A real princess....

(I'm going to take some time out from the marital drama now.)

My favorite (and my best) children's author is Lauren Child. I adore her stories and illustrations!

I'll admit we first discovered her after watching the Charlie and Lola series on Disney channel. Lil Miss was about 3 at the time. We just fell in love with these two characters, especially Lola. So we hit the library and we checked out every Charlie and Lola book there was. With titles like "Whoops! But it wasn't me!" and "But I am an Alligator" and "I Can Do Anything that's Everything All on My Own" and my favorite "I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato." How could we resist? Even Little Man loves Charlie and Lola and occasionally asks for "Charlie and Lola milk."

Charlie and Lola are brother and sister. Charlie takes care of Lola a lot. She's silly and very clever. Every book (and show) starts with Charlie saying "I have this little sister Lola. She is small and very funny." Lola loves dressing up and pink milk (see above where Little Man wants Charlie and Lola milk). And best of all, they have British accents.

We've also read some books in the Clarice Bean series. These books are about an older girl and Lil Miss didn't quite identify with them yet. They are still funny.

Most of all, I love Child's fairy tales. Last night we read the Princess and the Pea. It was really great! The Prince is trying to find a "real princess." Throughout the story, it explains what a "real princess" is. A real princess is beautiful and interesting and has a "certain....something." Real Princesses don't grow on trees, they have to find you. The Princess who catches the Prince's attention lives in a tree house and goes looking at the moon at night and climbs mountains and gets stuck in rainstorms. She's polite and sensitive and kind (as all real princesses are). Oh, and real princesses do not like peas.

What really caught me about the Princess and the Pea were the illustrations. Child always does a collage-type illustration. Charlie and Lola are paper cutouts with all sorts of scrap paper in the background. Child worked with a photographer (Polly Borland) on the Princess and the Pea to create a three-dimensional world. Child used cereal boxes and picture board and painted them to create the rooms. She drew and cut out and dressed the characters in paper. She used dollhouse furniture and everything else she made (like the 12 mattress feather bed). It creates such a fun mood for the book.

Other books by Lauren Child we have read: Beware of the Storybook Wolves and Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Book.

Lauren Child is our favorite and our best!