at the store.  He got all shy, so instead he asked for a gardening rake -- in the middle of winter!  Then he asked for hayseed -- in the middle of winter.  Then he asked for 20 pounds of brown sugar!  And Marilla barely ever uses brown sugar.  20 pounds!
Dad:  Isaac, would you be embarrassed to buy a dress for someone?
Isaac:  No.  But if the dress was for me, then yes.
Dad:  Alright, tell me some more about Marilla...
Isaac:  She is the opposite of Matthew.  Matthew is always doing this nice, nice stuff for Anne.  Like getting her anything she wants, and Marilla is horrified.  She doesn't want Anne to have stuff she doesn't need.  She doesn't want to spoil her.
Gracie:  She just wants Anne to grow up to be a proper lady.
Lily:  Marilla is grumpy because she is old.
Gracie:  Marilla never gives compliments.  Like in one part of the book, Anne did something really good and important, and everyone was giving her compliments, but Marilla just said, well I guess you did okay Anne.
Dad:  Tell me about Mrs. Lynde...
Isaac:  She always says, "That's what."  And she's always horrified at Anne.
Gracie:  She always has to know everything that's going on.  Like at the beginning of the book Mrs. Lynde sees Matthew in a tuxedo driving a golf cart...
Isaac:  A golf cart!?!
Dad:  In a suit driving a buggy...
Gracie:  Yeah, whatever.  So Mrs. Lynde runs over to Marilla's house and says, what's going on?  And one time Mrs. Lynde said Anne was skinny and her red hair was horrid.  So Anne said, you waddle like a penguin!  Then Anne apologized and said, what you said about me was true. And even though it hurt my feelings, I had no right to say what I said about you, even though that was true as well.
Dad:  Who wants to tell me something about Gilbert Blythe?
Gracie:  Gilbert Blythe is a boy who was always picking on the girls.
Lily:  He called Anne "Carrots," so Anne whacked Gilbert Blythe with the chalkboard until it broke!
Gracie:  Then she was never friends with him until the end of the book because Anne has red hair and she hates it.  She's very sensitive about the way she looks.
Dad:  Tell me about Diana.
Isaac:  She's Anne's best friend.
Gracie:  Diana is Anne's bosom friend.  One time Anne accidentally sent Diana drunk.  And then she wasn't allowed to talk to her or speak to her or even sit by her.  And they were so sad.
Dad:  Alright, so tell me about Anne.  What kind of girl is she?
Isaac:  Very imaginative.
Gracie:  She's got probably the biggest imagination in the land.
Isaac:  She names every single place and tree.
Gracie:  And she wanted to sleep in a wild cherry tree.
Lily:  She's a happy girl.  Ha ha ha.
Gracie:  And dramatic!  And romantic!
Isaac:  Anne doesn't stop talking for hours.  She was always using these huge words.  And she said people laughed at her because she was too young to be using these words.
Gracie:  When she was young she was like, Oh I will be so overjoyed when I am old enough to use big words and not have people laugh at me.  But then when she got old enough to do that, she never used her big words anymore.
Dad:  Anne finds herself in trouble quite a bit, doesn't she?
Gracie:  She makes mistakes a lot.  But she learns from them.  She learns from every one.  Once the kids were all daring each other, and Josie Pye dared Anne to walk on the roof ridge.  So she did it, and then she fell off and sprained her ankle.  And one time she bought some hair dye to turn her hair raven-black.  But instead it turned it green.  I think now there must be a color called "raven-green" because of Anne.
Dad:  There are so many funny scenes in this book.  Everyone pick just one.  What is your favorite scene?
Lily:  When Matthew bought the 20 pounds of brown sugar!  Because he was embarrassed to get a puffed-sleeve dress for Anne!
Isaac:  My favorite is when Anne accidentally made Diana go drunk.  Dianna was going to come over for tea and Marilla said there was some raspberry cordial in the cupboard.  But Anne got the wrong thing out, and Dianna drank three cups of it and said, I don't feel so good.  And as soon as Dianna's mom smelled Dianna's breath, she was furious and went crazy, angry, madness on Anne.
Gracie:  This is my favorite funny part.  Anne told about a time when she...  well, this is how her story goes:  Once I made some jello -- no, pudding -- and I forgot to put tinfoil on the top.  And when I went to go get it, there was a dead rat floating in it.  I picked the rat out with a spoon, but I forgot to throw the pudding out to the pigs.  Then these really fancy people came to have tea.  Marilla brought out the pudding and I said 'Stop!  Don't eat that pudding!  There was a dead rat swimming in it!'  Marilla was mortified.  And probably flabbergasted.
Dad:  There are lots more Anne books.  Do you think Anne will still be her same old self even when she grows up?
Gracie:  I hope so.

Anne stumbles off the roof, by Gracie

Diana and Anne cannonball onto poor Aunt Josephine,
by Isaac

"It would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry tree
don't you think?"  by Lily

Author: L. M. Montgomery
Published, 1908
Like it? Find it