Last month when I posted about my most recent trip to Montpelier, Vt., and my visit to The Flying Pig, I didn’t mention that there had been one other book-related stop on my brief Vermont tour: Linda Urban‘s house! Before spring gives way to summer and the content of my photos looks like a metereological impossibility, I want to show you where the author of A Crooked Kind of Perfect spends her (wintry) days.

Can you make out the house in the photo on the left? It’s that red thing peeking out from behind those snow piles, which were caused by (what else?) repeated snow plow trips up the driveway and shoveling trips up the sidewalk. Ah, the joys of life in New England… (Thank goodness spring has finally arrived!!)

(On a slightly related note, Linda pointed out Norma Fox Mazer‘s house to me — she lives just a couple doors down from Gareth’s mom! The world gets ever smaller…)

Linda and I had met for breakfast on the morning I snapped these photos, and our trip to her house was an impromptu one, meaning she hadn’t "tidied" before my visit and therefore did NOT want me capturing its interior in its usual state. (Though, really, I don’t think she had anything to worry about. I thought the house was extremely neat and organized by household-with-young-kids standards!). Linda did, though, allow me snap some photos of her daughter’s handiwork, which I just had to share.

On the right is the book Piglet Goes to School No. 2. (Perhaps you’ve heard of it?)

Linda has recently started putting out little premade, blank books in a basket on the kitchen table. When her kids (ages 3 and 6) come down for breakfast or in from playing outside, they pick up a book plus crayons and start filling the pages. I love this!

What I love even more, though, is the fact that kids (as we all know) notice just about everything. As anyone who has ever read aloud to a child knows, they don’t miss a beat, a page, a trick, a syllable, or, as you’ll see here, a marketing strategy.

One day, while drawing one of her many books at the kitchen table, Linda’s six year-old daugher asked Linda what she thought of the book she’d just made. Linda gave it an enthusiastic one-word review, and her daughter transcribed it on the back of the book under the heading "Prase" (a.k.a. "Praise"). She has continued to do this with (as best I could tell…) all of the books she’s created since.

There’s an example of such "prase" in the photograph on the right. The reviewer quoted here (was it Linda? her husband?) called the book "Awasome." [sic]

The "prase" on another of these books announces it to be "darling."

And who could resist the one that critics are calling "nice work"? (I wholeheartedly agree with that review!)

Want more fun bookmaking ideas? While I was searching for links for my recent Mud Pies and Other Recipes post, I came across a fantastic blog devoted to the subject of bookmaking with kids! Be sure to check it out and give its authors your "prase."