Scholastic Book Fair Blizzard

I helped set up the Scholastic Book Fair at Leo's school this morning.  This is the third year I've volunteered to work the fair, and I think it's the best one yet.  There are a lot of good books in the cases (Clementine, available in paperback, and The Talented Clementine are in there), and not as much non-book merchandise cluttering things up as there has been in the past.  I'm still a little uncomfortable with the way the books are marketed to students:  last year, they watched a video about some of the featured books; and each class visits the book fair twice, once to write a wish list and once to shop.  But the kids (not just mine) are obviously excited about it, and so are the parents.  It's a great event for the school.

This year's theme is Book Fair Blizzard, so there are two tables of snowy-looking books on display (Jan Brett's The Three Snow Bears and Susan Jeffers's The Snow Queen are there).  I like snow books, so I'll be sure to check those out.  My new book, however (yes, I got a book already; I paid myself for setting up at the fair) didn't come from the snow tables:  it's a nice paperback edition of Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (I'm probably the last person to read this book, I know), with the original cover art by Tim Zeltner.  Sure enough, I think that's snow.

Fox and geese

Leo is learning to play Song of the Wind on his 1/8 size violin.  I like this folk song, and not only because it's not Twinkle or one of its endless variations.  Leo likes it, too.  Then his teacher (Miss Sarah) suggested that he sing along as he plays.  We didn't know the words (they're not in the Suzuki Violin School book we're using), so she sang them to us:

• Fox you chased the goose last night
• You picked the fattest one (picked the fattest one)
• Now I'm going to hunt you down and get you with my gun, gun, gun
• Now I'm going to hunt you down and get you with my gun.

Leo, who as you'll come to know is a sensitive little guy, and I must have been visibly shocked, because Miss Sarah suggested we make up our own words.  This is what we came up with:

• Then it pecked you on the nose and made you want to run, run run
• Then it pecked you on the nose and made you want to run.

Much better.  Anyway, the episode reminded me of this book:  The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night: An Old Song Illustrated by Peter Spier (Random House, 1961; it won a Caldecott Honor).  I first read it, appropriately enough, on a chilly night in New England, at my in-laws' house in Bristol, RI.  I wasn't familiar with the song (recorded by Burl Ives in 1945), but I loved Spier's lighthearted pen-and-ink (and watercolor, on alternate double page spreads) illustrations: detailed, historically accurate, funny (see the expression on the face of the terrified goose).  This is what autumn should look like.

I haven't read it to the kids on any of our visits to RI, thinking that Leo, unlike the fox, might mind the "quack-quack-quack, and the legs all dangling down-o."  I just noticed that the goose (and the duck) join the fox family in a sing-along at the end of the book, though; maybe we'll gather around the piano ourselves and sing it together tomorrow.  After we eat our turkey, of course.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Gobble, gobble, gobble.

[The Fox was also recorded by Pete Seeger on his collection of animal folk songs Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Smithsonian Folkways).  We love folk songs; I'll have to check this one out.]