Mud!
No, wait! Don't run away! Mud is awesome - promise. In this guide you'll learn why, plus my best tips for managing muddy, messy play.
“Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart.” —Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
It’s still technically spring, “when the world is mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful” according to E.E. Cummings, so why not have an entire guide about Mud! Which might make you flinch a bit if you’re, you know, The Grown-Up responsible for The Clean-Up. But I promise I’ve got some great tips for making muddy play more manageable, no matter your personal level of mess tolerance.
What you’ll find in the Mud! Guide:
Mud Books to Read Together
Snack Time: Muddy Puddle Pudding Cups
Tips for Muddy, Messy Play
Invitation to Play: Mud Paint
Invitation to Play: Making Mud Pies
Plus poems and songs and even some mud fun with Mister Rogers. Download the guide right here ↓ for all the goods.
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10 mud books to read with your kids
Mud! by Annie Bailey, illustrated by Jen Corace
Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes by John Cage and Lois Long
What is Mud? by Katie Daynes, illustrated by Mark Chambers
Miracle Mud: Lena Blackburne and the Secret Mud That Changed Baseball by David A. Kelly, illustrated by Oliver Dominguez
Mud Puddle by Robert Munsch, illustrated by Dušan Petričić
Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud by Lynn Plourde, illustrated by John Schoenherr
The Piggy in the Puddle by Charlotte Pomerantz, illustrated by James Marshall
Mud by Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by Lauren Stringer
Rain School by James Rumford
Roy Digs Dirt by David Shannon
I’ve linked to Amazon for the sake of convenience, but go through Bookshop.org if you want to support independent booksellers, or buy used copies from AbeBooks, ThriftBooks, and eBay. And as always: nothing beats your local public library.
3 mud videos to watch with your kids.
➵ “Earth, Rain, and Mud by Slimey” (Sesame Street, 2 minutes)
➵ “Dancing Mud” (Sights for Seeing, 2 minutes)
➵ “Building With Mud: A Continuum” (The Nito Project, 6 minutes)
A mud poem.
“Mud”
by Robert William Service
Mud is Beauty in the making,
Mud is melody awaking;
Laughter, leafy whisperings,
Butterflies with rainbow wings;
Baby babble, lover’s sighs,
Bobolink in lucent skies;
Ardours of heroic blood
All stem back to Matrix Mud.
Mud is mankind in the moulding,
Heaven’s mystery unfolding;
Miracles of mighty men,
Raphael’s brush and Shakespear’s pen;
Sculpture, music, all we owe
Mozart, Michael Angelo;
Wonder, worship, dreaming spire,
Issue out of primal mire.
In the raw, red womb of Time
Man evolved from cosmic slime;
And our thaumaturgic day
Had its source in ooze and clay . . .
But I have not power to see
Such stupendous alchemy:
And in star-bright lily bud
Lo! I worship Mother Mud.Interesting mud things for grown-ups.
To help you get in the mood for mud, here are some links to spark your own sense of wonder, because mud is actually really fascinating. I mean, who knew?! Well, kids did. Kids knew.
➵ Bruce Gardner, Hikaru Dorodango (Buck the Cubicle) “Bruce Gardner excels at the Japanese art of Hikaru Dorodango, or ‘Shiny Dumpling.’ He first learned about the practice from the sci-fi writer William Gibson, and the rest is history.” (udmissRead more on Bruce Gardner’s website, and at The Last Straw.)
➵ Mississippi Mud Pie: The mysterious origins of the classic dessert. (Eater) “Perhaps we'll never know the story behind the pie, but everyone at least agrees it is named for the dark, goopy mud found along the Mississippi River.”
➵ “When Trucks Fly” (New Yorker) “A monster trucker is the kind of person who has a favorite type of dirt. I’ve heard drivers describe a track as fluffy, sticky, loose, tacky, grippy, greasy, slick, crumbly, powdery, bone-dry, baked out, dead, loamy, earthen, sandy, slidey, soupy, snotty, and marshmallowy. Everyone understands the distinctions. They obsess over them like vintners obsess over terroir. The first time I met an employee of Monster Jam, which sells millions of tickets to its monster-truck shows every year, the first thing she told me was that the company owns more dirt, she thinks, than anyone else in the world.”
➵ “The Origin of Mud” (Knowable Magazine) “For most of Earth’s history, hardly any of the mucky stuff existed on land. It finally started piling up around 458 million years ago, changing life on the planet forever.”
➵ “The Future of Mud” (The Atlantic) “A Senegalese architecture firm is championing a lower-tech material than concrete to help cities prepare for climate change.”
Quotable
“What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.” —Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
I hope you loved the Mud Guide! For more Discovery & Play Guides, click this green button here to find the full archive.
Gotta scoot, little newt!
Love, Kathryn