Destination Vignettes
Cape Lookout Seashore; Mount Washington Observatory; Cal Academy of Sciences
I’m traveling this week, so I was feeling inspired to share a small collection of picture books we’ve picked up at gift shops. The museum gift shop has long been one of my favorite places to book browse, and I love the way a book about an exhibit or a place you are visiting helps to extend a brief encounter.
Many summers from the time I was in 7th grade we’d go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My new, extended step-family lived nearby and we’d meet there to spend long days at the beach, eating good food, seeing the historic sites and local shipping and marine biology museums. “A Day With Don at Cape Lookout Seashore” was written ~30 years before I ever visited, but it’s a great snapshot of all the things that make this stretch of the Outer Banks really special: a preponderance of seashells and critters, wild pony islands, delicious fresh seafood, a historic lighthouse, and fantastic research institutes. It looks like the book is once again out of print, but I’m sharing it as an example of a really cool, small press publication, and I’ve recorded a read-aloud (see Instagram for that).
A Day With Don at Cape Lookout Seashore. 2007 (first published 1968) Bitsy Dudley, Doris King. Target age: PreK-Gr2 [read aloud on KidNonFic’s IG, out of print]
Last summer we spent a couple days in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where we enjoyed a great meal and interesting book browsing at the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) Pinkham Notch Visitor Center. I picked up “Haunted Hikes of New Hampshire” and a book on the AMC huts for myself, and “Cat in the Clouds” for the kids, which tells the story of a cat who lived at the nearby Mount Washington Observatory, famously one of the most inclement and windiest places in the world. Readers learn a bit about life at the observatory, and the meteorologists and many cats who have worked and lived there. Like the previous book, this one also appears to be a little hard to come by, although not unobtainable. I’ve recorded a read-aloud.
Cat in the Clouds. 2009, Eric Pinder, TBR Walsh. Target age: PreK-Gr2 [read aloud on KidNonFic’s IG, libraries, book stores]
Claude is actually a local celebrity for us – he’s an albino alligator who lives at our science museum; we’ve visited him periodically over the last 8 years. “Claude: The True Story of a White Alligator” is a picture book describing what makes Claude unique, his journey from Florida to San Francisco, and Claude’s challenges making friends. Even though our eldest kiddo is aging out of this genre, I hope to keep this book indefinitely as part of a time capsule of our littles’ earliest years.
Claude: The True Story of a White Alligator. 2020, Emma Bland Smith, Jennifer M Potter. Target age: PreK-Gr2 [author read aloud, libraries, book stores]