Amanda is spending the night with a friend, so in place of our regular bed time story, I let Kyle choose something to read to me. He chose
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, a beautifully drawn and written little book that I loved as a boy, and that I think he loves, too. It's hard to say exactly why this book appeals so much to little boys. It has all the right little-boy elements, of course, and all the classic elements of good story-telling, but so do lots of books that never amount to much. Maybe it's just that everything about Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is done so well and so concisely.
