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.