Margot: 3 Years 

Roxaboxen By Alice McLerran

The elementary school I attended as a kid backed up to a small forest preserve. The fields and playground equipment, on which we were allowed to play during recess and lunch, were bordered by what we used to call a hill, but which I would now describe as a snaking mound of dirt. Beyond the mound were the trees and swampy wetlands of the “forest” we were only allowed to enter on special occasions, like when we lived like pioneers for a week in the third grade. 

Many of my clearest childhood memories–ones that I know weren’t falsified by photographs or my parents recollections–took place on this mound of dirt. Every recess, all of the kids in my class would take up shop at one of the trees, stumps or bushes on “the hill.” We spent hours harvesting leaves, berries and sticks, mining for rock money and selling our homemade “jams” and “pies” to one another. 

I distinctly remember that a girl named Emmy was the boss of the village. She always set up shop in the best tree–one whose branches hung low to the ground and created a kind of natural tee-pee–and sometimes dictated which other business were allowed to operate and where. We all respected, admired, and oftentimes talked smack about Emmy. I look back on her now, fondly, as something of a first boss. 

Rediscovering Roxaboxen has been like rediscovering a piece of my childhood. The story follows a group of kids who spend their summers joyfully pretending to be adults. They build houses, self-organize and solve conflicts. They remind us how simple the game of life could really be, if we just stopped taking it so seriously. At the end of the book, one of the children, now grown, comes back to Roxaboxen, and her serendipitous rediscovery of a rock she once used as “currency” is such a sweet reminder that growing up doesn’t have to mean letting go.  

Max: 14 Months 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear (Slide and Find Edition) – By Eric Carle 

This has been both of my kids’ “first book.” I have, obviously, shown Max books prior to this one, but Brown Bear, Brown Bear was the first book he didn’t try to eat or throw at the dog. He is delighted by the pictures, and thrilled by the challenge of the little sliding doors. I’m also pretty sure he said “blue horse” the other day, which just about killed me.