North York Central Library Blog

Hello Everyone,

I'm Not Quite Miss Rumphius and this is the blog for the Children's Department at North York Central Library. Welcome back!

Every paren't or caregiver of a young child knows about those days when nothing goes smoothly and everyone, big and small, is out of sorts with the world. Those kind of days usually involve tantrums or tears — your child's, someone else's, maybe even your own. As well, those times are often accompanied by humiliating displays of bad-day paren'ting in, say, the produce section of your local grocery store, in front of people you know.

Sure, you'll often have times that go smoothly and look something like this:

But then, when you least expect it, you'll find yourself in a situation like this:

There's no getting around it. Really.

But not to worry — you still love each other, right? And at the end of those not-so-good days, after the tears have been dried, the hurt feelings have been soothed, everyone has been fed and bathed, and no one can remember exactly what went wrong in the first place, you can always finish off with something good — something very, very good.

You can snuggle up together and look at a book.

Here's one book that I think would work well on those particular nights. It's brand new and it makes me smile every time I look at it:

Mister Bud, on the right, has a comfortable life and his own familiar routine. Things are going along very nicely until Zorro — the tough looking guy on the left — comes to live with Mister Bud, bringing along his own very different ideas of how things should be done.

Not surprisingly, the two dogs clash and behave badly. They're grumpy, bossy, stubborn, and selfish. Think of them as canine versions of any toddler who has ever missed their nap or had to face something they definitely don't like.

How Mister Bud and Zorro go from being foes to friends is all due to the work of author-illustrator Carter Goodrich. He's created characters for animated films such as Shrek and Monsters Inc. and he's clearly someone who knows how to bring characters to life on the page. Even better, he knows how to give his characters a story that suits them perfectly with an ending that's both satisfying and just plain funny.

Of course, you don't have to wait until the end of one of those days to enjoy this book. Like any good book, Say Hello to Zorro! is worth reading more than once — on great days, on bad ones and on all those other days that fall somewhere in between.

I hope you'll keep an eye out for this book and let me know what you think.

Happy reading!

Not Quite Miss Rumphius