Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

There’s a reason Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price is still in print, despite debuting in 1947. Some books grow dated, while others simply become ‘vintage’, so to speak; Homer is the latter. I started listening to this myself, but I stopped before I was halfway through and started over, reading it aloud to my children instead.

They got a serious kick out of it.

There’s something timeless about Homer’s adventures here–the superhero who’s quite normal in real life, the competitive balls of string, even the never-ending doughnuts (which reminded more than one of us of the “Curious George” episode where he gets his zeros wrong and then tries to hide all the extra doughnuts around his apartment before the Man with the Yellow Hat comes home). McCloskey’s quiet but unmistakable humor was still completely accessible to my children–so much so that they took the (intentionally) ridiculous song from the last story, made up a tune for it, and serenaded my hubby when he got home, watching for him from the windows and bursting into song the minute he walked through the door. (He was entertainingly baffled. It’s not a song that makes any kind of sense out of context.) If you’re looking for a great read-aloud for (at the very least!) 2nd through 7th grade, this is your book; as a bonus, it should appeal equally to boys and girls.

Of all ages.