Tuesday Storytime: Animals Read Books

Because why not?

Three really long ones today, and a very active group, but the tone and the cadence of all of these was really good for a lovely quick flow.  Two of these are first-time storytime books, and I'm really happy with how they read for a group.  Nice to have more good books added to my backlist.

Wild About Books
Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 037582538X
Seussical rhymes and exuberant colored-pen spreads with lots of action and movement.


Molly the librarian accidentally drives the bookmobile into the zoo, and slowly introduces the resident animals to reading, to caring for books properly, and finally to creating their own works themselves.  On the readers to writers angle, would go very well with Daniel Kirk's Library Mouse  for an older group.  This book is long, but juuust barely doable because of the trippy language, the packed and colorful pages, and how quickly the rhymes work (also I skipped the page of haiku).


A Library Book for Bear 
Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (The Sniffles for Bear)
ISBN: 9780763649241
Grumpy Bear and perky Mouse head off to the library, over Bear's strenuous (and ever louder) objections.

I admit to partly liking this book because I get to yell in the library and enjoy the horrified expressions of all the kids as I do.  What can I say, get your thrills where you can!  Bear promised Mouse that he would go to the library, but he's really regretting it.  Mouse insists, but Bear ONLY wants a book about pickles, and gets very vocal about his not being happy about coming to the library in the first place.  When he gets shushed by a pair of moms sitting in on storytime, he loses it for real, but a chipper librarian and Mouse's persistence win him over in the end.  (Also, he gets a book about pickles, which helps.)


The Snatchabook
Helen Docherty, illustrated by Thomas Docherty
ISBN: 9781402290824
Weirdly-proportioned forest animals in scribbly environments remind me of a darker Steven Kellogg.

 Every night the forest animal children settle into bed with a good book, until they start vanishing!  Brave Eliza sets a trap for the book thief, figures out the problem, and works with the mysterious (and frankly adorable) Snatchabook to work out a better approach for the future.  Cute, straightforward, and the rhyme sequence gets your tongue moving double-quick, which is very helpful for the last book of the day.