Tuesday Storytime: Ducks!

I went with a nice simple theme and picture today since we had a daycare attending.  My normal group of about 20-odd warm bodies ballooned up to over seventy people today - I needed all the easy I could get!

Little Quack

Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Derek Anderson

ISBN: 0689847238

Math-concept book focuses on the first time ducklings leave their nest to go swimming.

Fuzzy bright simplistic paintings use the spreads to great advantage as the looming mother duck convinces her timid ducklings to leave the nest and join her in the water.  The math is relegated to the bottom of the panels, and could easily be left out - all I did was ask the kids each time how many of the ducklings were in the water.

Have You Seen My Duckling

Nancy Tafuri

ISBN: 0688027989

Caldecott Honor book.  Vivid naturalistic colored-pencil drawings have the missing duckling hidden.

An old classic.  Hard to do in storytime usually because there's not anything to DO really - just turn the pages and ask on occasion: "have you seen my duckling?" but with a group this large, there's going to be a few kids who can be counted on to answer questions and anticipate events, so I can ask: "what sort of animal is mama duck talking to?" and "do you see the missing duckling?" (and of course point it out each time so that everyone can share the joke.  I don't do a lot of wordless or near wordless books, so it's nice to be able to use this one at last.

Five Little Ducks

Ivan Bates

ISBN: 0439746930

Bates' illustrations are always sweet and just this side of precious, paired perfectly with the nursery rhyme.

Ivan Bates is a gifted illustrator, and his beautiful pictures always warm my heart.  Something about how he lays down colors and the slightly scribbly edges on his shapes and the almost-minimalistic backgrounds just resonate really strongly with me, and I simply adore looking at them.  Calming and fun at the same time.  Matching that feeling up with an old nursery rhyme is a perfect choice, and makes for an instant classic.  The only downside is that I never heard this particular one as a song, only as a chant, so I don't actually know how to sing it!  I have to settle for halfway between reading and chanting, and my natural cadence is not quite up to the task.  Oh well.  Small price to pay for such a sweet and beautiful book.

Tuesday Storytime: Counting with Ducks

And yes, there are enough duck books in the picture book world for there to be a three-book storytime specifically about ducks and counting.

Nine Ducks Nine (previously reviewed here)
Sarah Hayes
ISBN: 9780763638160
9 watercolor ducks hatch a plan to outwit a pursuing fox through an idyllic countryside.

This is essentially the same story as Do Like a Duck Does (Hindley and Bates, 2002 Candlewick hardcover ISBN: 0763616680), where a family of ducks outwit a fox and the fox ends up taking a swim.  To be perfectly honest, I like the cadence and the illustrations of that story better than this one.  But, this one has numbers and counting, and this one is also a longer read.

Quack and Count
Keith Baker  (Big Fat Hen, 1994 HMH hardcover ISBN: 9780152928698)
ISBN: 0152928588
Colorful and textural collages (even the words!) follow permutations of 7 ducklings.

I've used Baker's Big Fat Hen in a counting storytime before, and he's a stunningly talented artist.  This is less a counting book, and more of a math concepts book, but whatever.  It totally counts.  We start with 7 ducklings all together, and then Baker creates a clever series of rhymes for each sum of seven: starting with "Slipping, sliding, having fun / 7 ducklings, 6 plus 1."  Then 5 + 2, 4 + 3, and so on.  What's fun is to compare the different scenes with reversed sums: so we also have "7 ducklings, 1 plus 6 / In the water playing tricks" to compare with the first rhyme.  The pages are all in full spreads, with the seven ducks divided up between the two pages to match the sum in question.  Really pretty book, and really clever concept.

Five Little Ducks
from the nursery song, illustrated by Ivan Bates
ISBN: 0439746930
Colored pencils and watercolors. Bright expressive characters foregrounded against soft scenery.

Ivan Bates is a beautiful illustrator, and I love his work so much.  I try not have repeats of an author or an illustrator within a storytime, which is the other reason I didn't choose Do Like a Duck Does for this trio.  This is a simple illustration of the first verse of the rhyme, but there's a cute little story hidden within the illustrations about just why the ducklings aren't coming back each time.  So adorable.


This ended up being on the very short end on things, but I actually try to choose shorter sets of books for the early fall.  Families are coming in with their younger kids only (the older ones have headed off to preschool or kindie) and without the older kids to model good storytime behavior, it's harder for the little ones (and to be totally honest, the parents) to keep from squiggling around like mad.  This is the sort of thing you figure out over time, watching the pattern repeat every fall, and you just learn to work around it - shorter stories, more obvious transitions, really expressive stories with very narrative illustrations.