Booknaps

I just read this article (thanks to Fuse #8 for the link) expressing the comfort and importance of something I've never been able to accomplish: the booknap. Simply put, a booknap is when you read until you fall asleep. The article states, "If you set your book or magazine aside, rolled over and slept you have not booknapped. The experience should be seamless. One moment you are reading sleepily, the next you wake up with messy hair and a strange taste in your mouth." Like I said, this is not something I have ever experienced.

I remember once hearing an aunt say that she had fallen asleep while reading, and wondering how that was possible. I just can't let go of a story (even if I've read it many times before) enough to fall asleep in the middle. Am I missing out? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Summer Sunshine Rays of Reading

The sun is shining, birds are singing, someone is jamming on a guitar in the courtyard, and I've drawn the name of our first weekly prize winner for this year's summer reading program at The Alphabet Garden! Summer is one of my favorite times to work at The Alphabet Garden; I love it when kids come in excited to write down more books, and it's always fun to call the prize winners!

The Summer Sunshine Rays of Reading program is open to all students entering grades K-12 in the fall of 2008. For each book read between June 15th and August 23rd, 2008, a sun-shaped card with the name of the child and the name of the book will be added to our store window. Each sun with equal one entry for our prizes. Come in often to report books and earn chances to win weekly prizes. Weekly prizes will be drawn each Saturday, June 21st through August 16th, and the winner of the grand prize, a $50 gift certificate to The Alphabet Garden, will be selected on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008.

Stop by soon to register!

A Babysitter for Billy Bear

We just got in A Babysitter for Billy Bear, by Miriam Moss; it is a sweet book that would be great for preparing a young child for the experience of staying home with a babysitter for the first time. Moss's gentle prose follows Billy Bear through the evening as his mother gets him ready for bed and then goes to her pottery class, leaving him with a friend. He can't sleep, and goes downstairs, telling the babysitter he is worried his mother won't be able to find her way home in the dark. She reassures him, showing him the streetlights and the moon and stars, and he goes to sleep. Nothing groundbreaking, but the story would help to get a child comfortable with the idea of going to bed without Mom.