Spot’s parents take him to the beach to spend the day there. When they get to the beach, Spot wants to get a sailor hat from a stand selling beach equipment, and his father also buys him some beach toys.
Spot plays with a beach ball, builds sand castles, and buries his father in the sand.
Spot and his father later go fishing, and Spot falls in the water, but Spot is fine because he’s wearing a pool float.
Before they leave the beach, Spot also makes a new friend, another puppy!
This is just a cute book for children about the fun things that they can do at the beach.
Like other Spot books, this book is a lift-the-flap picture book. The British version of the title is Spot Goes on Holiday. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
Aria Volume 4 by Kozue Amano, 2004, English Translation 2008.
This is the fourth volume of the second part of a fascinating manga series that combines sci-fi, fantasy, and slice of life. The series takes place about 300 years in the future, when Mars has been terraformed and renamed Aqua (because of all the water on its surface). The human colonies on Aqua are designed to resemble old-fashioned cities on Earth (called Manhome here). The people of Aqua prefer a much slower pace of life than people on Manhome, and aspects of life on Aqua more closely resemble Earth’s past.
The series is divided into two parts. The first two books are the Aqua volumes and introduce Akari Mizunashi, the main character, a young girl who came to Aqua to learn to become a gondolier in the city of Neo Venezia (which resembles Venice). Female gondoliers, called Undines, give tours of the city, giving Akari plenty of time to admire the beauty of her new home and meet interesting people. The two Aqua books are the prequel to the main series, Aria. Aqua covers Akari’s arrival on the planet, her introduction to life on Aqua, and the beginning of her training. The main Aria series show Akari’s continuing training, her progression to becoming a full Undine, her evolving relationships with her friends, and as always, her delight in learning more about her new home and admiring its beauty.
The series has received some criticism for being slow and lacking danger and adventure, but that is not really the point of the series. The main purpose is to show people how to appreciate the small pleasures of life. The sci-fi and fantasy elements (the spaceships, advanced environmental controls, intelligent Martian cats, and even the occasional appearances of the legendary Cait Sith) are mainly background to the stories about the magic of friendship and simple pleasures. Each volume contains a few short stories about Akari and her friends and the little adventures they have on a daily basis and the life lessons they learn. It’s a great series for relaxing when you’re stressed out.
The stories included in this volume are:
Neverland
Alicia and Akira arrange a special, surprise trip to the beach for the trainees, a happy day that reminds Akari of Neverland. It starts out with an invitation for each of the trainees that supposedly comes from Peter Pan, inviting them to Neverland, but it turns out to be a fun day at a beach that President Aria found.
Akira wanted the day to be a day of training, but Alicia convinced her that a day of rest and relaxation would benefit the trainees more. The girls put on their swimsuits and enjoy a day of swimming.
Akari thinks that the beach and their day there really is like Neverland, and Alicia realizes that it is because of the way that Akari looks at things. Akari’s strength is the ability to enjoy the simple pleasures in life for what they are, finding the magic in daily life.
This story emphasizes the theme of the series, which is that the most important thing is to choose to be happy.
Traveling Water
Summer on Aqua is very hot, and Akari experiences her first mirages. People on Aqua sometimes call them “traveling water” because they can look like water that you can never reach. (I grew up in Arizona, and I grew up seeing that. On a straight road, the heat waves will look like distant water, waving and reflecting the scenery, but they appear to dry up or move further away as you go toward them.)
On a very hot day, Akari sets out to buy a night light chime and, oddly, seems to find herself all alone, except for President Aria. She follows President Aria, hoping that he will lead her to a place where she can cool off.
Akari finds herself at a mysterious cafe, which is nice and cool. The server gives her and President Aria ice cold milk, and Akari feels better, but the cafe is no ordinary cafe.
It turns out that the cafe is a secret hangout for cats and their king, Cait Sith. Humans do not ordinarily find their way there. They give Akari a special night light chime and urge her to go on her way …
Unless it was all just another mirage.
I love this story for its “was it all a dream” theme and for the cat-shaped chime that helps confirm that it all really happened. I also like the idea/warning that the server offers to Akari, that maybe it’s a good thing not to completely catch up to a mirage. Akari is sometimes a special guest of the magical characters that inhabit their world, going to places and seeing things that others don’t, but she can’t stay among them because her life is in the human world, and she has to let the fantasy elements slip away to return to her ordinary life that is a little less ordinary for the experiences she’s had.
Flying Fish in the Sky
Akari notices that some of the professions on Aqua relate to the four elements: water, fire, earth, and air. The Undines represent water because they spend their time rowing their gondolas, the Salamanders represent fire because they control the heat levels in the atmosphere to control the weather, and the Gnomes represent earth because they work underground to control gravity. The fourth element-based profession is Sylph, which represents air. They are flying deliverymen.
Akari helps a sylph called Woody, a flying deliveryman with a poor sense of direction, after he falls off his flying bike and loses the map he depends on in order to make his deliveries. It’s kind of a scary ride, but it’s also exciting, and Akari gets a bird’s-eye view of her city.
Woody also appears in later stories.
The Legendary Major Fairy
The trainees go to meet the founder of Aria Company, who is considered the Legendary Major Fairy, the grandmother of the younger Undines. She now lives in the countryside, and as the girls help her with some chores and enjoy other activities, Aika keeps looking for hidden tests of their skills or lessons slipped into the activities.
When hidden tests and lessons don’t seem to be in these activities, and the activities just are what they appear to be, Aika gets impatient and worries that maybe the older woman thinks that they’re hopeless and not worth teaching. She asks the Legendary Fairy, who asks them to call her “Grandma”, directly for some advice about being a great Undine, and what she tells them is both simple and yet something that is easy for people to forget.
Grandma’s advice is another repetition of the themes of the entire Aria series, but it’s worth repeating. She tells the girls to enjoy themselves in everything they do (the activities she gave them earlier were for them to enjoy, nothing more), remember that the world and life itself is full of things to enjoy, give yourself credit for your hard work, and when you encounter pain and sadness, try to turn it into something better.
The Redentore
The Undines celebrate Rendentore, a special festival of thanksgiving, with a party on a boat for all of their friends, organized by the trainees. In keeping with the tradition, the trainees invite special guests and use the opportunity to improve their hostess and entertaining skills, designing invitations and planning the meal and entertainment.
The party is a success, and one of the best parts is that the girls have brought together a group of people who otherwise would not have spent time together, except they are tied together by their roles in the lives of the girls.
This is a pleasant, slice-of-life story about the fun and wonder of a snowy day for young children.
A young boy named Peter wakes up on a winter morning to discover that it snowed during the night.
Peter hurries out into the snow, experiencing all of the fun it has to offer. He studies the footprints that he makes in the snow and uses a stick to make marks in the snow and knock snow off of tree branches. He’s still too little to join in the snowball fight that the big boys have, but he has fun making a snowman and snow angels.
The snow is so much fun that Peter makes a snowball amd put it in his pocket to save for later. Of course, the snowball in his pocket doesn’t last, and he worries that the snow outside will disappear as well, but there is even more snow the next day. He gets a friend of his to come outside and join him in the fun.
It’s a simple, sweet story about one of the simple pleasures in life and one boy’s discovery of the wonders of snow. It would make a nice, calm bedtime story for young children.
This book is also a Caldecott award winner, and it is noted for being one of the first children’s books to feature a black main character. Peter’s race is never mentioned in the text and is not directly a part of the story, but it is shown in the pictures. Really, I think that’s part of what makes the book so great; although the book was considered ground-breaking for representing minorities, it does so in a way that’s completely relatable because his story could really happen to just about any child.
This is a cute book of short stories featuring favorite Haywood characters, including Betsy and Eddie. The children spent their summer in different ways, having fun summer adventures. None of the adventures is particularly scary. Although a couple of the kids find themselves in semi-dangerous situations, everything is resolved pretty quickly, and the rest of the stories are more slice-of-life style stories about fun and funny things that the kids do or lessons they learn.
The stories are very easy to read and great for children beginning chapter books or for some light bedtime reading for younger kids.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
The stories in this book are:
Bears and Blueberries
Peter is at summer camp, and when he goes on a hike and camp-out with his camp friends, they have encounters with wildlife.
The Watermelon Party
Betsy’s father tells her that he used to have watermelon parties with his friends when he was young, and that the person who had the most watermelon seeds at the end of the party would win a prize. Betsy decides that she wants to have a party like that, but her friend Rodney learns why cheating takes all the fun out of a contest.
A Bell for Jim Dandy
Jim Dandy is a brand of ice cream that comes on a stick. When the bell on the ice cream truck is broken, Billy gets a job trying to help the driver attract customers in exchange for free ice cream. But, without a bell himself, how will he get people’s attention?
Betsy’s Property
While Betsy is visiting her aunt and uncle at their summer home by the beach, she discovers a special rock a little ways out from the shore that she likes to think of as all her own. She likes to sit out on the rock and read with her aunt’s dog, but what will she do when a sudden storm leaves her stranded?
Betsy’s Hammock Club
Betsy loves the hammock that her father bought for her, but so does every other kid in the neighborhood!
Eddie and His Hermit Crab
Anna Patricia buys a couple of hermit crabs at the beach as pets. When she gives one to Eddie, he decides that his crab will win the hermit crab race at the beach!
Eddie and His Money Sheet
Eddie sets out to make some money with sand sculptures and ends up convincing Anna Patricia to adopt a stray cat.
The Picnic
Eddie and Anna Patricia find out that her new cat actually belongs to someone else. But, they become friends with the cat’s owners, who take them out for a sailing trip and picnic. When the kids’ parents are late arriving with food for the picnic, Anna Patricia tries to let the kids into the house and discovers how different the Goldilocks story would have been if the bears had a security alarm.
An Afternoon on the Farm
Teddy and Babs visit a farm with their parents and make friends with the grandchildren of the owners, Mark and Sarah. While the children are playing at being explorers one day, they find a dead animal they’ve never seen before. When they bring it back to show their parents, they learn why you shouldn’t mess with a skunk, even a dead one. (No mention of disease, just smell, although I’d think that would be a more serious issue.)
End of Summer
It’s time for Mark and Sarah to go home after visiting their grandparents. With all of the things they have to remember to take with them and all of the things they forget, will they actually make it to the train on time?
Summer Fun by Carolyn Haywood, 1986.
The Watermelon Party
Betsy’s Hammock Club
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 