On the way to the playground, my son and I came across 10 feet of plastic tubing, the remnants of someone’s irrigation project. “FREE!” a sign encouraged. I draped it around my neck and dragged it along. As my son raced his bike around the field, I embraced my armature of tubing. Dog owners looked at me expectantly until one finally approached. “What can you do with that thing?” she inquired. I realized she thought I had some special talent, like a stilt walker or a juggler. “Ahh. I can’t do anything with it, but I’m hoping my ferrets can.

My kids love this one illustrated book --no words: it starts out with a picture of red with yellow dots. The next pages shows a picture of a rooster on a window sill-- the red is his plumage. The next shows two children playing, with the rooster on the window sill in the background. The next shows a magazine, and on the cover are the two children playing with the now tiny rooster on the window sill. The next shows the magazine in the hands of a girl who is reading it. And so on, each layer giving way to the next until the story simply ends with what could easily be the next beginning.