When we were little, my sisters and I each received a boxed set of miniature books. I had a set of four books about Laurent de Brunhoff's elephant King Babar, cleverly presented in Babar's Trunk. I've forgotten one for now, but the last was The Nutshell Library, by Maurice Sendak. It's still in print, and has turned into one of my favorite new baby gifts. Not unusually, the friend I spoke to today whose daughter is enjoying the books so much that they read them every night for two weeks straight, is perhaps 30 years old and had never heard of the set or the individual books.

If you're unfamiliar with them, I'll describe them (you can't stop me). Two are concept themed - the alphabet and the months of the year. Many authors do such things, numbers, colors, et cetera - they can be a nice seller for that author or illustrator, a good slot in a familiar and popular niche. Some can become big, bestsellers.

_Alligators all around_ is the alphabet book (All right: it has a subtitle: An alphabet book.) It's fine; the images are engaging, as Sendak line drawings usually are, and the alligators are amusing and charming. It's my least favorite of the set, and I do not remember much of the book unless I have it in my hands.

_Chicken soup with rice: a book of months_ bounces along through the year with lightly ludicrous emphasis on chicken soup with rice. Each month has a poem about eating CSWR in that month, cold or hot as the weather may be, and, if you're me or a lot of people who read it, the phrases seem to embed themselves within the psyche, occasionally releasing, as poetry, especially poetry learnt early, perhaps, little strands at odd times. "In December I will be/ a bangled, baubled Christmas tree/ with soup bowls draped all over me", for instance, or "Sipping once, sipping twice/sipping chicken soup with rice" and "In November's gusty gale I will flop my flippy tail/And spout hot soup-I'll be a whale!" The little strands have a tendency to draw me in to read the whole thing again. And to put chicken soup with rice on the shopping list, in case.

Of the last two, can I pick a favorite? It depends on the day, the moment. They are absolute treasures.

I think _Pierre: a cautionary tale in five chapters and a prologue_ was my childhood favorite. Pierre is a sulky little boy with loving, kindly parents, and Pierre, even when offered such a treat as folding the folding chair, responds only "I don't care!" Mealtime, treat time, he Does Not Care. So when his parents go out without him, because he doesn't care, and a lion comes along and asks to eat him, well. He does not care. He is eaten. But the story does not end there (five chapters! This is a TINY book!). His horrified parents rush the lion to court for judgment, where and when we find that Pierre is alive - and he has learned to care! Not only did I, as a child, love a book where a child is eaten by a lion and yet no lasting harm comes to him, the story advances a case that my mother always made. She'd point out that she was an anthropologist, which can be about observing people, but the lesson she drew and wanted us to know was to *participate*. Engage. Care. (Like Scrooge, we remember the before and the transformation best, but the fact that change and growth is possible is the story, however little we see of these improved versions of the two.)

Lastly, _One was Johnny: a counting book_, and thank you for that subtitle because that is not the part that matters to me, but yes, it is a counting book.

Johnny is a young boy who lives by himself. Unexplained, and no matter. He has a snug little cabin or hut or room, with a door and a window and table and a chair and a shelf (and a book and a rug and a lamp and a dog and bow of fruit, when I look at the cover). He's quite content. One after the other, creatures enter, at first in a sequence familiar from nursery rhymes and songs like "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly" "This is the house that Jack built", and rising, like them, to sillier and sillier conclusions. Ten creatures finally crowd the house and Johnny looks distinctly unhappy. He's unhappy enough to stand on his chair and tells them to go away. He's going to count backwards and they's better all go or he will eat them, he threatens, and they do leave, in reverse order, with a couple combinations, of their arrival. And the finale is a joyful Johnny, smiling hugely and holding his book on his head: "1 was Johnny who lived by himself/ AND LIKED IT LIKE THAT!" Johnny can count, Johnny can read, Johnny knows it's okay to want time to himself, and Johnny by golly knows how to set boundaries. It's a heck of a good lesson, and you see a dog on a sled.

If you know the books, you'll confirm or correct me. If you don't know them, I offer this introduction and hope sincerely they will become your friends, or at least enjoyable companions for twenty minutes or so. If you need to buy a baby gift, these are not the ones usually duplicated among the gift books. And they may, as I heard today, be one or two or three or four of those books a child falls in love with, and you can be the person who presented the opportunity. For the best all-round benefit, buy the set from an independent bookstore (and say hi from me).

I would call the last two most certainly life-changing books in my life - and life-changing so early that I barely think of them as such. They are part of me.

Riding a crocodile down a chicken soupy Nile,

Ann