I am amazed at how creative children are and then, how creative their parents can be. Here are some tips that I have heard from creative parents:
1. The car is a MANDATORY shoe-wearing zone.
2. When my kids don't want to finish their dinner, I make them take one more bite of everything for each year they are old.
3. If you're going to have a snack while you watch tv or a movie, it has to be vegetables. (corn, lima beans, etc)
4. One thing at a time. I can't get you a cup of chocolate milk and find your favorite socks, unless your socks are in the fridge next to the milk.
5. If Mom or Dad has said no to something and you whine, the answer will still be no. But if you hold the back of your hand to your forehead (in your best impression of a damsel in distress) and say, "Alas I fear I shall perish without it!" the answer might (just might) be changed to a yes.
A book that I have heard recommended is:
THE 39 APARTMENTS OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
By Jonah Winter. Illustrated by Barry Blitt. Unpaged. Schwartz & Wade Books/Random House. $15.95. (Ages 4 to 9)
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is based on at least one fact. Dickens used facts like flavoring in his novels — “Oliver Twist” is an example (those workhouses), and so is “Bleak House.” “The 39 Apartments of Ludwig van Beethoven” is built around six facts. The rest is fiction, a “mockumentary” from the author Jonah Winter and the illustrator Barry Blitt.
We begin with the first fact: “Ludwig van Beethoven was born in the town of Bonn in the country of Germany in the year 1770.” Pictured before a window looking out on a peaceful canal, a baby in his crib cries four musical “wah”s (the famous opening of the Fifth Symphony). Then comes a cut worthy of a first-class documentarian: “Years later, he became a great composer.”
The second fact follows: “Beethoven owned five legless pianos and composed great works on the floor.” The picture shows Ludwig sitting at a piano. Around him the floor is littered with balled-up manuscripts, a fork, a quill pen, and so forth. The messy room of a young genius. Fact 3 is that Beethoven lived in 39 apartments in and around Vienna. This tale needs the fanciful turns the author and artist bring to it. Both Winter and Blitt possess, besides wonderful names, plenty of imagination. For instance, how’s this for fancy — after two centuries of research, experts are still without a clue as to how Beethoven’s pianos made it from one place to another. Did he really forget to pay the rent on his first apartment, and did he leave his second after only eight and a half days, because of the “hideous stinky cheese smell” in a bad neighborhood? Did “Fräulein Inge Hausfrau” have him evicted because she just could not handle the noise? And are there truly water stains where Beethoven poured water on his head while composing and going mad and deaf at the same time?
The book ends with a page of author’s notes. “That Beethoven composed his greatest work, the Ninth Symphony, after he had completely lost his hearing is nothing short of miraculous,” Winter writes. “That he managed to compose so much beautiful music while constantly moving his pianos in and out of different apartments may be short of miraculous — but it is something to think about.”
Blitt draws better and more distinctively than most illustrators. He is also able to draw a likeness, which most cannot do. Nevertheless, his scenes of places, people and legless pianos are much more successful than the large-headed Beethoven who dominates most pages he is on. That he always looks unhappy is not odd; no doubt he was. But the use of a blood-red wash on his hands, lower lip and cheeks is puzzling.
I do admire Blitt’s more contained Beethovens. In one, the composer stands on a balcony overlooking the Danube, his big, brooding head wreathed by musical notes. In another busy spread, the great man scribbles on paper, quill in hand, as he embraces a cello with his other arm.
The endpapers of this well-made, handsomely designed book are photographic reproductions from a handwritten manuscript with lines that have been angrily scratched out, and other lines of triumphant notation. The manuscript itself (of the “Grosse Fuge”) was found in a drawer in Pennsylvania recently — it had been missing since 1890. What it was doing in Pennsylvania, no one seems to know. Something else to think about. This book is full of things like that.
I don't think that we realize how precious each moment is. Time cannot be bought or stored. Here is something that I read awhile back and it kind of makes you think.
Life is a gift
Today before you say an unkind word - Think of someone who can't speak.
Before you complain about the taste of your food - Think of someone who has nothing to eat.
Before you complain about your husband or wife - Think of someone who's crying out to GOD for a companion.
Today before you complain about life - Think of someone who went too early to heaven
Before you complain about your children - Think of someone who does not have and desires children
Before you argue about your dirty house someone didn't clean or sweep - Think of the people who are living in the streets.
Before whining about the distance you drive Think of someone who walks the same distance with their feet.
And when you are tired and complain about your job - Think of the unemployed, the disabled, and those who wish they had your job.
But before you think of pointing the finger or condemning another - Remember that not one of us is without sin.
And when depressing thoughts seem to get you down -
Put a smile on your face and think: you're alive and still around.
Please pray for my granddaughter Hope, she will be a big sister next week and is running a temperature. Her parents are taking her to the emergency room right now.
We are expecting a Princess next Wednesday!!!
