Fiction and nonfiction

We are quite struck by the growing differences in Anselm and Eliot's 2 year old reading preferences. Books that Anselm took one pass through and then politely declined to ever read again are now regulars-- Madeline, Olivia, Too Loud Lily. At this age, he enjoyed the usual catalogues of planes, trucks and fire rescue situations and poring over the Dinosaur Encyclopedia. Eliot has little patience for books where the characters have no names, or worse, fail to appear, and she doesn't like tense situations, so even Anselm's much loved Peter Rabbit is currently on the Do Not Read list. Thus the genius of books like Fireman Small, which both of them read very thoroughly. It's odd to us, since Anselm was quite a scaredy cat and also not much of a vehicles boy overall.

These days, he is still deep in the Adventure books. There's always another one!