Day 209: Living Color

A few days ago, a follower of the blog asked me for some nonfiction suggestions for 5-8 year olds.  As I searched through some past posts to see what titles I could share, I realized that I haven't featured many nonfiction titles on here.  Making nonfiction appealing to little ones can be tricky, but there are some gems out there that my kids and I absolutely love.

Living Color is one such book.  In fact, it's the kind of book for which I knowingly and willingly pay overdue library fines, because my son loves it that much and we've already renewed it as many times as we're allowed.  (I plan on sneaking it back to the library tonight so that it will be there for him to take out again tomorrow.)  Time to add another title to our must-own list!

We found this book on the library shelf in the nonfiction section about animals, and it was love at first read for my little nature lover.  In Living Color, author and illustrator Steve Jenkins has created a fabulous book that "takes a look at color in the animal world and some of the ingenious ways it is used."  Creatures of all kinds are sorted by color within its pages -- birds, spiders, snakes, fish, lizards, mammals -- each with an informative little description about what makes this animal unique.  The end of the book features an illustrated glossary of each animal mentioned within, including more information about the creature's size, habitat, and diet.  There is also an interesting page spread about why animals are different colors, how their colors are created, and how their colors have evolved through natural selection.  It's fascinating, colorful, and full of information for curious little minds.

If your child loves animals, science, or nature, be sure to look for this book the next time you are at the library.  My daughter (almost 3) loves looking at the pictures with us and learning about the animals, though doesn't have the attention span to sit through the reading the whole thing.  My 5 1/2 year old son, however, asks me to read this to him from cover to cover on a regular basis.

I've learned that Steve Jenkins has some other fabulous nature books out there, too, so am eager to look for more of them when we go to the library tomorrow.  In fact, I just realized that he also wrote Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest, another great nonfiction book that we've read and loved.  If we're lucky, perhaps we'll find ourselves coming home with more than one of his books tomorrow.  If the others are as good as these ones, we'll be sure to let you know.

Day 208: Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons

Sometimes when we're at the library and I don't have my list of "books-to-find," I turn to the shelves to find particular authors whose works we've enjoyed in the past.  Other times, my searches are more random, but last week, while I quickly perused the shelves for a few new books and my kids played with the puppets and trains, I employed the former strategy.  I was in the Q-R-S section, so looked to see what other stories Amy Krouse Rosenthal might have waiting for us.  We've enjoyed Duck! Rabbit! and Bedtime for Mommy, so I thought she might be a good bet.  When I saw a book called Cookies, I immediately took it off the shelf and added it to our pile.  We love baking cookies almost as much as we love reading, so I knew my kids would be excited to read it, too.

What a gem of a story!  Cookies: Bite Size Life Lessons explains the meaning of 21 different words -- some common, some new -- by defining them in terms of scenarios to which kids can easily relate.  The idea behind this adorable story is so creative and brilliant.  I just love it!  The illustrations are lovely, too.  Here are a few of my favorite examples from the book:

Cooperate means, How about you add the chips while I stir?

Modest means you don't run around telling everyone you make 

the best cookies, even if you know it to be true.

Trustworthy means, If you ask me to hold your cookie until you come back, 

when you come back, I will still be holding your cookie.

Open-minded means, I've never seen cookies like that before, but, uh, sure, I'll try one.  

Regret means, I really wish I didn't eat so many cookies.

Sweet, isn't it?

My kids are always asking me what words mean, and sometimes I struggle to define them in a way they can easily understand.  When this happens, I've found it is better and more meaningful to use the word in context rather than giving them a more traditional definition.  Cookies does just that, only far better and more creatively than I ever could.  It's sweet, clever, and a great way to teach children about some of life's most valuable qualities.  Combine reading this story with baking cookies of your own and you've got a perfectly fun-filled afternoon!

Enjoy!

2013 Summer Reading Theme: Dig Into Reading!

This year's early literacy summer reading theme is Dig Into Reading!  While digging into a book is wonderful any day of the year, here are some that you might want to check out if you really want to get into this year's summer reading theme.  Enjoy, and happy reading!

(Click the images to read more about the books on Amazon.com, or click the linked titles to read my reviews as they originally appeared on this blog.)

Diggers and trucks!
Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Sherry Dusky Rinker

Roadwork and Demolition by Sally Sutton

In the garden
 My Garden by Kevin Henkes

 The Curious Garden by Peter Brown

 Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming

 The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss

Digging for dinosaurs!
 See Me Run by Paul Meisel

 Flip-O-Saurus by Britta Drehsen and Sara Ball

 Dinosaurumpus! by Tony Mitton

 How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? (and others from that series) by Jane Yolen

Sandcastles

 I've never read this book so I can't vouch for its quality, but I'm so curious to check it out. It looks so fun! I stumbled across this book on Amazon and am going to look it up in our local library system.  We love building sandcastles at the beach in the summer, and while this book is probably more complicated than we can handle, it still seems like it would be fun to read.  I'll let you know if we find it and what we think!

What other books should be on this list?  Please share your favorites below!

Day 207: Go, Dog, Go!

My inspiration for today's post came in the strangest of places.  This past weekend, we attended my brother's college graduation.  Like other people with small children, we happily situated ourselves at the back of audience so that we could get up and let the kids run around a bit outside if need be.  At one point towards the end of the 2 1/2 hour ceremony, my daughter was sitting in my lap, snuggling up against me and talking quietly to herself.  It didn't take me long to notice that she was reciting part of a story. "Stop, dog, stop!  The light is red.  Go, dog, go!  It's green ahead."  She repeated these phrases to herself for a while, unaware that I was listening, occasionally mentioning some of the story's other lines, as well:  "You're almost there.  Stop at that tree.  Climb that ladder to a dog party!" The story?  Go, Dog, Go!, a classic early reader book by P.D. Eastman.  We've actually been reading the abridged board book version (Go, Dog, Go! P.D. Eastman's Book of Things That Go, shown below), but both are wonderfully fun.  The simple, repetitive, rhyming text, and the silly, colorful pictures make this book a great one for emerging readers and toddlers, alike.  This book was also one of the first that my son ever read aloud by himself.  I'm surprised I haven't featured it on here yet!

Books like this one are classics for a reason.  Something about them magically connects and sticks with children across generations.  I can count on one hand the number of times we have read that story in the past month, and yet there was my daughter, not yet 3, reciting parts of it from memory over and over to herself.  Don't you just love the way those little minds work? They never cease to amaze me.

If you haven't yet checked out the works of P.D. Eastman, look for them the next time you are the library.  Go, Dog, Go! and Are You My Mother? are both delightfully fun.

Day 206: Oh No, George!

Teaching our kids to do the right thing -- even when no one is looking -- is a challenging and important job.  We've been stressing this a lot with our five year old lately ("How did you see that?"), and Oh No, George! is the perfect story to help deliver this message.

In this adorable story, George the dog is left alone at home while his owner, Harry, goes out.  George promises he'd be good while Harry is gone, but there are simply too many temptations for him resist!  A big plate full of cake, dirt to dig in, Cat to play with...  When Harry returns home to find his house a mess, George feels terrible.  "I said I'd be good, George thinks.  I hoped I'd be good, but I wasn't."  In what is perhaps my favorite moment of the book, George then brings Harry his favorite toy as an offer of forgiveness.  Harry takes George out for a nice walk, and along the way, George encounters more of his favorite things.  This time, though, George is able to restrain himself, proudly passing by a cake, Cat, and a lovely pile of dirt.  Well done, George!

At the story's end, George comes across his favorite thing of all.  A trash can!  "There's nothing more George likes more than digging in trash.  What will George do?  George?"  We love how we're left to decide for ourselves what we think George is going to do.  Will he be good and pass by the trash can, or dive right in?  My kids sometimes change their minds about what they think George is going to do, but mostly, they think he's going to be good and leave the trash alone.  We all get such a kick out of this cute story, and my kids just love chiming in on the early chorus of "Oh no, George!" each time he gives in to temptation.  They are just as happy towards the end, too, when George is able to do the right thing.  It's always cute to watch their reactions to this story.

George might be a dog, but he provides the perfect analogy for young children.  He's sweet and means well, but sometimes he just can't resist the temptation to do certain things, even when he knows he shouldn't.  As my son likes to say, "I just want to do what I want to do!"  I love the way this story gets children to think about the difference between knowing the right thing and doing the right thing, as well as see the way their actions can affect other people.  The illustrations are funky and unique, and the story line is one to which you and your kids can both easily relate (especially if you have a dog.) Next time you're at the library, look for Oh No, George!  It's fun, sweet, and an all-around great read.

Day 205: Green

Spring has finally sprung, and we've reached that magical time of year when the leaves are popping open on trees throughout town.  (Yes!  Finally!)  When I saw this stunning book on the "New Arrivals" shelf at our local library, I just had to bring it home.  Featuring only two words per page, Green seems extremely simple at first glance, but really, it is a work of beautiful complexity from beginning to end.

The simple language of the book is remarkable.  With each turn of the page, we are introduced to another shade of green:  "Forest green, sea green, lime green, pea green" and so much more.  As described on the book's jacket cover, "there's the lush green of a forest on a late spring day, the fresh, juicy green of a just-cut lime, the incandescent green of a firefly, and the vivid aquamarine of a tropical sea." I absolutely love the way the whole story encourages children to delve into the wonderfully descriptive world of language, showing them how something as simple as a color can be described in so many different and unique ways.  The verse is lyrically written, too, though we never manage to read it quickly enough to notice the rhyme scheme as we read aloud.  In fact, I don't think I even realized that the lines rhymed until the fourth or fifth time we read it, since we were always too busy studying the illustrations.

And oh, the artwork!  The texture of Seeger's acrylic paintings is simply gorgeous, and every time I read this book, I just want to reach into the pages and touch the illustrations.  Her use of die-cuts is brilliant, as well, perfectly placed on each page in a way that never fails to delight and surprise us.  My children and I just love flipping the pages back and forth after we peek through the cut outs, eager to see just what those colors were on the page before.  Seeger's creativity and designs are simply incredible!  They make me want to try our own die-cut artwork and see what we can come up with.  Hmm...  Perhaps I know what our art activity will be this afternoon...

Green is a 2013 Caldecott Honor book, and deservedly so.  It also is a Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of 2012.  Creative, engaging, and positively lovely, Green is one book that's not to be missed.

Day 204: Andrew Henry's Meadow

Before I go on and on about how amazingly fabulous this book is, I have to give a big thank you shout out to my fellow picture book lover and blogger, Read Aloud Dad, who first introduced me to this book a month or two ago when I read his review of it here.  As soon as I read his glowing review, I logged on to my library system's website and set out to find a copy that we could borrow.  Surprisingly, there were only 3 copies of Andrew Henry's Meadow in the whole system.  Only 3!  Why every library in the world doesn't own this book, I have no idea.  It is truly one of the most wonderful stories I have read in a long time, and I'm so happy to have discovered it. Thank you, Read Aloud Dad!

Andrew Henry Thatcher lives with his family in the small town of Stubbsville.  He has two younger brothers who are always playing with each other, and two older sisters who are always with each other, leaving Andrew Henry alone most of the time.  Fortunately, he doesn't much seem to mind, happily passing the time creating clever new inventions.  He makes a helicopter in the kitchen, an eagle cage in the living room, and a merry-go-round from his sisters' sewing machine.  Unfortunately, though, Andrew Henry's inventions aren't exactly appreciate by his family.  

One day, after thinking about it for some time, Andrew Henry packs up his tools and runs away, setting off through the woods to build a house of his own.  He soon finds the perfect place for his house -- a lovely meadow, complete with a stream and a tall, strong fir tree.  "He set to work, and before long the house was finished.  The walls were made of clay and rocks and poles.  The roof was made of fir boughs, and outside one window there was a fine landing field for dragonflies.  But Andrew Henry wasn't alone long..."  

Soon, other children from the town, with unique qualities and interests of their own, are eager to join him.  Andrew Henry sets to work building the children their own customized houses, perfectly suited to their tastes and talents.  Alice Burdock's house was just right for a person who loved birds, high up in a tree with birdbaths, feeding stations, and "even a hand rest for Alice's binoculars when she wasn't using them."  George Turner's house is perfect for fishing, Joe Polasky's underground quarters are ideal for him and his many pets, and Margot LaPorte's house is well-suited for her music rehearsals.  The children all live quite happily in their meadow for a few days and nights, but back home, their families are frantically searching for them.  Where could they have gone?  Finally, of course, everyone is reunited, and the families are more accepting of their children in the end.  It's sad, in a way, that it took the children running away for this to be the case, but without doing so, we'd have missed out on all of the wonderful magic of that meadow.  

The little details throughout this book are simply perfect, in both the illustrations and the story, itself.  I love Doris Burn's descriptions of the houses, and her black and white sketches are even more wonderful and clever.  My son gets such a kick out of the different houses Andrew Henry builds for the other kids in the meadow, and it's always fun to brainstorm what type of house we would want to live in there.  I love the way this story inspires creativity and imagination, for Andrew Henry's inventions and houses are truly fantastic.  More than anything, though, I love the way this story reminds us all to appreciate our children's unique gifts and talents and love them exactly for who they are. 

Andrew Henry's Meadow was first published in 1965, with its most recent edition coming out last year in 2012.  It's a longer than your average picture book -- more like a chapter book, but without the chapters -- so probably better suited for children ages 4 and up.  That said, though, my 2 1/2 year old is quite content to sit and read this with me and my 5 year old.  This is one book that has certainly made itself on to our "must own" list, and is one that I'm sure we will treasure for years to come.  If you can manage to get your hands on a copy of this amazing book, please do.  I promise you won't be disappointed.