With so many fellow bloggers pregnant or just having had babies, I figured I’d share a few of my favorites from my favorite children’s author. She’s Judy Schachner, and if you or your child love cats, dog or just reading with a funny spanish accent, you’re going to love her too.

We’re absolutely nuts over the Skippyjon Jones series. Skippyjon’s a Siamese cat who thinks he’s a Chihuahua, much to his mother’s chagrin. After Mama Junebug Jones sends Skippy to his room to “think about what it means to be Siamese”, Skippyjon dons a mask & cape (as well as his best spanish accent) and becomes ‘El Skippito Friskito - the Great Swordfighter’.

I could read this to Sydney 20 times a day and never tire of it. It’s a fun, irreverent rhyming good time. The original, Skippyjon Jones, is my favorite of the series, but there are a few others we own as well.

Skippyjon Jones in Mummy Trouble finds El Skippito daydreaming about exploring ancient Egypt with his amigos- a rouge band of Chihuahuas who go by the name of ‘Los Chimichangos’.

And in Skippyjon Jones In The Dog-House, Skippy is forced to defend his rag-tag gang of Chihuahuas against an evil Bobble-ito after being sent to his room by Mama Junebug for drawing on the walls.

Sound silly? It is. It also makes reading to your child an absolute treat… so if you’ve got ‘em (kiddos that is), or want ‘em, or just enjoy silly, fun books, you owe it to yourself to check this series out.

Oh, and if you’re a cat fan (sorry Jeanni) you really need to own The Grannyman- even if you don’t have children. It’s so sweet and so catlike that the first 5 or 10 times I read it I couldn’t help welling up. Written from the perspective of Simon, who thinks life is just about over, until late one night when his family plops something soft & fuzzy right on their old cat’s tummy. It’s a kitten and, as the family looks on, Simon sniffs to the left, then sniffs to the right and with great difficulty (and a considerable amount of patience) slowly begins to raise ‘his kitten’. Every cat lover should own this book…

So there you have it… a blogging departure for sure, but hey, I’m multifaceted. And these books completely rock in a preschool to grade-4 kinda way.

On this day..

• Berlin - 2006