The Artful Parent

Lindsey from Filth Wizardry on big, messy arts and crafts

Lindsey is the relocated Brit who blogs at Filth Wizardry about the mess art making and other fun things she does with her two daughters, ages 4 and 5. She's funny to boot -- I snarfed my hot coffee, laughing at Lindsey's answers!

***Note: Readers will have a chance to win one of Lindsey’s favorite art tools at the end of this interview as well as a pair of her hand-crocheted flower hair clips.***

JEAN:  The subtitle for your blog is right up my alley—“Sharing messy art and craft fun for preschoolers, with the help of my very own filth wizards.” Can you tell us a little about yourself and your filth wizards?

LINDSEY:  I’m originally from the UK, but moved out to California in 2004, so although me and the bloke I’m affiliated with are Brits, both our daughters are American, with the full on accents to prove it! My kids are very close in age, they are four and five years old and although that was a lot of hard work when they were babies, I think these days it’s making life easier because they are sharing toys and are able to work together on the same projects easily. I am well aware that I was very lucky to get all the baby proofing and nap co-ordinating over in one burst. If our family grows in the future I know that I’m going to have to face the same issues that you are facing now with trying to ensure that Daphne is able to get into only the art supplies that are appropriate for her, whilst still keeping the rest accessible to Maia.

JEAN:  I love how open you are to messes and mayhem in the pursuit of creativity and fun learning experiences! What makes you like this? Don’t you ever think, hmm, I could set up an awesome light box for sand art OR I could keep the house clean and just pop in a DVD?

LINDSEY:  I get a lot of people telling me that it’s really good of me to let the kids get in a mess and not worry about the clean up while the art is going on, but really it’s not an altruistic thing at all. I just like making a mess too. I know I have to clean up after, but making stuff is fun and I’m a domestic failure when it comes to keeping a tidy house anyway, so why fight it. I can’t see the point of spending my time cleaning something if it’s not totally filthy, so it’s probably best that we get the house utterly destroyed on a regular basis or I’d never bring myself to clean it at all. The thought process behind all of our nonsense is usually a case of “what can I do with the kids to avoid chores and that isn’t going to cost us anything”.

Both me and my husband went from living student lives in shared houses to being married with kids and a family home almost overnight, so it’s not like we had any time to collect new furnishings that we want to keep nice and pristine. Everything is second hand or older. Regulars to our site have probably noticed by now that the wood on the kitchen table is covered in Sharpie markers, and truth be told I’ve become rather fond of it looking that way. Also we never had time to get used to not having other people’s belongings all over the place, so having toys and kid stuff and half finished artwork all around the house doesn’t bother us either. It’s better than ash trays, beer cans, last night’s take out or an unconscious stranger.

I haven’t totally banned TV in the house or anything like that. The kids do get a bit of idiot box from time to time, but it’s not in the living room, because it’s too much of a distraction to have it there as the focus of the room. A few years back I moved our TV into our bedroom, which will probably make any relationship expert freak out, but it keeps it out of the way during the day and the kids find loads of fun things to involve themselves in when the cathode ray tube of temptation isn’t right there next to them.

JEAN:  What are your family’s favorite art materials and activities?

LINDSEY:  Anything that is free or cheap that we can use our imaginations with. I guess I do have a bit of a soft spot for the low temp hot glue guns now that the kids are a bit older. Glue is so frustrating for little kids, because it never dries fast enough to make the 3D objects they want, but hot glue will stick pretty much anything in your recycling bin together in no time at all, and that’s a huge amount of creative fun whether you are five or fifty-five. Things like our Wall-e and care-a-lot would have been a gigantic pain without hot glue.

Same goes for Sharpie pens. Once the kids are old enough to get that you don’t stick them up your nose or in your ears or face paint yourself into a tiger with them, then they are very useful because they will draw on pretty much anything, from plastic to tin foil. I know neither of those things are particularly wholesome sounding, and people often expect me to extol the virtues of water colours and naturally dyed play dough, but we just go with whatever does the job really.

The best projects have to be the ones with oodles of brightly coloured sloppy paint though. The kids love that more than anything else, especially when the things they get to paint are unusual or really really big, like the junk house shanty town from a while back. I am extremely grateful for the vast amounts of cardboard that Costco doesn’t seem to mind us stealing from between it’s pallets of toilet roll too!

JEAN:  I love how you think big! So many other families (including mine) seem to be focused on arts and crafts they can do on their kitchen table, while you’re out reclaiming large chunks of wood as play blocks, building your own lightbox to use for sand art, and hanging dumbbells from your ceiling in the name of art. What gives you this drive to pursue such large scale experimentation?

LINDSEY:  I’m not really sure. It must be a combination of parts of my upbringing and then maybe being in the labs of the Physics department back in Manchester for four years. There was a lot of building apparatus involved there and that was usually on a daunting scale until you got stuck in. I really want my kids to have some hands on science fun early on, without getting bogged down in mathematics and formulae. Feed the curiosity about how things work in an environment where you can wonder about stuff without having to fulfill any academic expectations, hence the Bernoulli effect “hair dryer in a Frosties box” and the harmonograph in the garage.

JEAN:  Was your childhood like this? Did you create hanging pendulum drawing apparatuses with your parents?

LINDSEY:  Mum and dad are very creative people. Mum is very good at sewing and crochet. She used to sew a lot of clothes and toys for me and my sister when we were growing up. Dad was a civil and structural engineer before retiring. His influence on me was one of encouraging focus and problem solving. I can remember him teaching me how to draw in perspective when I was a kid. That seemed like some kind of magic until he explained it all with vanishing points.

 

Lindsey making wine with her dad when she was about 4 years old

He also made a lot of stuff around the house, usually woodwork and DIY related, which was empowering to see happen. They were really good about facilitating some of my childhood obsessions too. Like when I was about seven and became utterly absorbed in decorating paper doilies with intricate coloured patterns, mum collected all sorts of different ones for me. Last time we went back to visit, my older daughter got equally involved in the same thing, and mum still had a stash of those doilies handy from 25 years ago! Mum and dad do like things being extremely clean and tidy and really well organized though, so their house is very different to mine in that respect.

I think I realized in secondary school that other kids my age didn’t think the stuff I thought was fun was actually anywhere near as fun as I thought it was. Luckily I have a great best friend (back in the UK now) who was totally into making things with me, like river rafts and sculptures out of trash (we even collected scrap from a dismantled local railway station to make garden sculptures at her parent’s house). Having a friendship like that, where open ended creativity was a legitimate pastime, must have really reinforced it becoming part of my adult life too.

I know right now my kids require a lot of supervision with using tools and learning creative processes, and I love being a part of that, but I’m excited for when they are older and can just go have those epic, totally adult free, self directed, creative projects that ruled my tween and teenage years. It’s fun to be in the presence of these girls, who have the enthusiasm and drive to explore and play, and who don’t think it’s a silly idea to make a rocket ship out of a Costco potato box, but rather think it’s totally cool and want to do it RIGHT NOW!

JEAN:  Where do you go for inspiration? What are your favorite books and blogs?

LINDSEY:  All sorts of things can be inspirational. The kids themselves are very inspirational. They have what might seem like totally wacked out ideas, but given a bit of thinking time, they often turn out to be things that we can actually make happen, like the homemade toy car wash , the freaky kiddy scarecrow and the paper making fiasco . The cool thing about helping them to make these ideas a reality is that gradually over time their ideas get bigger as they dare to think that more might be possible. Their enthusiasm pushes you forwards to try bigger projects with them and before you know it you have a cardboard metropolis in your backyard and your mate’s kids are referring to your home as “The messy house”.

I subscribe to plenty of blogs and enjoy a lot of different websites. Some are parents that are into similar creative pastimes, some are teachers that have whole classes to attend to and some are purely selfish craft and hacker sites for me to expand my own skill set. Stupidly I didn’t take the opportunity to learn to crochet from my mum, so I’ve only recently been learning via Youtube videos because mum is so far away. I’m hoping to crochet her something decent for Christmas this year.

I like hearing what you are up to over here, because you always manage to have what seems like both creativity and a calm almost meditative environment. It feels very serene to read about your adventures in art. I also love Kami’s blog “Get your mess on”. She seems to have a similar truck load of crazy at her house as we do and it makes me happy to read about someone else who is embroiled in creative chaos and loving it. I love Teacher Tom’s attitude and many of the other progressive preschool bloggers out there too. I like Ikatbag, because LiEr is so lovely and the things she sews for her kids remind me of the types of things my mum would sew for me and my sister, also she shares our fetish for crafting with cardboard boxes.

As far as books go, I don’t really have any craft books that are aimed at kid’s stuff. Most of the art/craft books I pick up are from thrift stores and are instructional books for crafts that I want to learn myself, like basket weaving and knot work, then if the kids are interested we try and figure out a way that they can accomplish something similar. My five year old is really into knots at the moment. Paul has some old climbing rope and she’s creating these marvelous knots that look like some insane Celtic monk’s artwork.

JEAN:  Anything else you’d like to add?

LINDSEY:  Thank you for inviting me to be interviewed! It’s extremely flattering because I’m not qualified in early childhood education or anything like that. I just have a blog diary of the things we make and play at and think that it’s really cool that there are other people that find our antics interesting or useful to their own families. It’s always a highlight to my day when I find out that someone has tried something on our blog and enjoyed it.

I’d also like to say that it’s really fantastic having Paul as a partner in crime with all this stuff. He’s really into making stuff with and for the kids too. Over the last couple of years he’s got more and more into electronics and that’s added a whole extra dimension to the type of things we can make as a family. I persuaded him a while ago to start his own blog, which is called Fangletronics (Fangling and Ferkling are words that my dad uses to describe subsets of tinkering) He has a quite a few electronics and non-electronics based projects on there now. I love seeing the kids all enthused about us making things as a family and I feel pretty lucky to be with someone that’s as open to my usually batty suggestions as Paul is.

JEAN:  Thank you, Lindsey! What an amazingly fun mom you are! I'd love to channel some of your energy and attitude when it comes to creating and parenting.

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Readers who leave a comment by Friday, September 3^rd at 12midnight EST will be entered into a random drawing for one of Lindsey’s favorite art tools as well as a pair of flower hair clips that she crocheted. In her words:

I’ve talked a few times about how much I love my little Styrofoam cutter that I got from Daiso, and I’ve never seen such simple compact and cheap cutters like this anywhere else. Being able to cut out shapes to use in our projects has been very helpful, and I know that lots and lots of my readers live nowhere near a Daiso store, so the first thing I wanted to offer as a giveaway is one of those little Styrofoam cutters (of course with the C battery it uses, because you don’t always have that size handy).

I also wanted to offer something that I’d made, so seeing as I’ve mentioned my learning to crochet, I’m giving away a little pair of crochet flower hair clips. Good for kids or grown ups, and one of the few things I make that doesn’t involve hot glue ;)

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The random number generator picked #24 so Molly wins the drawing!

Awesome, awesome, awesome interview. I'm so glad I have an official title for the messes around here -- domestic failure! Seriously though, I am so excited to go and check out Lindsey's blog. Thanks to both of you.

A monsters and princesses birthday party

Maia's monsters and princesses birthday party was a blast. We held the party at a playground, as we did last year, which worked out well. The kids had plenty of room to run around and play, the weather was beautiful (lucky us), and there were three picnic tables to corral into food and craft tables.

I loved seeing the costumes! Maia started out in her purple monster costume, Gil and Nathan are both dressed as knights. Nathan's "arms" are vacuum attachments! :) There were many princesses as well, of course, and one other monster.

At one of the craft tables, I set up a "decorate your own crown" activity, with crowns cut out of poster board (using this template) and various inexpensive "jewels" to glue or stick on. The table is covered with the contractor's paper that I buy at Lowes and use as a substitute for butcher paper. It provided a clean surface to work on and also protected the table from our glue and other craft supplies.

At the other craft table, kids could design their own monsters. I bought this monster kit from Discount School Supply for the party. I don't usually go in for kits, but this one looked perfect for the party, and was very open-ended in terms of how the monsters are put together, which is important to me. 

I actually ended up cutting out extra bodies from colored poster board when I realized at the last minute that I didn't have enough to go around, but there were so many body parts included in the kit that it was fine. I threw in some googly eyes from our stash as well.

I loved seeing the kids' creations! These were made by 2-year-old Asher.

Maia changed into a princess half way through the party, as some of you predicted, and spent the rest of the time running around in the "woods" with some of the other kids

and playing in the sandbox in her fancy dress. I believe the birthday girl had fun! And hope everyone else did as well.

Thanks to Molly for taking many of these pictures!

Happy birthday, Maia!

Five years ago I held a tiny little baby in my arms, somewhat surprised that they let a clueless mother like me take her home from the birth center. Today, my baby is a big, important five year old and I'm somewhat less clueless, but still taking it moment by moment, stage by stage.

Happy birthday, darling Maia!

P.S. As you can see, I finally finished the birthday banner that I've been meaning to make since I first saw Amanda's in The Creative Family! I did the letters using freezer paper stencils, though, rather than applique. Maia's "5" shirt is appliqued.

Kid-made birthday banner

I thought I'd post a little more about our birthday party preparations. Maia wanted to make a sign that said, "Welcome to my party," so we gathered our materials last weekend, and got started. First, we unrolled a length of paper from her easel to form the base of the banner, and got started with the words.

Maia wrote the letters out on colored construction paper. I finally found some construction paper that I like, by the way. It's called Tru-Ray Sulfite construction paper and I ordered it from Discount School Supply. It's not any more expensive than other construction paper, but the paper and color quality are both better.

It was my job to cut out the letters (according to Maia), something I was happy to do while she wrote.

After all the letters were cut out, Maia decided she wanted to paint her banner first. Here she's using tempera paint and her own patented color mixing technique (actually it's a technique that's probably used by children around the world!).

Once the paint was dry, we glued the letters on.

And hung the banner up in the living room to enjoy until party time! I love how involved Maia has been in planning and preparing for her birthday party. I don't remember ever being that into my birthday when I was a kid, but Maia's been talking about her birthday all year long. She's so excited!

The purple monster costume

The purple monster costume is finally finished! And about time, too. Maia asked for it way back in May and I dawdled (and dawdled some more), partly because I had no idea how to go about making one and partly because I couldn't find much time to sew. But we picked out the fabric together (purple crushed velvet) a while back, and I sketched up a possible translation of her awesome drawing, and eventually it all came together. I was winging it the whole time, but am pretty happy with how the costume turned out.

Here's Maia's drawing for the costume, with spikes all around the body and head.

I attached the spikes (stiffened with heavyweight pellon) along the pant seams as well as along the top of the arms and around the edge of the hood. I altered a purple long-sleeve t-shirt as the top, which made it a little easier, I think, although maybe I'm fooling myself. It looks cool, anyway. And makes me want to experiment with altering more t-shirts.

The only thing that I'm not so happy with is is the hood. It needs some tweaking. I was hoping the spikes would stand up and out, away from her face, but am not sure how to make them do that. Any ideas? Maia's completely in love with the costume, though, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it!

The pants have a fold-over yoga-style waistband, which worked out really well.

Now I'm just wondering what she'll dress up as for her birthday party! A princess or a monster? Or maybe a costume change half way through?

Peace through art? The International Child Art Foundation says yes!

Ashfaq Ishaq is the director of the International Child Art Foundation, an organization that nurtures children's creativity around the world and promotes peace through art. Join me in learning more about how ICAF does this…

JEAN:  Ashfaq, will you tell us a bit about your background? What led you to your current position as head of the International Child Art Foundation?

ASHFAQ:  I started my career at the World Bank where I studied entrepreneurship development and later taught economics at George Washington University where my research was primarily on productivity and efficiency. It was not difficult connecting the dots to see the importance of creativity for economic development and growth. From this premise the significance of children's creative development arose.

At a certain age in the creative lives of children, art is perhaps the most effective means to foster imagination, ideation, and creativity. Hence our focus on children's art.  Since no national child art organization then existed in the U.S. nor an international one covering all countries, the case for founding the International Child Art Foundation became compelling.

JEAN:  According to your website, ICAF believes that children are innately creative and empathic and that the world needs creativity and empathy to survive and prosper. Can you talk about how you cultivate these qualities through art?

ASHFAQ:  The power of the arts can be employed to nurture individual creativity. Since art need not be structured, it sparks a child's imagination. So art education aimed at children's creative development can help a child overcome the socio-psychological constraints against creativity.  But creativity is morally neutral. It can take us to Mars or it can blow up our planet.  Empathy is the force (or the training) that can lead to positive creativity.  The power of the arts can be employed for the development of empathy like co-creation of art by children during the World Children's Festival (organized every four years in Washington DC by the International Child Art Foundation).

 

Philippines (Bhea Vacio, age 11)

JEAN:  I understand that ICAF aims to promote world peace through children’s art. Can you tell us a little about why you believe peace can be achieved through art? How is art so powerful that it can help the world overcome its imbalances and prejudices?

ASHFAQ:  To build peace is the most serious business in today's world.  Art can be deployed for peace-building strategically in a structured program and only when the guns (which are far more powerful than art) are silenced. Peace-through-art programs allow children to imagine peaceful coexistence and to practice it in post-conflict situations. Through art, empathy for the old or false enemy can be developed.  Only empathy can counter the poison that has trickled into young heart from grandparents, parents, and the media.  Children and young people can see that just like artworks, peace can be co-created between former enemies.

 

World mural (co-created at 1999 WCF)

JEAN:  If you were given unlimited funds –whatever you needed for your work – what would you or could you do (through children and their art) to make world peace possible?

ASHFAQ:  My experience running the charity on a shoestring budget since 1997 informs me that unlimited funds are a myth, not realistic especially in the current economic environment. If we had the support that we deserve, we could certainly expand our Healing Art programs to remediate suffering, our Peace through Art programs to end violence, our Arts Olympiad to grow imagination, and the World Children's Festival to develop global empathy. Since 1997, ICAF has touched, and perhaps transformed, the lives of at least 5 million children world over.  But there are 660 million 8- to 12-year-olds in the world and lots of hard work ahead.

 

JEAN:  I love the idea of your worldwide “Arts Olympiad” as well as the World Children’s Festival that follows. Will you tell us a bit about these and how you get children all over the world involved?

ASHFAQ:  The Arts Olympiad is launched every four years and is modeled after the Olympics, but as a free program for any child on the planet.  In the first year we develop structured lesson plans and partnerships with school and school boards and PTAs in the U.S. and with ministries of education, cultural institutions and art organizations in nearly 100 countries. The Arts Olympiad Lesson Plan is implemented in classrooms (as well as orphanages and juvenile detention centers) and each entity selects the most outstanding painting and digital art created on the Arts Olympiad theme. 

The work in the second year involves exhibitions of the art in local communities dotting the globe and selection of U.S. and international Arts Olympiad winners. 

In the third year these winners convene in Washington DC at the World Children's Festival on The National Mall, where they meet each other and develop a creative and empathic nexus for the future. We exhibit their masterpieces in a pavilion set up right across from the National Gallery of Art.

In the fourth and final year we take this exhibition to Olympic venues. We have organized three Arts Olympiads and are currently working on the fourth one.

The World Children's Festival, free and open to the public, will take place on The National Mall on June 17-19, 2011.

 

Belarus (Katia Lazar, age 8)

JEAN:  You see the artwork of children from all over the world. I would love to hear your views on how art, art education, and the approach to art varies from country to country, culture to culture. What differences and similarities do you see?

ASHFAQ:  A child’s art is a window into his heart and mind. It can be the most honest human expression. Since art and arts education is not valued in countries where science and technology are perceived as the only platforms for leaping into a prosperous future, the children in such societies have difficulty freely expressing themselves in their art.  Some do not have the basic supplies to produce a painting they would like or the software and computers required for digital art.  On the other extreme, children who live in luxury can unconsciously distort their expression if they rely too deeply on images they see on TV, in video games and movies.

 

City of our Dreams (mural by children at the 2007 WCF)

JEAN:  Thank you, Ashfaq! You’ve really taken on an enormous and noble task – cultivating children's creativity across the world and healing human relations through art. I sure wish I really had the power to grant you those "unlimited funds" for your work. Since I don't, I'm going to share your message with as many people as I can through my blog.

Friends, there are many ways you can support the work of the International Child Art Foundation, from giving a tax-deductible donation, to subscribing to the quarterly ChildArt magazine, volunteering, or (if you live in Washington, D.C.) hosting an international participant during the World Children's Festival week.

Also, it would be lovely if you would pass this interview on, so to speak. Share it with your family and friends. Link to it on your blog or through facebook or twitter. This is important work that ICAF is doing. Idealistic perhaps, but isn't all the really important work somewhat idealistic? I'm glad that Ashfaq and ICAF have the vision to see the potential for art and creativity. As art therapists know, art can heal. Perhaps it can heal our world.

Connecting children's art and creativity

Art is the native language of children and a powerful universal tool for nurturing children’s innate creativity. Research indicates that a child who is exposed to the arts acquires a special ability to think creatively, be original, discover, innovate and create intellectual property – key attributes for individual success and social prosperity in the 21^st century.

                                          – International Child Art Foundation

A stained glass sculpture & other artful ideas around the web

Maia and I made a couple of "stained glass" sculptures after school this week, following Valerie's instructions on Frugal Family Fun Blog. You know how much I love stained glass of any kind! Of course I had to try this. It was easy, fun, and mess free -- I recommend it!

Some other artful ideas from around the web that I'm in love with:

Truck painting! Check out Claires Toddler Tales to see the white jeep that a very lucky toddler got to paint. Yes -- a real jeep and real (washable) paint. What a fabulous idea! Claire will be in charge of painting her parent's white jeep before camping and off-road trips for some special "art on the move."

I also love these sculptural hats made of paper at Art for Small Hands! I think we'll try this project after school soon. Hats are always a hit around here.

I've always heard of DIY scratch boards with crayon on the bottom and black paint as the top layer (and that it was hard to scratch through the paint), but here's a version at Made by Joel with black crayon as the top layer that looks easy and fun.

And, look at these easy-to-make alphabet rocks at The Write Start. I so want to make them! Wouldn't they be fun to keep in a basket and use to play around with words and writing?

Please feel free to add your own link in the comments to an artful idea you've written about or come across recently. My plan is to have less computer time and more family time this weekend, so no more posts until Monday (but I will read comments!). Happy weekend!

Empowering our daughters through non-traditional princess books

Wow! I guess that post (rant!) about princesses hit a nerve. What a lot of great comments! Thank you. And thank you also for the reminder that this is just a phase and that many girls go through it, hopefully without ill effect.

To follow up, here is the list I've been promising you of our favorite children's picture books featuring strong and empowering princesses. We've been reading these and other non-traditional princess books ever since I posted about The Paper Bag Princess and asked for recommendations for other, similar books.

Anyway, here's the list of our favorites so far, and it looks like we may have more to add after we explore some of the books mentioned yesterday.

The Brave Little Seamstress by Mary Pope Osborne and illustrated by Giselle Potter

This one is my favorite, although it doesn't technically feature a princess. The Brave Little Seamstress starts out as just that -- a seamstress. But, full of confidence and resourcefulness, she holds her own with giants, unicorns, knights, wild boars, and a king. In the end she takes over the kingdom as queen (hence the book's spot here with the other princess books).

Princess Grace by Mary Hoffman and illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu

We love Princess Grace as well as Amazing Grace, Hoffman's first book about this imaginative and independent little girl. In this book, Grace is chosen to represent her class as a princess in a parade. As she tries to figure out what to wear, she learns about many nontraditional and empowering princesses throughout history. In the end, she chooses to dress up as an African princess (in Kente robes) rather than in the frilly fairy-tale dress she had originally imagined.

Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson and illustrated by Kevin O'Malley

Cinder Edna is just plain funny. It contrasts the highly manicured, but helpless, Cinderella, who has to wait for her fairy godmother to transform a pumpkin into a coach, with her next door neighbor, spunky and resourceful Cinder Edna, who takes the subway to the ball.

The Princess Knight by Cornelia Funke and illustrated by Kerstin Meyer

Princess Violetta is trained to ride and joust along with her older brothers. She is smaller and quieter than them, but very determined, and her skill surpasses theirs as well as that of all the knights in the kingdom. This we find out during the tournament set by her father to see who will win her hand in marriage (she enters in disguise and wins in order to avoid a marriage she doesn't want). We really like this book, as well as Cornelia's Pirate Girl!

The Apple-Pip Princess by Jane Ray

The Apple-Pip Princess is a sweet story about Serenity, the youngest of three princesses, who seeks to heal the land through hard work and a little magic. While Serenity is planting and tending fruit seeds, her older sisters are competing to impress their father by building towers to the moon and stars (and bankrupting their people in the process). I love both the story and the beautiful illustrations.

Many of you mentioned The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch yesterday. It is one of our favorites, too, and definitely a classic! After a dragon burns down the castle and carries away the prince, the princess pays him a call. She's able to outsmart the dragon (by playing to his ego) and rescue the prince who turns out to be not such a great catch after all.

Did I miss one of your favorites? What other books belong on this list?

Princesses drive me crazy!

What is it with princesses and little girls? I can understand cars and boys. Cars are all around us. Everyone uses them; they are functional, fast, exciting, and modern. I can see how anyone would be into them. But princesses? Princesses are obsolete as far as I can tell -- especially in this country where they are only perpetuated by Disney and fairy tales. It drives me crazy that so many little girls are obsessed with them because all princesses ever do are look beautiful and get saved by the prince. Talk about indoctrinating our girls early in some of our worst societal conventions! Be beautiful, skinny, nice, popular, well-dressed, with high heels (glass slippers!), and wait around for a prince to sweep you off your feet. Come on now! Is sleeping beauty really the role model we want for our daughters?

We've been avoiding the princess thing as much as possible in our house, but it's all around us and we don't live in a vacuum by any means. I also don't want to make a big deal out of it. Maia has princess-y dress up clothes and plays princess with her friends. We also have this (great!) fairy tale game and read books that feature princesses. As I struggle with my own princess aversions and prejudices (and yes, I know they're mostly just my own), I am helping her plan her 5th birthday party with a princess theme! Argh. Although I have to admit I just love that she wants a princesses and monsters party.

Maia had a great first day of kindergarten, by the way. She wore the t-shirt she decorated and was very excited to head off to school. That kid has spunk! As I think of her and the character traits I would like to help her develop, here's what comes to mind -- I want to help her be smart, loving, strong, adventurous, resourceful, creative, confident, and responsible. I can do this through the way I parent, of course, but I'd also like to make sure she has strong role models, both in real life and in the books we read.

I've had several requests for a post of our favorite books that feature powerful or unconventional princesses (we've read quite a few lately!), and will try to do that soon. I would also love recommendations for books with strong non-princess female characters. So please tell me if you know of any good ones!

How about you? What character traits do you want to foster in your children?