Saturday, April 30, 2011

A Saturday With Mez

So this morning, like most Saturdays, Bug and I packed a diaper bag filled with cloth diapers, grabbed the ring sling, filled our reusable drink cup with iced coffee and our water jug with water, grabbed a few healthy snacks and some toys, packed it all into the stroller (the bike cart was wet from the rain so it needed to dry out) and headed downtown to the library. Today it turned out that baby reading time was cancelled so instead we read and played in the toddler reading area. As Bug and I were reading various board books and toddler picture books my eyes fell on a black and white photo board book bound with hemp string. The title read "A Saturday with Mez: A Day in the Life of a Breastfeeding Toddler".
I was instantly intrigued. I plopped Bug on my lap and we began to read. I was amazed this book showed page after page of our everyday lives. It was pages full of a toddler that could have been Bug, the similarities were amazing. The pictures told the story of a baby named Mez who breastfeeds,









bike rides,









is worn in a sling,









shops at the Farmer's Market and Co-op


















It was a book about a very Green Family. The book was written and created by Lauren Serafin and Jason Rohrer. Then I started to notice that the places in the book looked awfully familiar. After looking closer I realized the book was made right here in my town. I actually realized I recognized the people in the book too. They were well known in our town around 2003-2005. They were a really nice super green family. So when we got home I looked the book up. It has gotten quite a bit of acclaim in certain circles. Sadly the family has moved to NM so I could not just go introduce myself and have a new set of greeny friends. I do think though that we need to buy a copy of this book soon. Bug and I really enjoyed this book. I saw so many parralels to our own lives in this book. This was finally a book about the kind of life that we lead, something you do not often see in children's books. Not to mention it takes place right here in our own town.

The couple/authors had this to say about the book. "Exploring the collection of "baby books" at our local library, we noticed a striking absence of any mention or depiction of breastfeeding. Our child, Mez, seemed particularly attracted to books with photographs, and we found plenty of pictures of babies eating solid foods (like chocolate, ice cream, and even orange cheese curls), but no images to which a breastfeeding baby or toddler could relate. Breastfeeding is now recommended by experts across the board, so where are the baby books that depict it? We decided to create one. The photographs for this book were shot on Saturday, September 4, 2004. To fill gaps in the narrative, extra photographs were shot on Sunday, September 5, 2004. This book was hand-assembled and bound with organic cotton in Las Cruces, NM. It is rare these days to find a children's book (or anything else for that matter) that is designed, printed, and assembled in the USA. We are very proud that we have been able to accomplish this. We can assure you that we will never outsource any of our work overseas. Saturday with Mez is an open source book. The complete source files, including high resolution image files, are available for download from the Internet Archive.This book and its source files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. As long as you give us credit for our work, you can freely redistribute unmodified copies of this book or the source files for non-commercial purposes."

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