Tuesday Storytime: Only One More (Storytime) til Christmas!

With apologies to the Muppet Christmas Carol, there was only one more storytime til Christmas, so it's the final opportunity to showcase some really sweet Christmas stories. Every year at this time we have a lot of returning storytimers who have "graduated" into school attendance - they're all off on their winter breaks, and it's lovely to have a chance to see them all again in storytime. It also makes for a difficult balancing act between their older and more mature tastes and concentration levels, and the needs of the still very young infants and tiny toddlers who are just barely holding on for a full storytime as it is.

The Night Before Christmas
Clement C. Moore, illustrated by Kathy Wilburn (Little Golden Book)
ISBN: 03070475501
I used to read this book at Christmastime at my Grandmother's house, and I have very fond memories of the illustrations. The book itself is on the small side, but we all scrunched up close and managed anyway. The kids loved it, and I'm glad I put it first while attention and interest was strong enough to make it through.

Dream Snow
Eric Carle
ISBN: 0399235795
A humble farmer dreams of snow blanketing himself and his handful of farm animals (named One through Five) and his single farm tree (named Tree) and the kids have a blast guessing the identities of the farm animals based on their white-draped shapes before I pull away the transparency to reveal them one by one. The end of the book has the farmer in his suspiciously-red winter warm clothes tramping outside with a sack of toys and shiny things to decorate Tree for the Christmas season. A big hit because of the interaction.

Bear Stays Up For Christmas
Karma Wilson, illustrated by Jane Chapman
ISBN: 0689852789
I love these books so much. Bear is normally asleep at this time of year (hibernation, you know) but his friends are determined that he'll be awake for Christmas at least once. So they plan a full day and night of activities, and the sleepy Bear manages, until all the friends fall asleep themselves from exhaustion. A delighted tricksy Bear spends the night creating presents and decorating for them while they sleep, and they all enjoy a lovely Christmas morning together. So cute. 

Tuesday Storytime: Christmas is Coming

It always seems strange to have Christmas so soon after it finally gets cold. I feel like we were solidly in fall territory last week, and Christmas is only two weeks away! Wild. These books were selected by my coworker.

Who Will Guide My Sleigh Tonight?
Jerry Pallotta, illustrated by David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9780439853699
Any story that seriously questions the type of animals best suited to pull Santa's sleigh is a winner for me.


The Christmas Kitten
Mary Packard, illustrated by Jenny Williams
ISBN: 0516053647
A frisky homeless kitten ends up in Santa's Workshop causing chaos until Christmas when Santa heads out on his sleigh with the kitten in tow, destined for a happy (non-elf-filled-workshop) home.


Click, Clack, Ho! Ho! Ho!
Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin
ISBN: 9781442496736
The well-intentioned but clutzy farm animals from Click, Clack, Moo! are trying to make sure that their farmer has a Merry Christmas, but they're all stuck in the chimney now. (It's always Duck's fault.) Who can save both them and Christmas?

Tuesday Storytime: Last Fall Storytime!

It's finally getting cold out (now that it's December, of course) and so we're wrapping up with one final salute to fall. These titles were chosen by my coworker.

Fall Leaves Fall
Zoe Hall, illustrated by Shari Halpern
ISBN: 0590100793
Oddly-textured papercuts give this an old-fashioned stop-motion animation feel, with flat matte textures for people and backgrounds, and vibrant painterly textures for leaves and natural objects. Factual and quite short.

In The Middle of Fall
Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek
ISBN: 9780062573117
This newest from Keven Henkes moves away from mice into a lovely exploration of fall and the activities and events that epitomize it.

Leaves
David Ezra Stein
ISBN: 9780399254970
Bear wanders around the woods, gently confused and saddened by the falling leaves all around. He gathers them up as he drifts gently toward hibernation, and when he wakes he sees the new leaves budding on the trees and is comforted.

Tuesday Storytime: Fall Leaves

A last generic fall storytime before it's finally December and I feel obligated to move on to winter, despite whatever it's doing outside.

Fall Leaves: Colorful and Crunchy
Martha E. H. Rustad, illustrated by Amanda Enright
ISBN: 9780761385059
A really good junior nonfiction title with information about photosynthesis and plant growth and leaf formation. Illustrations are cartoony and clear and stylized in a slightly exaggerated manner. Interesting choice and a fun difference from the majority which use photographs. It has "chapters" of a few spreads each, which was a big hit for my little ones to be big enough to listen to a "chapter book."

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf
Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 0152661972
This book always surprises me that it is so narrative-heavy. The (unseen) narrator tells us all about her sugar maple tree and how it was grown and developed and nursery'ed, and talks about the colors of the leaves and the different types of trees and resulting leaf colors.

Fletcher and the Falling Leaves
Julia Rawlinson, illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke
ISBN: 9780061134012
Fletcher the fox kit is experiencing his first fall, and so he's worried when his favorite tree starts turning brown and then (oh horrors) losing it's leaves! He tries very hard to save them, but it's a lost cause. There's a beautiful surprise on the last pages of the now-winterized tree (love when books have just a smidge of glitter or fun printing tricks to them!) Amazingly evocative and sweet, and more than a bit sad, despite the happy ending.

Tuesday Storytime: Autumn Thanks

Since we covered Thanksgiving pretty thoroughly last time around, I focused on a few of my newly-acquired fall books this time around.

Hocus Pocus, It's Fall!
Anne Sibley O'Brien, illustrated by Susan Gall
ISBN: 9781419721250
An entire book of fold-out flaps gives very short rhymes on different fall themes and situations, and then a "magic word" (a different one each time - there are SO MANY OF THEM!) to fold out the flap and show the "magic" change of seasons on the fold-out continuation of the spread.

Thanks for Thanksgiving
Julie Markes, illustrated by Doris Barrette
ISBN:  9780060510985
Short and as inoffensive as possible, this set of "thanks" are offered generally to no specified person or entity, and focus on the experiences of children - school and dress-up, play-dates and parents.

My Autumn Book
Wong Herbert Yee
ISBN: 9780805099225
Sweet but just a liiiiitle bit too long for my very young group this time around. A possibly-Asian girl notices lots of natural changes in the world as proof that autumn is approaching, and collects items to remember the season, building a book of memories to read in the winter.

Tuesday Storytime: Thanksgiving is Coming

My compatriot had lots of fun picking out Thanksgiving-themed books before she realized the rotation had her on the week before - but that's ok! We're not super tied to a schedule here, so there's no reason we can't have an anticipatory storytime a week ahead of time to remind kids what all the fuss is about.

She chose:

The Thanksgiving Play (a Herbster Reader)
by Cecilia Minden
Herbie and his school friends try hard to put on a fun and interesting Thanksgiving School Play, but everything keeps going wrong!

The Leaves on the Trees
by Thom Wiley
A beautiful nonfiction picture book focused on nature's glorious and varietal fall colors, to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus."

Bear Says Thanks
by Karma Wilson
Another of the really delightful Bear books - this time focusing on the importance of family and friends as a cause for celebration and happiness.

Tuesday Storytime: Fall is Here!

With Monster Month safely behind us for another year, it's time for the rotation to begin having a solid selection of "fall" themed books, and oh there are just so many good ones to choose from. This time around I went with two solid favorites, and a new discovery just recently published.


Wonderfall
Michael Hall
ISBN: 9780062382986
A tree narrates a set of short non-rhyming poems as the season progresses from the end of summer to the beginning of winter, hitting on the start of school, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, along with blustery winds, animal migrations and foraging, and even composting! Really well done, and a delightful addition to our collection.


Mystery Vine
Cathryn Falwell
ISBN: 9780061771989
This one really needs to be done very early in the fall, so I wanted to go ahead and use it while summer is still fairly fresh in people's minds. A pair of kids follow a garden through the year in cute little rhyming couplets while a "mystery vine" grows along the fence until fall, when everything else in the garden is dead or dying - it's of course a pumpkin vine. There's a spread about trick-or-treating, but the focus is on the outdoors and the garden.


Moon Glowing
Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Joan Paley
ISBN: 0525468730
We follow a squirrel, bat, beaver, and bear through the developing fall into winter, as they prepare for the coming cold weather. Very sparse text, very short, not much content. Chosen to be a short final story for our typical fall crowd of very very young babies and toddlers, who are nearing (or well past) their attention spans by the last book of the day. Sweet and a bit solemn,

Tuesday Storytime: Happy Halloween!

A cute set of books for Halloween, picked by my partner.

Trick or Treat
Leo Landry
ISBN: 9780547249698
Oliver the ghost is hosting a Halloween party for all his spooky friends, but one of the invites goes astray into the perfectly ordinary neighborhood house next door, allowing a pair of cute trick-or-treaters the chance to attend their first REAL Halloween party. All goes well, and Oliver ends up invited to a party himself!

Ten Orange Pumpkins
Stephen Savage
ISBN: 9780803739383
Graphically intense (all oranges and blacks and grey-scaled-desaturated colors) counting book with really nifty illustrations, and a serviceable "story" to accompany the counting.

Boo to You!
Lois Ehlert
ISBN:9781416986256
A clever crew of mice band together to outwit a mean cat in this Halloween-adjacent story made of fall-items-and-papercraft collages. 

Tuesday Storytime: Halloween is Coming

One week til Halloween, and because of the shared schedule, it's the first time in about 10 years that I will NOT be doing a storytime on Halloween. So I did some really cute Halloween prep books this week instead.

And Then Comes Halloween
Tom Brenner, illustrated by Holly Meade
ISBN: 9780763636593
This is an excellent Halloween book. It has a lot of atmospheric fall details, and lots of focus on the seasons changing and on very generic fall decorating with corn stalks and scarecrows, and only really gets into the Halloween-specific stuff right at the end. The focus is also on the creative process of thinking up and creating your own costume, and on the community fun of trick-or-treating in a group and sorting and swapping candy together. Very lighthearted and informative, with really lovely language.

Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin
Tad Hills
ISBN: 9780375858130 (board book)
I was lucky that this was a very small group, because this is a pretty small board book format. Duck and Goose and Thistle appear in this really short story, and I ask for a lot of audience interaction to drag it out a bit longer. Thistle has a very nice pumpkin, and Duck and Goose decide they want one too, so they go in search of it, with not much luck until Thistle reappears with a hint.

Happy Halloween, Biscuit!
Alyssa Satin Capucilli, illustrated by Pat Schories
ISBN: 9780694012206 (page-end-flaps)
Biscuit and his little girl are prepping for Halloween, which means the little girl is prepping, and Biscuit is getting into messes and generally being an adorable pest, revealed by the flaps on each of the far left side pages.  Sweet and gentle and with cute little "mysteries" to solve or questions to ponder on each spread.

Tuesday Storytime: Monster Bedtimes

There are SO MANY monster books out there now! It's awesome!

My Monster Mama Loves Me So
Laura Leuck, illustrated by Mark Buehner
ISBN: 9780688168667
A monster child narrates roughly over a day explaining how the mama monster does things to show her love. Touching and silly-gross at the same time.

Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Kelly Murphy
ISBN: 9780763642013
A pair of school-age monster (siblings?) race home from school and run through their monstrous bedtime routine before settling down to sleep at the end.

Goodnight Little Monster
Helen Ketteman, illustrated by Bonnie Leick
ISBN: 9780761456834
A VERY CUTE toddler monster goes through an exhaustive and inclusive bedtime routine, this time from the mama's perspective. Really seriously adorable, but man those spiders on the end-papers are gonna be the death of me.

Tuesday Storytime: Branded Characters do Halloween

I have a complicated relationship with "branded" characters like Pete the Cat, or Mittens the kitten, or Arnold, or the Berenstain Bears, or Ladybug Girl, Angelina or Fancy Nancy. On the one hand, I like them because they establish a character that children can "know" and be attached to, and ask for by name. "Where is Pete the Cat?" or "Do you have any new Fancy Nancy?" is a powerful question to be able to ask; to be a child and come into a library and KNOW that there's something you'll probably like. It's the kid equivalent of our adult patrons who read every single Nora Roberts but won't touch JD Robb (even though they're the same person), and the impetus behind everlasting series by Patterson or Evanovich. There's a formula and a character that is comforting and familiar and enjoyable. I get that.

But.

On the flip side, a lot of kid's writing can get VERY formulaic (to be clear, so can adult series), especially when a beloved character is the only thru-line. And while I have less than no objections to kids taking these sorts of books home and loving them forever (I actually encourage it, and fight for them to be included in our catalog) I have to say that I don't really like to have them be too much a part of storytime. I really don't want to sound classist or snobby, but part of having a storytime is to present a whole lot of types and styles of literature to kids, so they learn by repetition about the patterns of narrative and characterisation and plot-twists and tropes and all that. And to be honest, character books often don't have much of any of that, because they can ride on the success of their character. (I don't blame the authors and creators for this - they need to eat just like everyone else) Not all of them do - I find that Fancy Nancy is pretty consistently well-done, and the Biscuit books are also well plotted for their target age - but a decent number of them you can just read them and realize that the writer is coasting (or that a committee wrote it for a spec; "I need a Christmas book for a promo tie-in: have the Llama Llama family do Christmas!"). And that's not good.

So I don't have a RULE against using characters in storytime, but I do try to keep it to a minimum, or at least to be aware that I need to vet the quality of character books just as severely as I do any other title I consider.

All that said, Halloween is a fun season to look at branded characters, so that's what my partner went with this time around. I don't know that all of these would have made the cut with me, but there's nothing objectionable about them. That's why its good to have multiple storytellers: it's important to have different perspectives and approaches on display to the families and kids.

Pete the Cat: Five Little Pumpkins
James Dean
ISBN: 9780062304186
A straightforward printing of the "Five Little Pumpkins" song/rhyme, with the visually-distinctive Pete the Cat illustrations.

Happy Halloween, Mittens
Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Susan Kathleen Hartung
ISBN: 9780061702228 ("I Can Read" book)
Mittens the kitten "helps" with Halloween prep in this extremely gentle and light-hearted gloss of the holiday.

Herbster Readers: The Halloween Costume Contest
Cecilia Minden and Joanne Meier, illustrated by Bob Ostrom
ISBN: 9781602532175
Herbie the Bear and his school pals spend most of the book brainstorming out costume ideas so they can win the school contest this year.

Tuesday Storytime: October Already!

The month of October is a happy time for my storytime selecting; as it becomes essentially a month-long celebration of Halloween and all things spooky. This is my partner's first October, and she's off to a great start:

Me and My Dragon: Afraid of Halloween
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580896580
The boy and his adorable bright red dragon confront the frights and startlements of Halloween, and decide it's not that bad after all.

Penguin and Pumpkin
Salina Yoon
ISBN: 9780802737335
A little longer than it seems like it should be: Penguin heads out away from the ice with a pack of friends to see what "fall" is like, but baby brother Pumpkin has to stay home, as he's not quite big enough. (Serious questions about given names in this world remain unanswered) When Penguin and crew come back with fall leaves and pumpkins for all, they do what they can to give baby Pumpkin a chance to experience fall himself.

Crankenstein
Samantha Berger, illustrated by Dan Santat
ISBN: 9780316126564
Crankenstein is a very scary monster. Have you seen it? Check around when there are annoying or disappointing situations, or when life just doesn't go quite right. Crank will vanish sometimes, but it will always be back. A funny sideways view of childhood fits and grumps works perfectly for this time of year.

Tuesday Storytime: Airplanes!

Finally my turn again! When you're only doing storytime every other week, it's a long time when one gets cancelled. Last week we took a tour through some airplanes, as families look forward to holidays and visiting far-flung family or friends.

Airplanes Soaring! Turning! Diving!
Patricia Hubbell
Other than wanting to indict them for grave abuse of exclamation points on their title (seriously, people have to type that out) this is a seriously adorable and fact-filled early interest book about airplanes. Reads quick, a few fun vertically-oriented pages to mix things up a bit, and lots of weird faux-historical illustrations.

A B Cs on Wings
Ramon Olivera
Very well done. Super quick and easy to read, lay-out is STELLAR. Paper is crisp and weighty, colors are rich, designs are clear and stylized. Really truly super book.


Airport 
Byron Barton
Another good "slice of life" by Barton. This time we focus on the process of getting TO the airplane: all the boring bits of arriving at the airport and processing through the waiting rooms and into the plane. It's VERY dated: the illustrations are quite 70s, and of course there's no security to be seen, but the gist is the same, and a kid isn't going to notice the finer details. Perfect for making air travel seem routine and calm, while still keeping the fun and excitement of airplanes themselves.

Tuesday Storytime: Cows

I've done farms, and barnyard animals, and chickens, and I think even horses, but I don't think I've ever done cows before, so my cohort stepped into the gap with this riotous storytime. I think a pattern is emerging: she's way more comfortable and passionate about "funny" storytimes, and that's absolutely a perfect fit, because my sense of humor is a little... weird.

The Cow that Laid an Egg
Andy Cutbill, illustrations by Russell Ayto
ISBN: 9780061372957
Marjorie doesn't have any special talents, but if the chickens' plot goes to plan, she's going to be the most talented cow on the farm. Now there's all sorts of consternation: what exactly is going to hatch out of that egg?

Chicken, Pig, Cow and the Purple Problem
Ruth Ohi
ISBN: 9781554512195
When the girl made the pig and the chicken, she had the right colors, but when she made the cow, all she had for spots was purple clay. Cow doesn't match the pictures in the books, and heads out into the wild to sort herself out properly. Along the way she discovers things much more important than what color your spots are.

When Cows Come Home
David L. Harrison, illustrated by Chris L. Demarest
ISBN: 0563971437
A truly silly rhyming romp through cow-themed situations taken to extremes, and populated by blissfully dancing cows. Reminds me of a long version of Sandra Boynton's style of silliness.

Tuesday Storytime: Beary Good Friends

My co-storyteller's picks this time, with two that I've done myself before, or at least considered using.  Really sweet and cute books. We're back to picking very short and very straightforward reads since our audience has shrunk in both size and age with school snatching away all our older ones.

Bird, Balloon, Bear
Il Sung Na
ISBN: 9780399551567
Bird hopes to be friends with Bear, but Bear already has a good friend: a balloon. Bird watches as they play together happily, but eventually all Chekov's balloons must pop, and new friends made.


Good Luck Bear
Greg Foley
ISBN: 9780670062584
Bear is looking for a four-leaf clover, and has no luck at all. He's feeling quite unlucky, in fact, until his friend Mouse returns with a message of friendship and of finding the unexpected.

Bear and Bee: Too Busy
Sergio Ruzzier
ISBN: 9781423159612
Bear and Bee join forces again in this sequel book (Bear and Bee was a quirky story about prejudice and fears) to have a light-hearted discussion about the concept of doing things that you perhaps don't super enjoy yourself, simply because you want to be with the person doing them, and you enjoy helping the person enjoy the activity. Hard concept for kids and adults, and it's a hard slog for the Bear and Bee too, but they make it work out in the end.

Tuesday Storytime: Beautiful Houses

A fun collection of people showing how their houses reflect their personality.

If I Built a House (If I Built a Car)
Chris Van Dusen
ISBN: 9780803737518
Our imaginative auto engineer has moved on to houses: his dream home to be exact. We start with labor-saving gadgetry in the kitchen and bathroom, then quickly move into more exotic rooms, with aquariums and detachable rocket playrooms making appearances. A fun book on it's own, and really cute when paired with the car book for a trip through a Jetsons / Joyce future wonderland.

The Big Orange Splot
Daniel Manus Pinkwater
ISBN: 0833506889
Mr Plumbean's identical row house got defaced by a bucket of orange paint dropped by a seagull (nobody knows why) and instead of painting it over, Mr Plumbean gets inspired. Mr Plumbean's neighbors are first incensed, then individually also inspired (by Mr Plumbean's house) and their row of "neat" houses soon becomes anything but. A classic, and a good yarn.

This is Our House
Hyewon Yum
ISBN: 9780374374877
A sweet generational story of a house told in snapshots on one page and related larger messier "life" representations on the facing pages. All in beautiful pastel watercolors with faint fuzzy edges. Not the most exciting, but a sweet book to end on.

Bonus Round:
This House, Once
Deborah Freedman
ISBN: 9781481442848
A beautiful meditative and calming journey through an old northern house, where doors remember being trees, and the stones of doorsteps and slate roof tiles remember being solid rocks in the ground. Sweet and calming and juuuust a bit too slow and meditative for a newly-young crowd of our remaining younger siblings and babies after all the 4s have gone into kindergarden or all-day care. So pretty tho. Sent it home with one of our families to an older sibling who is sad to be growing up and missing storytime.

 

Tuesday Storytime: Grumpy Animals

Now that summer's over, our "trainee" has graduated to full storyteller status, and this is a delightful set of books this time around.

The Grumpy Pets
Kristine A. Lombardi
ISBN: 9781419718885
Billy is a grumpy kid, and he doesn't have anything in common with the desperately sweet and happy pets in the front of the pet store. But when he wanders into the back there's a new world of grumpy antisocial pets; just perfect for his personality! A cutely moody story illustrating that there's usually someone for everyone if you look long enough. Love this one.

Lazy Daisy, Cranky Frankie
Mary Ellen Jordan and Andrew Weldon
ISBN: 9780807544006
This farm is full of animals who really are just totally out of sorts, or simply uninterested in their normal farmyard functions. A bit surreal, but totally silly, and the animals' faces are delightful.

Grumpy Bird
Jeremy Tankard
ISBN: 9780439851473
Grumpy Bird is in a mood, and he's stalking through the forest being peevish, but his friends are there to help out, as annoying as that might be; until finally they manage to get through Grumpy Bird's grump and all have a good time. This is one I suggested, and while I'm delighted with the match-up choices, I am a bit sad to not get to read it myself.

Tuesday Storytime: Back to Nature

Got some very nice naturalist/nature books newly in to the library and wanted to show them off for our parents: all of them got checked out afterwards by storytimers!

Out of School and Into Nature: the Anna Comstock Story
Suzanne Slade, illustrated by Jessica Lanan
ISBN: 9781585369867
Biography of famous early American naturalist and scientist Anna Comstock, and her crusade to learn more about the natural world, and to share it with students in the most inspiring and personal ways possible. A BIT pedantic at times, but overall very nicely presented. The illustrations and text effects are very attractively done.

Fantastic Flowers
Susan Stockdale
ISBN: 9781561459520
Such a clever and cute nonfiction book! Very light on the text, but takes longer to read because the kids were really interested and invested in the concepts. Stockdale takes a whole lot of plants with evocative names, and illustrates them in a way that really foregrounds the name-sake. The pictures are beautiful and vibrant and enormous, and there are actual photographs of the flowers at the end of the book. Really well done.

Lola Plants a Garden
Anna McQuinn, illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw
ISBN: 9781580896948
I love Lola and her little brother, and the stories Anna tells about them are just perfect. This time Lola is inspired by the Mary Mary Quite Contrary nursery rhyme, and uses that as the basis for her own flower garden that she designs and implements step by step with Mommy and Daddy (using resource books from the library, of course!) and then celebrates with friends and garden veggies.

Tuesday Storytime: Summer Daze

It's that lovely time between Summer Reading and fall, so it's almost like a second summer, where we aren't restricted to the summer reading theme. So that means lots of fun summery books.

Maisy Goes on Vacation
Lucy Cousins
ISBN: 9780763647520
Maisy the mouse goes on vacation to the beach, with the anticipation, packing, travel (a train ride in this case), and hotel stay all preceding a trip to the beach with friends.

Summer Days and Nights
Wong Herbert Yee
ISBN: 9780805090789
A tiny book that packs a great big nostalgic punch. Fuzzy grainy paintings appear summer-hazy as we follow a girl through a green and gold summer day into a warm cozy summer night of fireflies and late bedtimes. Very sweet and really attractive.

And Then Comes Summer
Tom Brenner, illustrated by Jaime Kim
ISBN: 9780763660710
This book is a straight-up When This Happens / Then This Happens, all on a summery theme. Very anticipatory, and lots of fun, as we follow through a set of summer activities (stereotypical or iconic, depending on how much you like summer rituals). We get fishing, parades, ice-cream trucks and camping, and more. Cute and vivacious.

Tuesday Storytime: Our place in the cosmos

Ok fine, it's not the snappiest of themes, but I wanted to end our exploration of space with a reminder that we have a place in the universe, and that the world (and their own lives) are a part of the vastness of space. Yes, I'm a huge softy and the kids won't even notice or care, but I think it's important.

Light up the Night
Jean Reidy, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine
ISBN: 9781423120247
A black-haired boy goes to bed and he and his shape-shifting quilt take a tour of the universe from stars down to his own hometown and bedroom, in a "house that Jack built" sort of cumulative tale of shrinking down reference frames. The very end opens back out into space and slows the tempo way back down. Seems short and snappy til you read it, then it's pretty long and repetitive, but it's still a solid read for this age-group.

The Night Sky
Robin Nelson (photographs and diagrams by various contributors and sources)
ISBN: 9780761345770
There needs to be a book in this series about every nonfiction topic under the sun. It's short, sweet, clear, the pictures and diagrams are phenomenal, and basically it's just perfect. We learn about the moon and how it cycles through phases.

Our Solar System (board-book)
Peter and Connie Roop
ISBN: 9781454914181
Also perfect, but in board-book/lift-the-flap format! A "shaped" board-book where each consecutive spread is a slightly larger cross-section, and slightly further out from the center, starting with a sun-shaped circle to begin with, and ending with Neptune at the furthest reaches (sorry Pluto) and a shout-out to the updated memory catchphrase "My Very Excellent Mother..." Really beautiful, an excellent concept, executed beautifully.

And that does it for summer reading and for space this year (until I decide to do one on my own, just because I like space). Tune in next week to see the third set of self-selected books by our trainee storytimer!

Tuesday Storytime: Peaceful Moon

A trio of peaceful, gentle, moon-centered stories. Another that would have gone delightfully with this theme is Floyd Cooper's beautiful sepia-toned Max and the Tag-Along Moon, but it was just a smidge too long, and I wanted to try and include a nonfiction title as often as I could with these themed storytimes.

Footprints on the Moon 
Mark Haddon, illustrated by Christian Birmingham
ISBN: 9780763644406
The author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time presents a lyrical  (and hella long, but we skipped pages like mad) exploration of watching the original moon landing, and being comforted by knowing that regardless of the changes here on earth, the footprints on the moon will endure for centuries.

Moon Plane
Peter McCarty
ISBN: 0805079432
A small boy watches a plane fly at night and spins a fantasy about flying up to the moon.


Kitten's First Full Moon
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: 9780060588281
Kitten wanders around in a luminous night and has kitten-sized adventures chasing after the "little bowl of milk" that is the full moon, having a few accidents, but ending safely at home.

Tuesday Storytime: Fairy Tales - IN SPACE!

Yeah I know, super original. They're so cute I couldn't resist.

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot
Margaret McNamara, illustrated by Mark Fearing
ISBN: 9780375866890
The three little pigs are a bit wider-ranging in this planet-hopping version that replaces the big bad wolf with a clanky cranky robot. Bork, Gork, and Nklxwycz (good luck with that one, I went with Nickle-zee-wits) each build their houses, and in turn the robot smashes them all to bits, until the last house defeats it and becomes home sweet home. Cool visuals and planetary references actually attempt to be factual, although that tidbit is most probably lost on the young audiences I have.

Best Frints in the Whole Universe
Antoinette Portis
ISBN: 9781626721364
Best frints on planet Boborp have sharp teef and really short tempers, so friendship is a perilous thing, especially when one frint shmackles the other frint's brand new spossip. (Trust me, by the time you get to that point, you'll get it with no trouble.) But a bit of taypo and some twire, and maybe a little bit of friendship (and a game of eye-ball) and things are as good as new (except for the poor spossip). Some very knowing winks towards the adults in this one.

Interstellar Cinderella
Deborah Underwood, illustrated by Meg Hunt
ISBN: 9781452125329
Down and dirty Cinderella is a spaceship mechanic in this version (strong shades of Kaylee Frye from Firefly here) and her family dumps her right before the big royal spaceship parade. A bit of help from a robot rat and a fairy god-robot (and her own know-how) has Cinderella fixing the Prince's ship in no time, and then he has to search for the girl of his dreams (he makes the evil step-sisters try to fix a broken ship!) and the whole fun romp ends with a lovely tongue-in-cheek commentary:
She landed right beside the Prince. / "That wrench is mine!" she cried.
She quickly fixed the ailing ship. / The prince said, "Be my bride!"
She thought this over carefully. / Her family watched in panic.
"I'm far too young for marriage / but I'll be your chief mechanic!"

Tuesday Storytime: Summer Reading: Not Quite Space

Sometimes imagination can be better than facts, and outer space provides plenty of "scope for the imagination" as Ann of Green Gables would have said. These stories show the kinds of fun you can have when you blast off - even if you never really leave the ground.

No, No, Kitten!
Shelley Moore Thomas, illustrated by Lori Nichols
ISBN: 9781620916315
Kitten keeps getting into things, but she's not being naughty just to be bad - she's got BIG plans.

Planet Kindergarten
Sue Ganz-Schmitt, illustrated by Shane Prigmore
ISBN: 978145211893
Cute kid heads off to "planet kindergarten" for his first mission with his new crewmates. Very well-executed premise, just a couple of groaners or really stretched concepts.

Otter in Space
Sam Garton
ISBN: 9780062247766
I only recently discovered Otter and Otter Keeper, and oh my goodness am I in love. (Don't keep otters for pets tho, seriously - they'll destroy your house and be unhappy.) But in this fictional universe, Otter is a bored stay-at-home pet who manages to subvert his daily activities into environment-destroying fun every single time. In this installment, Otter has discovered space, and he's headed to the moon for a moon rock.

Tuesday Storytime: Seeing Stars

A good set of books today, for a fairly large crowd.

Our Stars

Anne Rockwell

ISBN: 0152018689

Lovely factual and old-fashioned book examines stars, the sun, planetary and lunar orbits, comets, meteors (shooting stars), and constellations in clear illustrations and simple age-appropriate language, using the correct terms and explaining them straightforwardly.

The Sun is my Favorite Star

Frank Asch (Happy Birthday Moon)

ISBN: 0152021272

Skirt-wearing white child waxes lyrical about our own personal star: the sun. Beautiful fuzzy-edged and warm-toned imagery, and very short and sweet (and repetitive) sentences.

Fancy Nancy Sees Stars

Jane O'Connor, illustrated by Ted Enik (in the style of the original artist: Robin Preiss Glasser)

ISBN: 9780062572752

Fancy Nancy loves fancy words, and also loves stars. Her class is headed for a night trip to the planetarium when disaster strikes and the trip is cancelled, but her family makes the best of it (as they always do) and the class trip is saved (perhaps by a wish on a shooting star?)

Tuesday Storytime: SRP Space: Rockets Away!

First set of books bequeathed to my trainee: rocketry is cool and fun. I don't blame her at all for choosing these for her first round.

The Moon (a Bamboo and Friends book)
Felicia Law, illustrated by Nicola Evans
ISBN: 1404812822
Bamboo and friends admire the moon and then take an imaginary rocket journey up to see it.Very cute combo of nonfictional information and cute preschool thinking styles.

On the Launch Pad (a counting book about rockets)
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Derrick Alderman and Denise Shea
ISBN: 1404805818
Counting down the iconic 10, 9, 8 with really good pictures and informational text, and a fun horizontal spread at the end that requires you to turn the whole book sideways.

Roaring Rockets
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 061388857X
Trippy wordplay and anthropormorphic animals traveling up to the moon and back down into a splashdown in the ocean.

Tuesday Storytime: Summer Reading Program theme is SPACE! This week: Going to the Moon

Last week was CRAZY!

Still, storytime was fun and we did our first round of space books. I mixed things up a bit, because with a trainee storyteller on board, I feel obligated to give her the first choice of the summer-reading space-themed book sets so she can continue to feel as comfortable and engaged as possible while she's still on-boarding during this first summer. So that means she grabbed all the "good" sets I picked out and worked into coherent and easy fun themes. Ah well. I didn't have time this spring to plan things as far ahead as I would have liked, so it only seems right that I should suffer instead of my trainee.

What that means in practice is that all the "odd" sets or themes that are slightly too long or too advanced conceptually, those are on me this summer. I really wish there were more nonfiction books designed for very young readers and listeners. There's just so much for older elementary school kids, and just a drought for the little preschoolers, and especially for things like space and dinosaurs and sharks, they WANT good nonfiction: I just don't have access to it to give it to them.

Our first space adventure is going to the moon! I had only two books this time: I read the Kellog tome as both the first and last book, splitting it up right before the kid lands on the moon, and reading Barton's book in the middle as a bit of a break.

If You Decide To Go To The Moon
Faith McNulty, illustrated by Steven Kellog
ISBN: 9780590483599
Beautiful Kellogian spreads of space and lunar landscapes and a stirring and somewhat preachy return to earth.

I Want to be an Astronaut
Byron Barton
ISBN: 9780064432801
Barton's minimalism works really well for this aspirational declaration of all the things the potential (female?) astronaut wants to accomplish. Stark and powerful and colorful.

Tuesday Storytime: Dogs

We decided to give it one last week to let our trainee get one more set of self-selected books done before the summer: our kickoff is later this week, so we had a bit of wiggle room to work with.

Dog's Colorful Day

Emma Dodd

ISBN: 0142500194

Cartoony oversized style, with messy colors all around. Silly fun, especially since all the colorful spots are perfectly round and perfectly colored in, regardless of their sources (grass stains, chocolate smears, pollen). 

Spot's First Walk

Eric Hill

ISBN: 0399208380

Spot takes a walk through the yard and around the garden and pond in this lift-the-flap book. 

I Don't Want a Posh Dog!

Emma Dodd

ISBN: 9780316033909

Slightly more refined art than the first one in this trio, but still messy and colorful. A girl runs through all the types of dogs that she isn't interested in, with lots of funny illustrations of them all.

Tuesday Storytime: Firefighters

Back to me again, and a theme I had prepped waaaaaay back in February. It's been waiting patiently, and I figure it's a great one for a big boisterous crowd like today. It's also our last self-pick theme before our Summer Reading kicks off next week and we move into all sorts of Space books.

Fire! ¡Fuego! Brave Bomberos!
Susan Middleton Elya, illustrated by Dan Santat
ISBN: 9781599904610
Multi-ethnic and male/female fire-fighter crew rescues a cat from a burning building. Santat's illustrations are as always rich and vibrant and lively, with animated faces and postures, and vivid environments.


Fireman Small
Wong Herbert Yee
ISBN: 0395689872
Probably my most-used picture book. I just love how sweet and calming the repetitive portions are, and how simple and easily-understood the fire-fighter's work is, and the pause for gratitude and community at the end. Sweet and unassuming, but classic quality.

Fire Engine No. 9
Mike Austin
ISBN: 9780553510959
"wordless" in the sense that there are a lot of onomatopoeic bits, and lots of sound, but the "story" is carried by the illustrations and the sound effects. There is "soot" on the pages, and the illustrations are gritty and punchy - a few kids were visibly slightly distressed at various pages (the window-breaking was cause for a good bit of verbalized concern) but everything ends well and the endpages have interesting (ie distracting) equipment to distract away from fears or intense feelings.

Tuesday Storytime: Scaly Friends

This is the second set of picks from our trainee, and these are all very cute. They acknowledged that they'd possibly do better to split them up into different themes for each type of scaly friend (we have alligators, dragons, and dinosaurs represented) but that they liked them and liked the thought of doing two of their own sets of picks in a row. These DID end up a little on the long side all matched together, but not insurmountably so, and they noticed that as well, so a good training experience all around.

If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur
Linda Bailey, illustrated by Colin Jack
ISBN: 9781770495685
Very bright dinosaurs in otherwise mundane environments, getting used for all sorts of chores or tasks. The idea is very Flintstones, but the execution is closer to Family Guy. EXCELLENT facial expressions all around, and funny page-spreads of visual jokes.

Gator Dad
Brian Lies
ISBN: 9780544534339
Gator Dad is taking his kids out for a day of adventures. Slightly smaltzy but saved by the protagonists being alligators, and by a series of misadventures along the way. Beautiful artwork, but a little bit on the dark side (visually speaking).

Me and My Dragon
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580892780
I've done this one recently, but it was far enough back that I felt ok with it being used again. Love the ambiguity of the protagonist kid (brownish and with floppy hair) and the mundane chores of pet-ownership filtered through the prism of a baby dragon. Useful lessons in a cute package.

Tuesday Storytime: Monkeys

Storytime duties are getting shared with another trainee, and this is her first set of selections, and I think they're a great first choice. Monkeys are a perennial favorite (also see sharks, fire-trucks, and dinosaurs) and these three are cute and a show off a lovely spectrum of styles.

What Do You Say When a Monkey Acts This Way? 
Jane Belk Moncure, illustrated by Terri Super
ISBN: 0516057448
Moncure's books all have a very classic 1970s-80s Little Golden Book sort of "teaching" vibe to them, whether they are manners books or books about the alphabet or about phonics. Despite that, they're cute and repetitive in a good way, and clear and have attractive simplistic images. Here we have a young monkey acting in normal heedless ways, until other monkeys prompt it to behave more pro-socially: saying thanks and please, sharing and being respectful. The monkey goes to visit the grandparents at the end, and proves all the lessons well-learned.

The Monkey Goes Bananas
C. P. Bloom, illustrated by Peter Raymundo
ISBN: 9781419708855
Graphic-novel style, with very few words (leading to a lot of "filling in" to keep the younger ones clear on what's going on. Monkey lives on a small island, and there is a bunch of bananas on a neighbor island. Unfortunately there is a shark in the water. Monkey tries various plots to get the bananas, with a cute but very obvious twist at the end.

How to Lose a Lemur
Frann Preston-Gannon
ISBN: 9781454911319
Slightly oversized pictures and very cute lemurs (not exactly monkeys, but I'm not going to quibble) follow a boy who is searching over the whole world for friends, only to get lost and realize that perhaps those pesky lemurs might be what he's been looking for. Very cute and very sweet. Love the art-style of textured painting and collage pieces.

Tuesday Storytime: Gone Swimming

As the weather warms up, the chances of my storytime families getting involved in swimming lessons or simply trips to the pool goes way up. These are calming and ultimately fact-based "experiences" stories to help manage expectations and fears, and provide touch-points to reference later.

Maisy Learns to Swim
Lucy Cousins
ISBN: 9780763634800
Maisy is a popular mouse character done in faux naive childish style with heavy borders and bright colors. Like if someone did a Byron Barton book, but were a bit scribbly about it. In this particular installment, Maisy and her friends go to a swimming lesson, going through all the generally accepted motions thereupon. Everyone is excited and happy and successful, and the story ends with warm towels and hot showers.

Leo Can Swim
Anna McQuinn, illustrated by Ruth Hearson
ISBN:
9781580897259
Leo is Lola's little brother, and Lola is the Black protagonist of a set of slightly older-aimed experience books set in England. Those and Leo's books have only recently migrated across the pond, and I'm very glad they did. I love having poc in my stories, especially when that isn't the focus of the story. Here, Leo is obviously an infant, and he's attending baby swim class with his Daddy. (Also a great touch.) Once again all the general descriptive steps are there: from getting dressed to the different parts of the class to the shower and lotion and nap afterwards. Sweet sweet illustrations.

Sergio Makes a Splash
Edel Rodriguez
ISBN: 9780316066167
Sergio is a baby penguin, and his class takes their first field trip to the ocean, but Sergio can't swim. He's outfitted with swimmies, a lifejacket, and a swim ring, an encouraging teacher, enthusiastic friends, and a nicely-illustrated bit of positive self-talk, which I like to see modeled, so he's ready to tackle his fear. The ending is a BIT of a let-down, but it's still solid enough to be enjoyable.

Tuesday Storytime. Excellent Eggs

This was supposed to be the storytime for the Tuesday after Easter, but we had a slight technical difficulty and so it got used today. Example #three-million-and-one for why I do slightly off-note storytimes when I can for holidays or themed days; I can re-use general egg storytimes, but Easter storytimes are a little harder to explain three weeks after the fact. :)


An Egg is Quiet
Dianna Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long
ISBN: 9780811844284
Beautiful nonfiction picture book showcasing the diversity and beauty of eggs. Really lovely and lyrical and fantastic; while being absolutely grounded in reality and information. Perfect layout to choose what age-group or complexity-level to engage with, which makes it a great school pick.

Egg
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: 9780062408723
Almost wordless picture book with comic-book framing on several pages (it's like a gentle version of a Mo Willems Pigeon book) tell the story of four eggs and their slightly diverging paths through life. The "mystery" got a lot of traction from my audience, and there were several exlaims of shock and interest. Always a great thing to get from a storybook.

The Egg
M. P. Robertson
ISBN: 0803725469
While I appreciate the mystery of the egg-hatching as much as anyone (especially when it makes an impact like it did today on an appreciative audience) I have to say that this particular book for some reason is THE HARDEST to find when you don't remember the author's name! Librarian Problems. Anyway. George (first clue) finds a GIANT egg under his mom's favorite chicken (love that detail) and proceeds to play mommy for the fantastic find. A really sweet and funny and beautifully illustrated fairy tale ensues, and one that's actually short enough to read during storytime! One of my all-time favorite picture books, even if I do forget the author's name all the time.

Tuesday Storytime: Tickles and Tumbles

Three cute ones, and they all start with the letter T, in addition to being about tickling and teasing and tumbling around. I have way too much fun sometimes finding these sets of books.

Tweak Tweak
Eve Bunting, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier
ISBN: 9780618998517
Baby elephant goes Tweak Tweak on mama's tail every time they come across anything new and interesting. Mama is tolerant and gentle and explains the differences between what can and can't be done, while suggesting alternative actions that CAN be taken. Very gentle and illuminating, and the illustrations are just plain cute.


Tickle, Tickle
Helen Oxenbury
ISBN: 9780689819856 (board book format, ISBN not on book itself)
Oxenbury crafts a cute but VERY short book with diverse babies and young toddlers all getting tickled and having fun. Sweet.


Tumble Bumble
Felicia Bond
ISBN: 9781886910157 (make sure to get the original hardcover, not the board book - it's sooo tiny)
Bears and alligators and cats and pigs and frogs and mice and bugs and one little boy Oh My! It's a tumble-bumble world for these animals as they bumble through the streets and through a house and into bed. Excellent "scaffolding" story, and lots of fun language.

Tuesday Storytime: Fish Tales

Some weird and wacky and audience-responsive storytime books today, perfect for a big crowd with lots of bored older siblings and off-kilter schedules due to spring break week.

Paul Meets Bernadette
Rosy Lamb
ISBN: 9780763661304
Paul is a goldfish in a classic goldfish bowl (don't do that to your fish, kids) and he swims in circles: lots of different kinds of circles, but just circles. Until Bernadette "drops in" and he learns to look outside the fish bowl at the wide and wild world, which, in Bernadette's interpretations, is a bit wilder and more wonderful than perhaps it truly is. Parents enjoyed the subtext of falling in love, and kids LOVED Bernadette being wrong about everything.

Poor Little Guy
Elanna Allen
ISBN: 9780525428251
Is there such a thing a "aqua-toned"? because if so, the only "color" in our aqua toned book is our small yellow protagonist, the assumed "poor little guy" who is not enjoying his role in a series of bullying games played by a hungry octopus. Unfortunately for the octopus, our protagonist is a puffer fish, and the "poor little guy" becomes clear at the end.  Make sure to check out the end-pages here, and be aware that the first five or so spreads are wordless, so be prepared to improvise narration or to ask the audience for their input.

I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean
Kevin Sherry
ISBN: 9780803731929
Our really enthusiastic (and frankly a bit annoying and childlike) protagonist here is a bright blue giant squid, who is just thrilled to be bigger than all the things he points out in the ocean, until he is resting complacently in his bigness and something else comes by. Without spoiling, he is NOT the biggest thing in the ocean, but he does find something new to be enthusiastic about in his altered situation at the end of the book.

Tuesday Storytime: Bathtime

Found a very cute picture book, and just couldn't resist building a storytime around it.

Bears in the Bath
Shirley Parenteau, illustrated by David Walker
ISBN: 9780763664183
Pastel colored baby bears all have great fun in their various activities, getting quite messy in their individually rhyming ways, until Big Brown Bear (identified as a he in the book, but easily adaptable) drags them all squirming back to the tub to clean off, with Big Brown Bear getting equally messy as a result, and needing a bath as well.

Time for a Bath
Phillis Gershator, illustrated by David Walker
ISBN: 9781454910329
Yeah I know, I try not to have duplicate illustrators or authors, but every once in a while it just seems inevitable. Once again in pastels, but this time at least pastels in greys and creams, with a baby bunny who gets oh so dirty, no matter what he and mommy bunny do. What else is there to do but take a nice bath after every activity? Short, sweet, and rhyming.

The Pigeon Needs a Bath!
Mo Willems
ISBN: 9781423190875
I do love Mo Willems, but I tend to try and avoid his books for storytime, because I feel like he's one of the few modern picture book writers who end up being known well enough that kids will come across either Pigeon, Elephant and Piggie, or Knuffle Bunny all on their own, and I can use my platform to show off lesser-known but equally excellent books. Still, when you have a perfect fit, you have a perfect fit, and the Pigeon definitely fits. He is QUITE dirty, and determined not to take a bath, for various excellent toddler-style reasons. Of course he changes his mind in the end, but the persuading is most of the fun.

Tuesday Storytime: Bugs

Spring is officially here, and it's beautifully warm outside, and that means the bugs are out in full force. No better time to feature them in a storytime!

The Caterpillow Fight
Sam McBratney, illustrated by Jill Barton
ISBN: 1564028046
ADORABLE young caterpillars rile up and whale away with their 'caterpillows' in this tongue-twisty rhyme, at least until Big Caterpillar makes them settle down, and removes temptation in a clever way.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Lorianne Siomades
ISBN: 1563977273
I have yet to be able to get through this book without singing, but its a great way to model prediction and "what comes next" for the kids, because they all know (and sing) it along with the page turns. There's one glitch where a wordless spread precedes "out comes the sun" that ALWAYS causes hiccups. Still cute and fun. One of the only books I can do about spiders because the little guy is amazingly inoffensively non-spidery.

The Very Ugly Bug
Liz Pichon
ISBN: 9781589250482
A very ugly bug doesn't have plant-mimicking body parts like a leafy-green back, or wings to fly away into the sky, so how is she to avoid getting eaten by a big hungry bird? She tries a disguise and fake wings, but that fails spectacularly. A fun story, and a good lesson that "ugly" is only in your perception.

Tuesday Storytime: puddles!

My only regret for this set of books is that Rain Feet is suuuuch a small board book. I really wish that more of them were a bit closer in size to regular picture books.

Muddypaws
Moira Butterfield, illustrated by Simon Mendez
ISBN: 9781407518404
Sweet nameless puppy gets muddy in all sorts of interesting contexts.

Rain Feet
Angela Johnson, illustrated by Rhonda Mitchell
ISBN: 0531068498
A sweet little Black boy (context not clear so can't tell if AA or otherwise). Bright colors, sweet face.

Puddle
Hyewon Yum
ISBN: 9780374316952
Story-within-a-story of an evolving drawing on a rainy day of a boy and his mom and their dog.

Tuesday Storytime: More and Too Many

I really enjoy doing concept themes, and this one is a fun set.

Just Enough And Not Too Much
Kaethe Zemach
ISBN: 0439377242
Simon the Fiddler has everything he needs, but then he realizes he can get more if he wants, and pretty soon, more has become too much, and he needs a clever plan to get rid of all the things he doesn't really need. His solution is storybook cute, but unlikely to win friends in real life.


Henry Wants More
Linda Ashman, illustrated by Brooke Boynton Hughes
ISBN: 9780385385121
Very like my favorite sweet picture book (Again! by John Prater) Henry is a toddler that wants MORE of whatever is going on, and he wears out his whole family in the process. Cute and very real.


Too Many Frogs
Sandy Asher, illustrated by Keith Graves
ISBN: 0399239782
Rabbit has his habits and his routine, and they're perfect, until Frog comes by and just invites himself along for everything - and THEN starts inviting the whole Frog clan! Enough is enough, but Rabbit balances boundaries with kindness.

Tuesday Storytime: Beach Day

It's been so bloody warm lately that I just felt like I had to.

Surf's Up
Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Daniel Miyares
ISBN: 9780735842205
Orange and Green frog are headed to the beach, but distracted by the tale of Moby Dick. A celebratory look at reading and of the beach.

Beach Baby 
Laurie Elmquist, illustrated by Elly MacKay
ISBN: 9781459809543 (board book format)
Sweet, soft, gentle, soothing. Spreads of gentle beach scenes paired with comforting assurances that baby won't miss anything while asleep. A bit on the quiet side for my group today.

Beach Day!
Patricia Lakin, illustrated by Scott Nash
ISBN: 0803728948
Repetitive and simplistic (large) type indicate it's mostly for beginning readers, but past the repetition, Sam and Pam, Will and Jill have a lovely full day trying (and mostly failing) to get to the beach.

Tuesday Storytime: Chickens

A bit off the beaten track, but hey, Chickens and baby chicks!

A Chicken Followed Me Home
Robin Page
ISBN: 9781481410281
Nonfiction Q&A style fact-book targeted at the very youngest readers/listeners. Very good info, well presented.

Big Fat Hen
Keith Baker
ISBN: 0152928693
The classic counting rhyme gets a facelift with a slightly-oversized bright collection of spreads.

Big Red Barn
Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Felicia Bond
ISBN: 9780060207489
A sweet and gentle look at a person-free day on the farm with animals and their babies.

Tuesday Storytime: Rainy Day

It's the time of year for random rain showers, and there are always so many good rain books floating around.  :)

The Cloud Princess
Khoa Le
ISBN: 9781608877317
Cloud Princess is always lonely and curious about the world, but she dissolves into rain when she gets too close.

Rain
Robert Kalan, illustrated by Donald Crews
ISBN: 0688841392
Simplistic, word-centered (the rain in the illustrations is the word RAIN repeated like thousands of tiny raindrops) and beautifully, simply colorful.

Puddles!!!
Kevan Atteberry
ISBN: 9780062307842
The bunny-loving monster is back, and this time there's a rainstorm, with puddles, mud, and THUNDER! Loud noises are scary even for monsters!

Tuesday Storytime: Valentines Day

I'm always unreasonably pleased when we have a storytime that actually falls on the day of the celebratory event of the season.  This time around we get an actual Valentine's Day storytime, and I had such fun.

Catching Kisses
Amy Gibson, illustrated by Marie Van Lieshout
ISBN: 9780312376475
A sweet tour of United States landmarks following kisses as they blow through the air.

This is a sweet book, and I'm happy to use it on Valentine's Day. We follow various kisses as they travel on the wind between people, and to the hearts of the ones who catch them. Beautiful and charming, and the illustrations of the landmarks kept the adult attention while the little ones pondered all the different types of kisses there were.


Together
George Ella Lyon, illustrate by Vera Rosenberry
ISBN: 0531070476
A pair of young girlfriends play happily together in various imaginative and fantastical scenarios.

A gleeful set of girls plays merrily through the pages of this sweet and fanciful book, where the two of them divide tasks into parts. "I'll find the ball if you'll call the team" and then once together they play at their games, always with the refrain "Let's put our heads together and dream the same dream" across a spread of even more imaginary landscapes. Sweet, visually interesting, and open-hearted.


Love Monster and the Last Chocolate
Rachel Bright
ISBN: 9780374346904
Love Monster has a box of chocolates and an eternal dilemma: should he share them?

The Love Monster is back from vacation to find a box of chocolates on his doorstep. He's delighted, because Love Monsters LOVE chocolates, especially certain kinds. But his glee is soon mired in guilt - he SHOULD probably share with his friends. But if he does, what if there aren't enough to go around? What if someone takes the one he likes best? What if the only one left is COFFEE flavored? What if there isn't one left AT ALL?? Oh dear. Sharing is hard. but Monster comes out on the caring side of things and discovers his friends are sweet and thoughtful too. No word on what happens when two monsters share the same favorite chocolate type.

Tuesday Storytime: Valentine's Animals

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Our trainee has moved on to different roles in a different location, so I'm back to the primary storytime presenter for now, with the hope of sharing the load evenly with our eventual new person.

For now tho, I had a lovely first day back in the groove with sweet valentine's day books and an actual craft for once (creating valentine's day cards for in-patient children at a nearby hospital).

Thank You Bear
Greg Foley
ISBN: 9780670061655
Bear finds a present for Mouse, but a slew of "friends" aren't very nice about the present. Is it good enough?

I love this because it's very clear and obvious that the friends aren't being friendly, and what impact that has on the poor Bear. In the end, Mouse is delighted with the gift, and the nay-saying others are forgotten or disregarded, as they should be.

Like Likes Like
Chris Raschka
ISBN: 0789481898
Poor cat is alone and lonely in a world of couples and groups. Then he finds a "like" animal to like.

This cat seriously has the saddest facial expressions I've ever seen in my whole life. He's SOOOO SAD! He wanders around lonely, sleeps lonely, and his world, even in a bed of roses, is sad and lonely. Then he finds another like him, and everything springs into happiness. Is it trite and cliche and simplistic and perhaps a bit too cloying at times? Yep. But is all of that par for the course around valentine's day? Absolutely. This one is sweet and happy-hearted, and I love it.

Bear in Love
Daniel Pinkwater, illustrated by Will Hillenbrand
ISBN: 9780763645694
I have gushed about this one before in person, but I don't think it's been listed here yet.

Bear finds a series of gifts (mostly edible) left outside his cave, and begins to reciprocate for his mysterious admirer friend. Eventually after a long process of exchanging gifts, the two meet and a sweet love story blooms. There is even a bit of subversive subtext as the bear's admirer is a bunny, and we never see any sign of gender.  It's cute, but be aware that the bear "sings songs" nearly on every spread, which for me are sing-song little cutesy things, but might give some storytellers or readers hives, or make them nervous.

Tuesday Storytime: Animals Behaving Oddly

A fun theme, and our trainee is starting to relax into storytime a bit: doing sound effects and animal noises, trying out different voices for characters. Very nice progress, and good to see him enjoying the process a bit now that it's not so new and intimidating.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild

Peter Brown

ISBN: 9780316200639

Mr. Tiger lives in an anthropomorphic Victorian city, but he decides to get back to nature instead.

This one is a read from a Summer Reading Program a few years back, and I've liked it since I first saw it.

The Crocodile Who Didn't Like Water

Gemma Merino

ISBN: 9780735841635

Baby croc doesn't like water, and doesn't fit in, until he realizes something very important.

This one also was a past summer reading hit, and it's very cute and has a fun twist at the end.

It's Only Stanley

Jon Agee

ISBN: 9780803739079

Stanley is the family dog, and he has some very interesting (and noisy) late night hobbies.

Agee does very interesting work: feels very much like "classics" from the 70s, I love that all the effort was for love of a moon-dog. That makes me quite delighted.

Tuesday Storytime: Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are always a hit.

How Do Dinosaurs Play with their Friends? (board book edition)

Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mark Teague

ISBN: 043985654X

One of the more obviously moralistic of the "How Do Dinosaurs..." series offers conflict resolution in a dino-sized package.

This board book version MIGHT be shorter than the regular one - it's been a long time since I looked through it and I can't remember.  Regardless, there is no story to speak of, just narration of what a dino does with his friends: does he hog the swings? or pout and grump? or refuse to share? Of Course Not! Dinosaurs are GOOD friends, and so they share, and take turns, and respect other people's feelings. About half the book is spent on the bad examples, and about half on the good examples, which is a good flow for storytime, but I'm not so sure it's better for moral impressions. (Psychologically speaking things go better when ONLY the good examples are presented, oddly enough.)

Dinosaur Roar!

Paul & Henrietta Stickland

ISBN: 061335933X

One of my all time favorite dino books.  Lots of dinos, lots of compare and contrast words, so short.

I love this book so much. It's short and simple and rhythmic and the contrast words are delightful vocabulary: "dinosaur fierce, dinosaur meek... dinosaur clean, and dinosaur slimy... dinosaur spiky and dinosaur lumpy..." with just absolutely perfect bright clear colorful images and expressive faces and bodies. Really delightful, I don't even care that there's not a story there.

Dinotrux

Chris Gall

ISBN: 9780316027779

What's better than dinosaurs? Dinosaurs that are ALSO heavy construction equipment, obviously!

These steamy meany stompy powerful things are Dinotrux, and they're not playing around - life is hard work, and they're gonna get things done! Each dino-machine combo has an appropriately-dinosaurific name: "dumplododucus" "garbageadon" "semisaurs" and gets a spread to themselves or shared with another complementary mecha (they seem like mecha to me) talking about their prehistoric lives and work.  The (cute but unnecessary) catch at the end is that over the eons, they've evolved into the current batch of "tame" construction vehicles that people work with every day.  

Tuesday Storytime: Bedtime Stories

There comes a time in all novice storytellers' development when they realize that the established routines of bedtime can be gleefully pilfered for storytime themes, and thus we have our trainee's first Bedtime Storytime theme.  :)

Time to Say Goodnight
Sally Lloyd-Jones, illustrated by Jane Chapman
ISBN: 9780060543303
Forest animals in Chapman's sweet style all share bedtime rituals with their young ones.

Lovely sweet book, good length, lots of lovely animals  (including some nighttime animals having a "breakfast" storytime) are all out in natural habitats, but at the end there's a bit of a twist, as the animals all turn to ask a question of the audience/reader, revealing a child in bed surrounded by stuffed forest animals, from the classic floppy bunny and stuffed bear to a mascot-looking cardinal and a beanie-baby-style deer. Rhyming quatrains on each spread make for a sweet lilting cadence, but some of the meter is a bit forced, and there are word-choices that caused some stumbles, despite preparations. Personally, I think I would have switched the places of this one and Close Your Eyes and had this one to close up with, but that's more individual taste than anything else.  

Sweet Dreams, Maisy
Lucy Cousins
ISBN: 0763628743
Another in the everlasting Maisy series, this one tackles bedtime by verbalizing sweet general rituals.

Very short, and very Maisy, with colorblocked sections and wide shaky cartoon borders around everything. Maisy and Panda are getting ready for bed, and go through a quick run-down narrating the various comforting steps to sleep, from admiring the sunset and the rising moon, to bedtime stories and songs, to bedtime benedictions (from moon and stars, rather than any religious affiliation).


Close Your Eyes
Kate Banks, illustrated by Georg Hallensleben
ISBN: 9780374313821
A cute little sloppy-painted tiger cub tries in vain to avoid bedtime by listing all the things he'll miss, but his clever mother reminds him all those things will be in his dreams.

Sweet but a leeeeetle bit on the long side. I think I would have done this one first, and let Chapman's sweet gentle art usher us out. Regardless, this one is sweet, and I love how the clever mom turns all of the reasons why the little tiger can't close his eyes back onto him. It does get a little repetitive, but the spreads are colorful and full of dreamlike imagery, which helps. It really doesn't SEEM that long on the face of it, but because there's no real narrative drive, and because it's so dreamlike and gentle, it takes longer to get through it, or it FEELS longer because it is so lilting and gentle.

Tuesday Storytime: Creativity Day

Chase's Calendar of Events is a dangerous tool, y'all.  Some day in January is "creativity day" so off we go!

The Dot

Peter H. Reynolds

ISBN: 0763619612

School-girl doesn't think she is artistic until she's encouraged, then passes the gift along.

Vashti can't draw, but at her teacher's gentle urging, she smacks an angry dot down on a page during art class. Her teacher has her sign it, and then the next day the page is framed and hanging behind the teacher's desk. Now Vashti's on her mettle; she can make a better dot than that! So she does, and learns about different artistic principles (my colleague and I discussed how every book about colors or painting feels incontrovertibly bound to have a section on blending primary colors to make secondary colors) and even art styles.  At the end, during a school art exhibit featuring her extensive works, she encounters another young boy who "can't draw." Vashti gets him to produce a signed squiggle, and the cycle begins again. A great storytime choice, but I do wish the book (or the pictures inside the book) were larger.

Duck! Rabbit! (boardbook)

Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld

ISBN (boardbook format): 9781452137339

Hinged on the "duck/rabbit" optical illusion, and a set of offscreen narrators.

CUTEST BOOK EVAR!  I love the arguments for the duck and rabbit, and the various pages where essentially the same picture is repeated over and over and over again with different backgrounds or verbal contexts forcing it to change what it is.  Totally went over the little kids' heads, but the adults were hooked.  A funny "twist" ending made them all crack up, and prompted a question about brachiosaurus.  Superb choice.  Nice and short and funny.  

The Adventures of Beekle, the Unimaginary Friend

Dan Santat

ISBN: 9780316199988

An imaginary friend gets sick of waiting to be imagined, so he sets off to find a friend.

This is the first book that has been one I would not choose myself.  See my initial impressions here if you like (I was unimpressed for various reasons) but I'll talk about it from a storytime perspective here.  Firstly, I initially thought it was too long, and I still think that.  If I had been using it, I would have placed this one first, and used The Dot as my last story. There was a lot of squirming and a lot of kids wandering off. That's something you pick up with experience tho - no way to really teach that juggle between stretching attention spans and keeping interest in the majority. That aside, the kids seemed to like the illustrations and the language was smooth and flowing. I don't know how much they understood the story, but there was a section in the middle that really dragged - the voyage and the initial foray into the city was just SLOW and ponderous. Lots of lost attention during that bit. Overall, not a bad storytime use, discounting the reservations I have about content that are mentioned in my own review.

Tuesday Storytime: Winter Holiday

For the first time in 9 years here, and (mumble mumble) years elsewhere, I'm stepping back from the storytime programming for a while, and training a fresh new person to the ropes.  They've been reading picture books and shadowing storytimes for a few months now, but a new year is a perfect time for new beginnings, so today is their first set of selections. From here forward, storytime selections will be theirs (guided by me, but ultimately selected by them) for as long as they're here at this location.

So, this development will actually be interesting for the purposes of reviewing, because I'll be looking at these books from a more neutral vantage - I won't be biased by having selected them myself. I'll get to see the books from a distance as they're read, so better see how the audience perceives them. I'll get to more clearly watch the reactions of the audience from a less distracted perspective. I think it's going to be a fun change in viewpoint.

So the first selection was "winter" themed, and ended up with the short middle read being a bit more of a 'holiday' book than a winter/outdoors/snowy theme, but I actually think that worked well.  Holidays are always rough on kids - they are anticipated for so long, then they're overwhelming and routine-scrambling, then they're over and packed away so quickly and it's like whiplashing back into sudden normalcy.  (Heck, that's stressful for me and I'm grown!) So I do actually like that this first winter story set has a reference to holiday festivities.

Mouse's First Snow
Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Buket Erdogan
ISBN: 9780689858369
Mouse and Poppa venture out into the snow for variations on snowy activities.

A very repetitive story has Mouse and Poppa out in the snow performing snowy-day activities in sequence: first Poppa does a thing, then Mouse repeats it.  There are lots of repeated action words in the story like "Plop Plop!" or "Swoosh! Swoosh! Swish!" that need a bit more dedication to the delivery to really make them pop, but that's something that comes with experience (it IS hard to do those sorts of things in front of other adults without practice and experience and a decent bit of either no cares given or vibrant self-esteem.)  Poppa's examples are uniformly beautiful and well-executed, and Mouse's are small and amateur, but still done functionally well.  At the end, they combine giant "snowballs" into a snow mouse that they decorate together. Cute, sweet, fun, wintry without being specific to a time or place. I like that it's a young person and a caregiving male figure; seeing Poppa either as Dad or Grandfather works in the story. A BIT on the short side for a first story, but again; choosing stories that are an appropriate length comes with experience.


Llama Llama Jingle Bells
Anna Dewdney  
ISBN: (boardbook format) 9780451469809
A cute and VERY SHORT addition to the llama llama books, focused on the more secular side of Christmas.

Very very short boardbook in about 5 spreads. This was a short read, especially after an already-short first book, but it is cute and thematic, and like I said, I like the impact of having a bit of acknowledgement of the holidays that are over now, just to give kids some processing space to handle the transition back to normal schedules. Rhyming couplets like all the other llama llama books go with really detailed pictures of secular(ish) Christmas activities like tree-decorating and shopping for presents. Cute, but don't expect content on the level of the actual llama llama books.  


Jingle-Jingle 
Nicola Smee
ISBN: 9781906250089
A winter themed sequel to Clip-Clop, and much more fun, in my opinion.

Cat, Dog, Pig, and Duck are off again with Mr Horse, this time on a winter sleigh ride that goes "Jingle Jingle" through the fields. (Again with the action words needing a bit more forceful delivery) Fun is had by all until they decide to all pile into the sleigh and toboggan down a hillside, where everyone tumbles out. This one is also a bit short, even though it's repetitive and a bit cumulative, where the animals are always called by individual moniker and the refrain "jingle jingle" shows up to mark the movement from spread to spread. Not the most inspiring story, but fun and simple, and the kids were very invested in the outcome of the snowy crash landing.