St. Patrick's Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting and Jan Brett

Here we are on another holiday and here is another Eve Bunting book to honor the holiday. Clearly, Eve Bunting is the holiday go-to. Holiday books are a bit touchy. Quite often, holiday books are written by popular authors, whose book is sold mostly on their name and character recognition, not on the quality content. So good holiday books are fairly scarce. Especially for such low key holidays as St. Patrick's Day.

Overall, this is a pretty cute book. Jan Brett, illustrating Ireland, is as perfectly adorable as she is in her Scandinavian books. 

Stone houses, green, and stone walls. What more do you need?

Jamie is too little to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade up Acorn Hill, or at least, that is what everyone tells him. 

Getting up early, before anyone else, Jamie decides to give it a go. Donning his dad's hat, his brother's jacket and his other brother's flute, he sets off to see what he can do. 

Saying hello to the not quite awake village and Kit Kelly's donkey.

Jamie making a fearful racket on the flute. Or at least that is what grouchy old Mrs. Mulligan says. "But what does she know?"

Half way up sweet shop

Mrs. Simms in her sweet shop. 

Jamie is quite convinced that he is the only one who really knows what is up. "Mrs. Simms was nice. But what did she know?"

Exulting on the way up Acorn

A triumphant ascent

The whole, long way up Acorn Hill

To show he was there, he leaves his bottle and flag in the middle of the podium.

After all of this exhausting accomplishing, Jamie gets home before anyone else is awake and falls asleep. 

His family thinks he must be very young indeed if he is falling back asleep so early in the morning. Much too young to march up Acorn in the parade. 

 But, as Jamie would say, What do they know? 

One Zillion Valentines by Frank Modell

I remember loving this book when I was a little kid. Reading it as an adult, I am not sure why I loved it so much. However, my kids seem to love it too, so maybe it is just a kid thing. 

I do think it is cute. It is a friendship Valentine book, rather than a romantic Valentine book. 

These two pals discuss Valentine's Day.

All the lovey-dovey stuff. Marvin says he loves Valentine's Day. 

Milton is not a huge fan of Valentine's Day because he never gets any. Marvin tells him he never gets any because he never sends any. Milton, being a typical cash poor child, says he can't send Valentine's because he doesn't have the money to buy them. 

Marvin is optimistic enough to counter any and all of Milton's pessimism. 

Marvin tells him that Valentine's don't have to be bought. They can be made. So both rush home to find Valentine making supplies. 

And they make a lot of Valentine's. 

These were some of my favorite pages as a little kid. I loved all the different kinds of hearts! I wanted to make all those different kinds of hearts. I liked that the hearts weren't Hallmark perfect. Some were wobbly and some were misshapen in parts, just like normal kid hearts. 

After all the hard artwork was done, Milton and Marvin slide a Valentine under every door on their street. 

I also loved these pages, of everyone being happy to see their Valentine heart. 

After all the Valentine's are delivered, they realized they made too many. So they sell the rest. This is, of course, an entrepreneurial kid's delight. Look at all the people, coming in droves. 

After all that selling, Milton realizes that even though they sent out loads of Valentine's, he himself is still Valentine less. So Marvin takes their hard earned cash and buys them a box of chocolate's to share together. 

Which they do to evident delight. 

Arthur's Valentine by Marc Brown

Marc Brown's Arthur is your typical.... third? fourth? grader. He is slightly unbrave and a little unsure about things, but he is game enough to keep on trying. I have never had any strong feelings about Arthur. I enjoyed the books as a kid, but never loved them.  

My cousin gave my kids a tape of Arthur being interviewed, which Gilbert loves. Having listened to it a lot, I have more of a sense of what Arthur is--a slightly pessimistic and earnest aardvark without a great sense of humor. Most of the humor in the books comes from other characters. I can relate to that actually. Especially as a kid, I felt that everyone else was funnier or thought up better comebacks than I did. And clearly other kids relate to that too. Arthur has been back burner popular for several decades now. Other books might come and go with flashier receptions of critical acclaim and award medals on the covers, but Arthur is always there, steady and faithful.

He has his own show on PBS too. My kids play Arthur games on pbskids.org a lot. 

Good ole Arthur.  

This book is about Arthur's secret admirer, who kept sending Arthur Valentine's, even though it wasn't Valentine's yet. 

This was worrying Arthur. Who was it? And how could he keep everyone from finding out about it?

Classroom Valentine's preparations.

One afternoon, after taking off his coat to play soccer, the Valentine's fly out and everyone finds out about them. Mortifying! 

Finally, Arthur gets a note telling him to come to a specific seat in the theater at a certain time. And there is Francine. Arthur tells her to close her eyes because he wants to give her a kiss. 

But just like she has always teased him, he teases her. It is a sweet sort of teasing though. 

The Valentine Bears by Eve Bunting illus by Jan Brett

Although I stand by my previous statement that Jan Brett's writing leaves a little to be desired, her illustrations are superb! This book was written before she decided to take writing into her own hands and therefore, I enjoyed it a lot more. 

Eve Bunting has written a lot of books. Close to 200 I believe. I am not in love with all of her books, which tend to be a little... dry. More informative than entertaining. Still, she has some good ones! 

This particular one is about Mr and Mrs Bear, a happily married couple.

Mrs. Bear, who in the normal course of events sleeps through Valentine's Day, is determined to wake up and celebrate with her husband. 

So she sets her alarm for Valentine's Day. 

I like her alarm clock.

She makes preparations before waking up her husband. 

I love the pictures in neutral colors with pops of red. 

This fur coat cracks me up! Why does she have such an elaborate fur coat when she is supposed to be sleeping all winter? I think she should give it to me. It looks spectacularly warm. 

Mrs. Bear unearths the honey she hid last fall

And puts a lovely collection of bugs into a serving bowl.

Then tries to decide which Valentine to give her husband.

When everything is ready, she goes to wake up her husband. He mumbles about just a few more weeks of sleep and goes back to sleep. 

Mrs. Bear is a determined bear. She goes out to get some ice cold water to wake up Mr. Bear.

Her determined face is marvelous.

Lazy Mr. Bear.

And then, just before she throws the water on him, he jumps up to surprise her. 

She gets a little damp. Which is what comes of people who try to wake up those who would prefer to sleep in. 

Some people might resent being soggy, but not bears apparently. 

They have a delightful Valentine's Day.

Mr. Bear had hid a box of chocolate covered ants for Mrs. Bear, which he hopes she will share. 

And after all the excitement of Valentine's Day, they go back to bed and sleep 'til spring.

Frosty the Snowman Comparison Malvern and Thornburgh

I am going to take a chance that everyone knows Frosty the Snowman, so I will skip the story line for these books. Ha! 

For this 1950 Little Golden Book, Annie North Bedford adapted the brand spanking new song into a story for kids, complete with pictures by Corinne Malvern. 

Corinne Malvern is an artist whose work just screams vintage-y delight. The kids are all fresh faced and rosy cheeked and the colors are bright. 

I grew up with this book on the bookshelf, so I have a particular fondness for Malvern's illustrations. 

They are sweet aren't they?

My quibble with this book is that it doesn't have the song. It yakkity yaks a story about Frosty. It is a nice story about Frosty, not too wordy and interesting to kids, but I sort of miss the song. 

The epitome of Frosty-ness. 

On the other hand, this Frosty came to life one day fifty three years later in 2003. The pictures are updated; the kids are dressed in modern clothing, their is greater diversity in the kids, and the pictures are more cartoon-ish.

While I miss the sweet Malvern illustrations, I do love straight lyric books. The kids all know Frosty as a song, so by George, they want a song. Especially Gilbert, who is a song book fanatic. 

And these pictures are rather sweet too. I love the little birdie in a stocking cap. 

Both are darling books. But for pure fun of reading (or singing), I have to say I like the 2003 version best. 

But you can bet your boots I am not getting rid of the 1950 version. Because it is totally adorable and I love it.