Stuart Little by E.B. White

Watching my little baby girl grow up has inspired me to read children's books. One of the novels that I recently read was the classic Stuart Little, the ageless tale of a small mouse who is born to a human family in New York. Despite his diminutive stature, Stuart proves to have an explorer's heart, as shown by his adventures sailing a toy boat and his scuffles with the house cat.

His greatest adventure, however, arises when his best friend Margalo, a little brown hen-bird, escapes from his nest. Determined to find his trusted companion, Stuart starts off on a quest to find him.

This book is very well written and wonderfully told. Like Kafka's classic novel Metamorphosis, in which a travelling salesmen wakes up one day as a bug, the reader can easily suspend disbelief and accept the fact that a tiny mouse can be born into a human family. If I had one small critique, however, is that the book ending seems a bit rushed. The final scenes do not seem like the logical consequences of the story, but rather as the quick scribbles of a tale that needed to end suddenly.

Overall, however, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to the day when I can read it to my daughter.

4 out of 5 stars

Where's Spot by Eric Hill

My baby girl is now a toddler who loves to waddle around the house. Although she can can't form sentences yet, I want her to appreciate books, so I have been borrowing some from the library for her.

Where's Spot? is a cute pop-up book for little children that allows them to "search" for Spot the dog who is hiding somewhere in the house. The book is a lot of fun, even if some of the reviews are a bit over the top. (Parent magazine said: "Spot is one of the essential experiences of childhood," which is a bit much). That being said, this is a great story that will encourage your little ones to love books.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

This masterful book is a wonderful work of art. Set in Paris in 1931, the story revolves around a 12-year-old orphan boy called Hugo Cabret, who lives in a busy railway station. After the death of his father, the boy is taken to the train station by his uncle where he works as a clock keeper. (Hugo’s mother, who is never mentioned, is assumed dead).

After his uncle disappears, little Hugo continues to live in the railway station where he maintains the station's clocks. What truly inspires him, however, is his almost obsessive work in fixing an automaton that his father, who was a fixer of clocks, discovered before his death. In order to repair the mechanical robot, Hugo steals mechanical pieces from a toy store inside the railway station, which is manned by a man named Georges.

The ensuing story is a masterpiece of children’s literature. With 158 pictures and 26,159 words, Brian Selznick reveals George’s cinematic secret, the magic inside the automaton, the incredible story of young Hugo, and the friendship that develops between the boy and Isabelle, the friendly girl who lives with her godfather Georges and his wife. The combination of illustrations and written text is an aesthetic delight, which is like nothing I have ever read before. If I had to use a metaphor, I would say that this book is a literary sculpture, in which the story is told through text and images.

In a publicity letter, Selznick writes that the book is a, “531 page novel in words and pictures. Unlike most novels though, the images inside don’t just illustrate the story, they help tell it. … [T]his is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things.”

This book was so captivating that I read it in a single sitting. The illustrations are beautiful, the story magical, the writing masterful and the combination of pictures-and-text a true work of art.

5 out of 5 stars

The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

This delightful children's book is an ingenious way of teaching young people about the wonders of mathematics. In this imaginative tale, a young boy named Robert falls asleep and in his dream meets an impish, elderly man who calls himself the Number Devil. Over a series of nights (and dreams), the Number Devil teaches Robert such concepts as prime numbers, infinity, the Fibonacci numbers, pi, imaginary numbers and square roots. Along the way, Robert is introduced to such famous mathematicians as Bertrand Russell, Georg Cantor, Friedrich Gauss and Pythagoras.

Reading this book reminded me of Sophie's World, the wonderful novel by Jostein Gaarder that provides an excellent summary of the history of western philosophy. Like Gaarder (who is able to convey a wide array of ideas with a brilliant tale), Hans Magnus Enzensberger finds a way to explain a wide range of mathematical ideas to his young audience, while simultaneously entertaining them. This is a great book for any parent who wants to teach their young children math.

4 out of 5 stars