My five year old daughter loves the book ISH by Peter Reynolds. It's a lovely little story about being creative without needing to be "perfect," that the joy of creating far outweighs the need for an exact product. When she draws something now, she tends to say "This doesn't look like a lighthouse, Mommy, but it looks lighthouse-ish." In the book, the main character learns that he can also write ISH-fully and ultimately relax ISH-fully. Life, he finds, is in the ISH.

This year, I read ISH to m...