Oh, am I ever tired of Richard Scarry.

Nate has asked me to read Cars and Trucks and Things That Go every night for the past few weeks. My personal opinion is that this book would be perfect for Nate to read to himself. He could spend hours poring over all the little details on every page. Unfortunately, he can’t read just yet. It’s driving me bonkers. I prefer books that have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Luckily, Richard Scarry books are so episodic and disjointed to begin with that Nate doesn’t usually notice when I skip a page, or ten, or half the book. Nighty night.

The good news is that he also likes some of my favorite books. My dad bought him a copy of Many Moons, which was always one of my favorites when I was young. Heck, it’s still one of my favorites. It was very important to me that he should love it too. Luckily for both of us, he does.

A while back, his preschool did a fairy-tale theme week, so I got out Volume I of Journeys Through Bookland. This is a leather-bound, ten-volume set that belonged to Sarah’s dad. These are real books; I had to impress upon Nate that they were very old and fragile, and that we both had to be extra careful.

That day’s theme was Jack and the Beanstalk, so I flipped through until I found it. Turns out that our version is just a bit darker than the one they read at school. For one thing, there were a lot more people who “got dead” in our version. It’s also about three times longer than his usual fare. We did make it through, but it’s not part of the regular rotation. We’ll come back to it soon enough.

I can’t wait.

Last night’s bedtime books:

We’ll All Go Sailing is a great colors book. Nate knows all his colors and is very proud of it.

Bunny Money is a Max & Ruby book. We’re big Rosemary Wells fans. Sarah and I collected all the Max & Ruby board books back when we were dating. I gave her Voyage to the Bunny Planet for Valentine’s Day one year.

Tonight’s bedtime books:

Are You My Mother? A classic. Nate loves the way I do the voices of the dog and the cow. This was mine when I was little.

Summer, which I mentioned in my June recap. He picked it out tonight and we got to tally up our score. We didn’t catch butterflies or lightning bugs, but we might still manage to go on a hayride before it gets too cold.