Tuesday Storytime: Outside in the Snow

This is our last week of snowy storytimes - it would have been the whole month of January, but we had a short side-track into Italian celebrations last week.

These ended up being a leeeeeetle bit on the long side; there was much squirming and chattering of very young ones through the last story, and I was tempted to rush or elide, but I held strong and did the whole thing.  I think it's good for the littlest kids to be challenged a little bit past their comfort zones sometimes, and what better time for an easy non-stressful challenge than a storytime?


The Longest Night
Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Ted Lewin
ISBN: 9780823420544
Forest animals pledge to bring back the sun during a long winter night, but only the chickadee's song works.

This was very beautiful, but I think a little bit too lyrical and mystical for the little kids to grasp.  Almost like a fairy tale or a creation myth, with the animals taking on archetypes and the wind acting as a guide and mentor.  The winter night has been going on for far too long, and so first the crow, then the moose, then the fox all try to use their various abilities to bring back the sun.  Nothing works until the small chickadee offers the only thing she can do: to sing her song "dee dee dee."  The animals mock her efforts until the sun rouses, curious about the singing, and brings the morning and the spring.  Strangely solemn and almost religious, this tale feels old and hoary and mythological.


Outside
Deirdre Gill
ISBN: 9780547910659
A boy has fantastical adventures in the snowy landscape outside his house.

The only thing I don't like about this book is that there are occasional wordless pages or spreads, and while that is fine in an entirely wordless book, or even in some books where the page-turning impulse carries the storyteller and the audience past the wordless sections on the strength of what came before, this tale is so slight and wispy that the wordless pages just sort of hang listless in the narrative.  I was tempted to narrate them, and I did at least comment on the illustrations, which I usually don't do mid-story, but I needed something to keep the tempo at least moving forward.  Other than that, this is a sweet middling-short story about a boy using his imagination and hard work to create fantastical playgrounds in the snow.


Over and Under the Snow
Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal
ISBN: 9780811867849
A boy skiis and has a cookout in a wintry landscape, while learning about all the creatures living or sleeping below the blanket of snow.

This is the one the littles got restless through, and it was a bit of a slog.  It's longer than it seems, and it is hard to pick up the tempo - it WANTS to be slow and gentle and cool like snow in the woods, and trying to hurry it along didn't really work very well.  Our boy skiis and wanders in the woods and talks about various woodland creatures living in or under the snow, as he goes through a VERY LONG day before settling into bed himself.  Factual enough to qualify as nonfiction, there's an author's note at the end about the various animals and how they manage to live and thrive under the snow.

Picture Books: Dinosaur Thunder, by Marion Dane Bauer & Alphabatics, by Suse MacDonald

Getting brand new freshly cataloged books into the library is always so nice, and I especially love when the picture books come in.

Dinosaur Thunder
Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine
ISBN: 9780590452960
Pop-art with ragged white highlighted edging shows off the imagination of a young boy scared of thunder.

This one is going on my list of books about storms.  It's nice and short, and has various family-members trying to comfort a small boy by saying comforting cliches about what thunder is - all of which he imagines as still frightening, until his older brother latches on to dinosaurs as the magic imaginary remedy.  Thinking of the thunder as familiar dinosaurs roaring and stomping around makes the boy much less nervous about the earth-shaking thunderous booms of the storm.



Alphabatics
Suse MacDonald
ISBN: 9780027615203
1986 book, Caldecott Honor, re-issue.  Primary colored alphabet letters gradually morph into animals or items in action.

Love the colors in this book, and glad to see a re-issue of it in hardback.  Each letter has a color scheme which takes the original letter through a series of three or four blocks of gradual morphing on one page, into the fully-formed scene on the facing page.   As an illustrative example (not sorry for the pun), the letter J is a lowercase red J in a yellow box.  The next box has the J turned sideways and resting on the floor of the box, and the box is given a "lid" with the inclusion of a simple white line.  Next we have the box-top being slightly pushed open by a multiplicity of Js (now minus their dots), and the final box has the lid fully back, the stack of Js are wobbling slightly, and the dot is on top as a head.  The facing page keeps the red J body and the yellow box, turns the red dots into the corners of a clown's smile, and adds a nicely contrasting turquoise ruffle and hat to the ensemble.

Sadly, this one isn't so good for storytimes, because there's no through-line or any action/dialogue, but I'm glad to have a copy to suggest to parents with kids who enjoy interesting illustrations.  This would be a really interesting teaching tool to pair with a book like Numblers (also by MacDonald) to use in the classroom to help kids visualise numbers and make imaginative connections with them.