Last night, my daughter Lakey and I walked to a neighborhood park. You may think it was because I’m a great dad who loves taking my kids to the park on hot summer evenings. That’s not really true however as I needed to get my Fitbit steps up and Lakey was so tired that if she stayed home, she would have fallen asleep at 6:00 pm and waken up at 8:00 pm and been up all night. It was strictly a tactical visit to the park.
Parks, by the way, are completely overrated in the minds of kids and I don’t know quite why. Sure, when other kids they know are there, they can invent games that keep them busy for hours, but when its just them, they’re as bored as we are. Sorry, I digress…
At this particular park, there a free little library (freelittlelibrary.org). Its a cool idea. Its a cute little box with a latched opening where people can take and leave books right there in the park. Sugarbeet Falls has been in this particular little library for a few weeks now. I assume it has been read and returned many times, because there’s no way no one has grabbed it by this point!
Lakey loves the library and we brought a book for the sole purpose of an exchange. She chose this as her new book:
Patricia Polacco has written some great kids books. “My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother” for example, is loads of fun.
Thunder Cake, specifically is a bit weird. Lakey loved it, and it was a cool story. The idea is there’s a girl who is afraid of thunder and her grandmother helps her take her mind of the impending storm by gathering ingredients and baking a cake. If they get the cake done by the time the storm actually reaches them, its a true Thunder Cake! Its a fun adventure.
Here’s my weirdness take though:
- It’s oddly wordy for a kids book, unnecessary for the story.
- The grandma tells the girl to count seconds from lightning to thunder to judge how far away the storm remains from them. That’s a solid plan of course, they’re trying to get a cake baked for goodness sake. Its strange though because she literally writes the girls saying “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10” and then “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9” and so on which is kind of boring to read anyway, but as a dad I kind of got into it with Lakey. Then oddly, it stops she skips a couple counts and then just says things like ‘I only got to 3’ and stuff. Just kinda weird.
- There’s tomatoes in the cake…c’mon don’t do that to the kids.
- The cow and chicken where they get the milk and eggs are mean. Just kinda weird.
Ultimately, if your kids want to read the book, you won’t be mad you’ll probably dig the story and maybe even help a kid get comfortable in a storm. You’ll likely just think its kinda weird. Patricia Polacco also has a ton of published books and I don’t, so what do I know.