Pop-up books

Josephine loves pop-up books and lift-the-flap books. Anything by Karen Katz is a favorite.  She is obsessed with a Strawberry Shortcake pop-up that requires the reader to sing along with some tinny tunes.  (I confess to hiding this one from her, but of course, she's already figured it out.) 

Lately her goal seems to be to muscle the flap or pop-up right out of the book, but still, these are the ones she very seriously carries to me each day to read to her over and over again.  I recently read The Crawly Caterpillar to her, and it reminded me so much of my recent pregnancies and births:

The Crawly Caterpillar

by Judith Nicholls

Underneath a droopy leaf,

something small and yellow lay.

Who was waiting in the egg,

and who just flew away?

Something wiggled, wriggled, jiggled,

then crawled out on leafy green.

It nibbled, gnawed, and guzzled,

until the leaf could not be seen!

It nibbled, gnawed, and guzzled.

It grew and grew and grew!

"I'm sleepy now," said the caterpillar.

"I know just what I must do."

She turned into a chrysalis

and hid there, dark and still.

She slept, she dreamt, she waited;

she waited there until...

Her hiding place split open.

Out she crept with folded wings!

She spread them wide and wondered,

"Just what are these fluttery things?"

She raised them high, then higher

into the summer sky,

and sang down to her garden,

"I am a butterfly!"