Tuesday Storytime: Getting Along With Others

Ok fine, I'm a giant drag, I know. I use storytime to force my agenda of purposefully acquiring manners and learning cooperation and developing emotional regulation on 4 year olds. Sorry not sorry.

Do Unto Otters: A Book About Manners
Laurie Keller
ISBN: 9780805079968
What it says on the tin, basically. Rabbit discovers his new neighbors the Otters, and is concerned about them being good neighbors and good friends. He learns the maxim "Do Unto Otters" (you get the idea) and spends the book laying out what exactly, behavior-wise, that sort of thing entails. Really really good for being clear and obvious about social expectations while also being cute and tongue-in-cheek.

When Sophie Gets Angry
Molly Bang
ISBN: 9780590189798
Love how this book just straightforwardly deals with emotions, and shows a valid way of processing them out in nature, and shows the progression of a general upset from rage to anger to frustration to sadness to acceptance and re-integration into the original scene. It's a lot of really big concepts that are conveyed perfectly clearly through illustrations and colors and perspective, and carefully chosen child-level vocabulary. Classic and nonjudgmental.

llama llama and the bully goat
Anna Dewdney
ISBN: 9780670013951
Llama llama and his preschool class (and Zebra! preschool teacher) deal with a kid who is leaning into acting in bullying ways. The resolution is a leeeeetle bit too pat, but with kids this young, there's a fine line between being a bully and just being un-social and needing a bit of help. I'm choosing to view it as the second, and they're just using the bully terminology because the beginning of "here's how to handle this" is the same in both cases: advocate for yourself, use your words to clearly set boundaries, then involve a trusted adult or authority figure. After that if it really is a settled bully and not just a fellow kid having a singular bad day, things get a bit too complex for a book I'm willing to read in storytime.

Tuesday Storytime: Pets

A really stellar lineup from my coworker today: a trio of adorable animal books.

Zorro Gets an Outfit

Carter Goodrich

ISBN: 9781442435353

Zorro is an adorable pug dog, and he has been put into a superhero outfit, and the other dogs all laugh at him. He's inconsolable until another dog at the dog park shows up in a pirate outfit and just so happens to be a really cool dog - who likes Zorro's outfit! A good story about friendship and identity and feeling shame and pride.

Have You Seen My New Blue Socks

Eve Bunting, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier

ISBN: 9780547752679

Eve Bunting is channeling her Dr Seuss here, with a cute rhyming (perhaps just a slight bit tooo cutely rhyming) quick story about a forgetful and perhaps somewhat disorganized duck who has lost their new blue socks somewhere. A progressively-further-unlaced shoe provides a tiny visual clue about the location of the socks as the story goes on.

Papillon Goes to the Vet (The Very Fluffy Kitty)

A. N. Kang

ISBN: 9781484728819

This is the cutest book about a very fluffy kitty with a very unrealistic story of what happens at a vet's office, but it's ok, because it's adorable. Papillon is soooo fluffy that he floats! Which is quite fun, until he accidentally ingests a cat toy and has to spend the night at the vet. Very low-key explanations of how Papillon feels less than well, which keeps the very lighthearted feeling flowing through even at the vet. 

Tuesday Storytime: Valentine's Day

Valentines books are so much fun. I got a late start on them and so I went with several tried-and-true classics, but there are some other good ones on hold that should filter in soon, and I will review them when I get a chance to see them. Always good to have ideas and books for next time around!

The Day It Rained Hearts
Felicia Bond
ISBN: 0066238765
Scribbly backgrounds and stylized simple outline cartoon characters still manage to carry sentiment and interest in this short story of personalized and thoughtful valentines. I also like our double-barreled named heroine: Cornelia Augusta. She plucks the falling "rain" hearts, and uses them carefully to make valentines for her friends, all of them carefully individualized. Short and sweet.

A Short History of Valentine's Day
Sally Lee & Gail Saunders-Smith
ISBN:9781491460986
Lots of historical photographs liven up a VERY short and preschool-aimed history of the concepts and impetus behind the current holiday. Like some of the others in this series, the end is a bit abrupt.

Just Because You're Mine
Sally Lloyd-Jones, illustrated by Frank Endersby
ISBN: 9780062014764
Daddy red squirrel and his baby squirrel are out and about for the day, with baby squirrel demonstrating all the amazing squirrely things he can do, and wondering if those things are why his Daddy loves him. The answer of course doesn't come til the end, repeating the title. Really adorable sweet art, like Sam McBratney, Ivan Bates, or Anita Jeram. Sweet without being maudlin.

Tuesday Storytime: Loving Feelings

We're getting close to Valentine's Day, and so my coworker is excited about all the sweet loving books there are out there to choose from. She was a bit disappointed that I used Mama, Do You Love Me last week, but these three are just as sweet.

Sam and Jump
Jennifer K. Mann
ISBN: 9780763679477
Jump is Sam's stuffed rabbit, and they're best friends, until a fateful trip to the beach where Sam happily plays with Thomas (yay for an AA character!) ... and LEAVES Jump behind! Happy endings abound, but the book spends a good deal of time with the physical signs of feeling loneliness and guilt and sorrow.

Always
Emma Dodd
ISBN: 9780763675448
Sweet book, but I don't know that I like the silver print conceit enough for it to carry the whole book. I would have maybe liked to see the capstone line repeated through the book to make it more positive and repetitive for younger listeners. Still adorable, just like all of Dodd's work.

I Will Love You
Alyssa Satin Capucilli, illustrated by Lisa Anchin
ISBN: 9780545803106
A white mom and an ambiguously brown curly-haired girl feature in this breezy testament to parental love. Beautiful spreads, but this one is a litttttle too unironically sappy for my taste. It's still very sweet, and sure to tug at the heartstrings of any less cynical parent. Very pretty pastels and water-color feels to the spreads and panels.