books are my favourite souvenirs

Sadie was tugging on leg this morning while I strained to make sense of the phone conversation I was having with a person for whom english was not his first language. I was quite lost until my caller said "Apple" and then it immediately clicked! My computer was fixed! It escaped the crowd of sixty thousand unhappy Thai people protesting in the Ratchaprasong shopping district, had a case/screen repair, and now it could be picked up at the location across from Chris's office, far from the mob of protesters! Do I need a better reason than that post about a book about Thailand for Feed Me Books Friday?

I picked up a copy of When I Grow Up (in Thailand) by Janice Santikarn at Asia Books yesterday. Obstensibly, this book is for Sadie – a little souvenir for my girl who is going to be too little to remember the country where she was born.

The guise of this book is that a little boy, growing up in Thailand, imagines himself in a variety of professions. What I like about this book is how it talks about the things that we see everyday - the police officers wearing their ultra-tight brown uniforms (which must be incredibly hot in the sun), the tuk-tuk drivers, the men and women who sell fruit from carts on the street, etc. I think that it will be a couple of years before Sadie gets into this book, as it's rather wordy, and the text on the back cover suggests "ages 5 – 8" but I think that she might like looking at the illustrations and even her big sister can talk about the times when we went to see traditional Thai dancers or watched mahouts do their work with elephants. I don't mind books that my kids will need to grow into one bit!

PS – check out more of this week's book reviews at The Adventure of Motherhood.