Adele Enersen. When My Baby Dreams. New York: Blazer and Bray, 2012.  46 pages.

After Adele Enersen’s daughter Mila was born, Adele noticed that the baby slept a great deal. Adele, however, was so excited to be a mom that she posed her sleeping infant in a variety of tableaux depicting her dreams.

It’s much, much cuter than it sounds, and you know what? It works for me. Prima loves it too, and when we read it we both tell stories about just how baby Mila got to the point in the dream that’s captured in the photograph. It’s one way you can use the sparse text as a springboard to let your child tell you stories that relate to the photos. She loves to read and re-read (and re-read) When My Baby Dreams. That, alone, would give it a five-star ranking in my book.

By making creative use of clothing, blankets, and props, Enersen is able to create the illusion that her sleeping baby is a butterfly, an astronaut, a pink-caped super hero, and much more. The baby’s naturally adorable, but there’s a definite art to the way the photos are staged, and you have to admire Enersen’s creativity. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to create a realistic-looking Chinese dragon from some sheets, but seeing is believing.

In short, this is a fun, cute, book, that you will probably get just as much of a kick out of as your child. Highly recommended.

Dan Yaccarino. All the Way to America: The Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 32 pages.

Most picture books communicate simple concepts of family: a child or more, a mother and

perhaps father, and maybe a few grandparents. In All the Way to America, Dan Yaccarino goes much further, reaching back four generations to his great-grandfather Michele Iaccarino, who came to New York from Sorrento, Italy, in search of a better life. As he left the Old World, his father handed him a little shovel that he’d used as a boy with the injunction to “Work Hard.”

The shovel gets passed down from Michele (who at Ellis Island becomes Michael Yaccarino) to his son Dan, who uses it in his suburban market. He then passes the shovel on to his son Mike, who then passes it on to his son (the author), who moves back to New York City to become an illustrator. On the final page, we see the author’s children playing with the little shovel on their terrace garden.

It’s a beautiful story about a family’s journey, and about the lessons that are passed down between generations. Although each generation is different from the one before it, each works hard in its own way. Younger children will appreciate seeing how even the grandparents were once small children. You might use the book as a springboard to talking about your own family’s history (as did I) with slightly older children.

The illustrations, gouache on watercolor paper,  are gorgeous as well. This really is a fantastic book that will help you explore history with your kids; even if you’re not Italian, you will get a lot out of this book.

But if you drive far enough east on Tropicana Avenue, you’ll come to a hidden gem of outdoor, family-friendly Las Vegas: the Clark County Wetlands Park.

The Wetlands Park has two parts: the Nature Preserve and the Duck Creek Trails. Because we spent some time walking the Nature Preserve today, I’ll talk about that.

To get to the Nature Preserve, take Tropicana east…far east. Past Eastern, Pecos, the 95/93, Mountain Vista, Boulder Highway…and keep on going. Just where Tropicana turns into Rebel Road/Broadbent Boulevard, you’ll see a few (small) signs telling you to make a left for the Wetlands Park. Make a left there, and it’s very nearby on your right.

There’s a small parking lot, with more spaces on the street. Once you park, you can spend some time in the Play Zone, which isn’t quite a playground, although it has some rock-climbing walls and concrete animals to climb on. There’s also a very handy restroom, in case someone needs to make a stop before hitting the trails.

There are two sets of connected trails that weave their way throughout Wetlands Park. One is made of concrete and is ADA-compliant, so if anyone in your group is in a wheelchair, they’ll have easy access. The other group of trails is made of decomposed granite, which is less muddy than dirt, but might be slow-going for someone in a wheelchair. It isn’t appreciably much more difficult for pushing a stroller, though.

Mostly, the Wetlands Park is a place to walk around and enjoy–again, not what most people come to Vegas to do, but most people don’t bring their small kids to Vegas. One of my favorite things about the Nature Preserve is that in most of it you can’t see anything of the rest of the city (the Eastside Cannery is what disturbs the illusion most often), so it’s easy to imagine you’re exploring a desert wash anywhere in the Western U.S.

At 210 acres, you’re not going to stroll through the entire Nature Preserve in a half-hour. It’s large and varied enough that you can easily spend more than an hour there without getting bored or feeling like you’re walking in a circle. Grab a map at the trailhead and you shouldn’t have any problem navigating your way through the Preserve. Your kids will love searching for animal tracks and animals themselves. This morning we saw several cottontail rabbits, a squirrel-type thing, turtles, fish, and birds.

One note of caution: it gets very, very hot at the Preserve, so if you’re going anytime after early April, a) go early b) bring lots of water and c) put on sunscreen before you go. There is a Shade Shelter hidden in one part of the Preserve, but you’d be surprised how hot the sun feels when you’re tramping around the trails. This is a no-frills public park, with no admission, but also no snack bar or other amenities. I suggest stopping at a convenience store (you’ll pass at least a dozen on your way down Trop) and getting whatever water and snacks you need.

Because of that, this probably isn’t a 3-4 hour, afternoon-filling activity. There’s plenty to do, but the sun will take a lot out of you and your kids. Instead, I’d suggest doing this one morning of your trip, particularly if you’re supposed to meet the rest of the family/friends your with for brunch, and need something to do with the kids for a while in the morning. Figure on it taking about 30 minutes to get there from the Strip, and the same going back, and you can easily work this in before meeting up at 11 or later.

One more note: the official policy is that dogs are not permitted, since they tend to disrupt the wildlife, so leave Fido at home.

The Nature Preserve is at 7050 E. Wetlands Park Lane, Las Vegas, Nevada 89122. It is open from dawn until dusk throughout the year.

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Antoinette Portis. Kindergarten Diary. New York: Harper, 2010. 27 pages.

Every adult can remember the anxieties of starting a new job. What’s it going to be like? Will I make friends? Am I going to like it? But few of us can recall the terror of the day before kindergarten. Scary teachers, mean big kids, strange school work–who knows what lies ahead?

In Kindergarten Diary, Antoinette Portis does a wonderful job of showing the hopes and fears of little Annalina as she starts kindergarten in a way that’s relatable to kids and endearing (and perhaps a bit poignant) to adults. The book is laid out as a diary. Each “entry” is dated, and most pages have lined paper as the background. No worries, though–the text is in an easy-to-read font, so you don’t have to worry about struggling through faux handwriting. The art, which mixes distinct-looking color drawings with photographs of  objects, is fantastic, and tells the story just as much as the text.

There’s some good, nuanced stuff in here. For example, from “September 2.5: Still the First Day,” Annalina says how her mom walked her to her classroom and “held my hand hard,” before the teacher made the grownups leave. Over two pages, we see Annalina’s schoolmates, some weepy, some waving. In the right corner, outside a window, we see three anxious-looking parents, their faces practically pressed to the glass. Very, very true.

The rest of the book is just as brilliant. My four year-old absolutely loves it, and I do too. Great art, great message–there’s not too much more you can ask for in a kids’ book.

Douglas Florian. UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings. New York: Beach Lane Books, 2012. 29 pages.

Often, parents have to choose between picture books that engage their children’s curiosity and imagination and those that are scientifically accurate. With UNBEELIEVABLES, Douglas Florian has given us a book that is both. The poems are pithy, cleverly written, and mercifully vary in their line length and rhyme pattern. Kids’ books of poetry written in the same cookie-cutter style can get a bit tedious after the fifth reading, when you know you’ve got multiple pages to read in exactly the same cadence. Florian mixes it up nicely, which is much appreciated.

The paintings are fantastic as well–anatomically accurate when they have to be, but full of whimsy and imagination. Most of them are pretty enough to frame, and they all help you and your child visualize what the author is describing.

Each set of two pages has a poem describing some aspect of bee life (“Bee Anatomy,” “Worker Bees,” “Pollen,” etc), a painting showing the subject, and a short paragraph filled with facts about the subject. Parents can choose whether to read the informational paragraph verbatim to their kids, incorporate it into the discussion of the paining, or just wait until their old enough to read it for themselves. The book also has a bibliography and suggestions for further reading, should your kids’ curiosities be piqued.

I really liked this book, and I’m going to pick up some more of Florian’s work. If it’s anything like UNBEELIEVABLE, the entire family is in for a treat.

I bought this dress, the Zaza Couture “Robin” babydoll dress, when it was on clearance last December. Actually, I bought a good chunk of my daughters’ clothes last winter when my favorite website, A Child’s Closet, was liquidating the last of their summer wears. This is how I can afford boutique, designer clothes for toddlers. I highly recommend getting on their mailing list so as to be aware of sales and further markdowns!

The Zaza Couture “Robin” dress is from last summer’s line which was named after different birds.  Each category of bird has multiple dresses or outfits to choose from.  This “Robin” dress is a longer dress. It hits Prima below the knee, and uses several prints and crinkly materials in shades of red, blue, and white. Because Prima refuses anything other than dresses, it’s all I have to review, but actually pretty easy to dress her in the mornings!

I like the crinkly material because of its texture which is still soft but dimensional. It is also not meant to be ironed which works out great as I’ve always got my hands full these days! It also has sparkly threads running through the ruffles which also give it added interest.  The sleeves are fluttered and have stayed so even after a couple of washes.

Like most of Zaza Couture clothes, it’s hard to find faults- the dresses are really cute! Prima said her teacher wanted it for herself. That really isn’t too surprising; I would wear most of my daughter’s clothes if they came in my size. Am I vicariously dressing my kids? Maybe, but I won’t delve into that right now. Prima wore this dress with flats and has received compliments in and without my presence.

A Child’s Closet, my favorite online kids’ boutique, calls Zaza Couture’s “Eagle” line halter dress “perfect for summer”, and it is. Although the “Eagle” line was a part of last summer’s bird collection from Zaza, the dress is still amazing.

It is as I’ve mentioned a halter dress that is also a maxi (it hits Prima mid-calf) and made of blue, pink, and cranberry stripes with coordinating florals of the same colors. The halter has a tie-back so it’s adjustable and the neckline has very cute pompoms which are such a fun detail on a little girl’s dress that they balance out the “sexiness” of the halter.

I think the halter is so cute because I love seeing Prima’s shoulders in a summer dress. But what I like very much about the way this dress fits her, is that the back doesn’t sag. Zaza Couture’s sizing gives the option of a 4T or 4Y. I went with the 4T, as it is a little smaller and therefor snugger in a dress style like this one.

The material is very soft cotton with 1% elastane and is probably another reason it sits on her so well. Like all her dresses, I wash them in cold water and lay flat to dry to keep the colors so bright and the materials from pilling. Although it’s still new, I don’t see any problems there.

I know that buying on-line is a risk that some parents don’t like when shopping for themselves or their kids. My advice is to find brands that you can trust and shop those on-line. Zaza Couture is definitely one of those I recommend to not let you down.

Anna Harwell Celenza, with Don Tate, Illustrator. Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite. Watertown, Massachusetts: Charlesbridge, 2011. 32 pages.

In early 1960, Duke Ellington and his collaborator, arranger and composer Billy Strayhorn,
decided to step out of the jazz mainstream and record a version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. In Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite, Anna Celenza lets young readers learn a little bit about how this remarkable recording came to be made.

Celenza’s prose and Don Tate’s brilliantly-colored illustrations tell the story of Ellington’s “Nutcracker” and also capture the personalities of both Ellington and Strayhorn, making the collaboration and the music it produced as fresh as it was a half-century ago.

The book has a Vegas connection, too: the idea for the album comes to Ellington and Strayhorn while the orchestra is playing the Riviera. Tate’s illustration of Strayhorn, Ellington, and producer Irving Townshend in a booth at the Riviera is a true midcentury-modern gem.

In addition to getting to learn about how the two came up with the idea for the album, we learn how they wrote the arrangements–lots of long-distance phone calls between Los Angeles, where Ellington was working on a film score, and New York. Along the way, they drew on the history of jazz to that point and several locales. You really can hear some New Yorker swagger in “Toot Toot Tootie Toot,” and I love that “Dance of the Floreadores” was inspired by Vegas high rollers.

The best part of the book might be that it contains a CD of the music, so even if you don’t already own the album, you can play it for your little ones.

This is a wonderful introduction to both the Nutcracker Suite and the music of Duke Ellington for young readers. They’ll be thanking you some day for reading–and playing–Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite for them.

A Child’s Closet is my new favorite online store for Prima and Secunda’s clothes. It’s a boutique store so everything they sell is by a designer label. Unfortunately for me, I can not afford designer labels for toddler wear. Fortunately for me, everything eventually goes on sale. And so that’s how I buy my girls really great clothes at prices I can live with. They often have sales where the prices can go as low as 65% off retail. Trust me this is worth taking a look at because really awesome deals sell out fast. They have boy clothes too, but to be honest I never more than glance at them since I have two girls.

So on this fabulous site, are many many brands to choose from. One that I have come to love is Hannah Banana which has a couple of lines: Truly Me and Baby Sara. I could fill Prima’s closet with these dresses because they are really beautiful. So pretty, I would wear them if they were in my size.

The one I’ve chosen to review, the gray multi-print layered fabric and faux lace print, caught my eye well before it ever went on sale because, although not vibrantly colored, the tiers of mixed fabrics is stunning. The cuffs are interesting too as well as the faux lace print on the sleeves and dress. This is a unique look that I had Prima pair with black leggings and flats to see the Fresh Beat Band Live because it just looked so cool.

As Spring approaches, look for my reviews on all the great spring/summer dresses that Prima has been itching to wear!!

The Springs Preserve is relatively new–it opened in 2007–and it feels fresh. It’s owned by the Las Vegas Valley Water District, which seems to be doing pretty well for itself, since the Springs Preserve is pretty nice.

In a nutshell, the Springs Preserve is an outdoor, ecology, and history museum/exhibit center with a focus on Las Vegas. If your main Vegas experience is on the Strip, you might chuckle at that…and I strongly suggest you visit the Springs Preserve to see what you’ve been missing. There’s some interesting history here.

There are six main sections of the Springs Preserve:

The Origen Museum, which itself has four parts:

- Natural Mohave, a section that explores the land in and around the Las Vegas Valley, including  the “People of the Springs,” a section that includes a recreation of the 1905 land auction that created Las Vegas–and a rail car you can walk through. I saw two kids wearing Thomas t-shirts here, which can’t be a coincidence.

- The Big Springs Gallery, which, when we went, seemed to have children’s art.

- An Outdoor Area featuring a mock-up of early Fremont Street that kids can help build, an extensive play area, and the chance to see a few of the species native to the Las Vegas Valley. There aren’t too many, and most of them are frankly not that cuddly: bats, spiders, and scorpions seem to predominate. But there are two animals that are genuinely fun: a fox and a cottontail rabbit. We saw the fox while he was curled up for a nap, and even with his eyes closed he was one of the cutest things I’ve seen in a while. I respected him enough not to flash a picture while he was sleeping. There’s also a cottontail rabbit, which was neat for us to see because we have them in our neighborhood, and some of them hang out in our backyard.

–A Special Exhibit area, which, when we went, was occupied by “Space: A Journey to Our Future.” This was the only exhibit that was Vegas-specific, and indeed the Springs Preserve seems to have caught this traveling exhibit on the tail-end of its life, since it seems to be at least four years old and makes reference to the Constellation program,

which has been canceled. There are lots of neat things to see, though, that are timeless, including the looks back at the Apollo (moon) and shuttle programs. You can see a genuine moon rock (the first time I’ve done so) and hear astronauts speak about their missions. You can also see yourself via an infrared camera, which is pretty neat, although if you stare at your face for a while you might get freaked out. This exhibit, which closes in May, is an excellent introduction to space travel for little kids, with plenty of interactive experiences for older ones as well.

The Amphitheater/Playground area, which is a nice place to unwind after spending some time in the Origen Museum. You can easily spend 45 minutes here. There are a few playground fixtures and sand pits. Guess which ones your kids will want to hang out in?

VivaTotVegas Tip: take off their socks and shoes before they go in the sand pit.

The Trails. There are 3.65 miles of them, and you can walk through them or rent bikes

and ride around. We didn’t do this, but probably will on a future visit.

The Desert Living Center. This is probably the area where the Water District’s interest is most strongly felt–there are lots of interactive exhibits here about “sustainability in action,” and a Nature Exchange where kids can create things while learning about nature.

The Gardens. These are beautiful to walk through but also educational, especially for Valley residents. There are classes and activities, including demonstrations that are helpful to anyone who’s tried to make their backyard patch of the desert bloom. There’s even a Rose Arbor that hosts weddings and other special events.

Nevada State Museum. This moved over from Lorenzi Park a while ago, and if you’re a Vegas fan, you definitely should visit it at least once. It’s not large. On the left you’ll find the permanent exhibit, which chronicles the history of Las Vegas from prehistoric times until today. It’s probably the only museum in the world that features the Ichthyosaur Shonisaurus popularis, showgirl headdresses, and Steve Wynn. Seriously, it’s required for anyone who considers themselves a Vegas aficionado, and one part of the Springs Preserve where you’ll have as much fun as your kids. On the right is a rotating exhibit. When we went it had a very interesting photography exhibit. There’s also a gift shop.

I don’t think I can recommend the Springs Preserve highly enough. It’s not expensive: for Nevada residents, adult tickets are $10, kids 5-17 $5, and 5 and under free. Non-residents will pay $19 and $11, respectively, with discounts for seniors, students, and veterans in both groups. If you’re planning to come more than once a year, you might want to look at becoming a member. Again, there are some family-budget-friendly options here.

Showing up at around 10:30 in the morning with no real plan and not much of an idea of what to expect, we spent 3 hours at the Springs Preserve. Those three hours went by very quickly; with a variety of exhibits and areas to explore, you’re not cooped up in a single air-conditioned building. It’s the antithesis of Casino Vegas, and a welcome antidote for people who’ve brought small kids to the Strip.

You can easily spend five hours here, and still not see everything. If I was traveling with kids for a family event (let’s say a wedding or reunion), I’d schedule my trip to the Springs Preserve on a morning when you’ve got an entire day to yourselves–for example, the only thing scheduled is a family dinner at 6-ish. You can go shortly after opening at 10 AM and have plenty of time to explore, then get a nap in so your kids are fresh for your family meet-up.

One note: while the Springs Preserve is open all week, the Nevada State Museum is only open Friday to Monday.

It’s relatively accessible from the tourist–at Valley View and Alta, it’s northwest of the Strip and a bit southwest of Downtown. It’s an easy car ride away, and it’ll give you an excuse to get away from the casinos. Bonus: if you find you haven’t packed something, the Meadows Mall is across the street.

There are plenty of places in Vegas where you and your kids aren’t welcome; this is one of the few where you’re all the center of attention. Highly recommended.