Ramona's Picture Books This Week

Gennady Spirin's A Apple Pie is an elegant alphabet book. Yes, elegant ... the illustrations by Gennady Spirin, which accompany this traditional 17th century rhyme, are beautiful, as is all of Spirin's work.

And, not only did Ramona enjoy the detail and whimsical word choices on each page, Anne and Betsy enjoyed the beautiful script and the mini-history lesson about the alphabet. An afterword tells us that in the 17th century, "I" and "J" were used interchangeably, so there was not a separate page for "I" (although this book does include one ... "Inspect the apple pie.") This book goes on the "acquire a copy" list.

Ramona's other favorites this week:


I Loved You Before You Were Born, by Anne Bowen, is the sweet story of a grandmother who anticipates and plans for the birth of her grandchild, expressing her overwhelming love with the title phrase.




A Visit to the Zoo is a fairly typical photos-from-a-zoo book, but Ramona loves it. Anything with photos of animals? She's there. Plus, she has so much fun typing the word "zoo" into the computer at the library. So, we always search for the word "zoo" and always come home from the library with a zoo book or two or three.



Demi's Mary is an astoundingly beautiful book. But then, everything Demi illustrates is astoundingly beautiful. To see such love and care applied to a children's book about our Blessed Mother does one's heart good.