Week 2: My Big Sister

For the first few years of my life, the world was my big sister.

It was just the two of us. The four other kids my parents would produce were years in the future, and there were no pets, no cousins, no relatives close by. Our parents chose friends for us by noting who in my sister's classes had one younger sibling; Katie was friends with Shana, so I was friends with Stevie. And actually, we shared some friends, like Reagan and Elizabeth, though we didn't share them well-- we fought over them.

We fought over everything, now that I think about it. We had a lot of similar, though not the same, toys, and we fussed and smacked each other over whose was that Barbie, that My Little Pony, that baby doll. Our parents circumvented this in the next generation: my two younger sisters, also born three years apart, received the exact same presents for every birthday and Christmas until the Christmas morning the older one broke down in tears when the younger opened a present, because we always opened youngest to oldest and that meant she always saw what her presents were before she got to open them. Nice try, Martin parents.

Big sister was my only company and therefore she was by default my best friend. I don't think I was always *her* best friend. But she had no choice but to include me in everything. Like the time we touched our poo* and proudly announced to our mom that we had done so. My mom was never a germ freak and so the frenzy of scrubbing that followed caught me slightly off guard.

The Storytime:
This one was harder than the last to put together. "Babies" is kind of a softball topic. This time, I went with a loose theme of "big sisters" but looked for books that reflected something about big sister's and my relationship. I knew this was going to outstrip my current collection, and I left myself without enough time to place holds, so off to the Main Library I went.

I already had a couple in mind:

Big Sister, Little Sister, by LeUyen Pham

This one's pretty recent and I've used it in storytime before. It's all about how the big sister can do things the little sister can't, then ends with the little sister asserting that she is best at being the little sister. Aww. It has brief, catchy text and bright, cartoony illustrations, and I thought it would go over well.

No Fighting, No Biting! by Else Holmelund Minarik, illus. Maurice Sendak

This is one Big Sister and I read often as kids. It's got great dialogue, the ever-intriguing subject of "biting," and pen and ink illustrations by Sendak that show his terrific skill with realism. It's an early reader and a little long for storytime, but I wanted to revisit it and see if maybe I could read an excerpt. I am pretty sure I tried to bite Big Sister a couple times and may have landed one or two. I remember little circles of teeth marks on skin. That's okay, she once kicked my front tooth out (it was loose).

So I went to the Children's Room of the Main Library. I tried using Goodread's mobile scanner, but it couldn't read some of the barcodes--maybe the mylar threw it off? Also, I didn't realize you have to physically save everything you add, so sadly, I created some really nice lists that were not there next time I logged in. If you want to see all the contenders for this week's storytime, check back for a link to the Goodreads list; I'll be keeping lists on Goodreads for all books used and considered for autobio storytime.

Here's what I decided on:

the aforementioned Big Sister, Little Sister, by LeUyen Pham

To Hilda, for Helping, by Margot Zemach

This is the reason I'm doing this: To Hilda, for Helping is TERRIFIC. There are three sisters, one of them is helpful, the others are not, their dad makes the helpful sister a medal, one gets intensely, diabolically jealous. Not content just to push and not share, Gladys opens her mouth and gives Hilda some major attitude:

"Someday you're going to lose that medal. In the summertime you'll take it outside and you'll drop it in the dirt. It will get dirty, and the rain will rain on it and make it rusty. People passing will step on it and kick it under a tree."

It goes on for... pages.

Interestingly, though I could not find a picture of Hilda online, I did find this one, also by Margot Zemach, which made the email rounds at my work as WTF book of the year:

George and Martha, by James MarshallBit of a curveball. I did actually put together a lovely "sisters" storytime with four titles that fit my theme and my relationship with my sister. Unfortunately, when I put them all together, at least three out of the four looked really similar. I knew I had to vary things a little more or my audience would be just sitting there daydreaming about graham crackers and juice. I went for George and Martha because a) I've used them successfully in storytimes of the past, and b) the way those two lovingly squabble totally reminded me of older sister and me as kids.

Close Your Eyes, by Kate Banks

No, I didn't just cop out and pick something cute. Big Sister had a tiger collection as a child, one I coveted ceaselessly. There were rules around which tigers I could touch and how and when. I had the most free reign with Fudge Stripes, who I was allowed to hold up high with one hand and plop into the other hand. This little guy looks like Fudge Stripes.

Roundup to come!

*I don't actually remember whose poo it was.