Snowman Bookmark How-To

Click Read more below for patterns and directions. (Shown above marking my page in Twelve Kinds of Ice by Ellen Bryan Obed and illustrated by Barbara McClintock, Houghton Mifflin, $16.99,  2012.)

What a Marvelous Book! Holiday Gift Guide 2010

A book may not zip when it moves, bop when it stops or whir when it stands still, like the whatsit in Tom Paxton's song The Marvelous Toy, but it can be just as wondrous.

Every year, as I prepare this list, I am amazed by how many wonderful books came out that year, and it's always hard to pick favorites. I pile up the books I'm especially fond of, then send each through a filter of sorts in my head.

I try to imagine myself as a child, picking each one up for the first time and reading it through, and I ask myself whether, like a marvelous toy, it could become my heart's delight, the kind of book I'd never forget.

In some cases, a book sneaks up on me and only after letting it sit do I realize how much I loved reading it, and in other cases, it's like the marvelous toy in the song and it pops the first time I read it.