Tuesday Storytime: Beach Reads

I was off on vacation this past week, so I had a fellow librarian give my storytime, and I treated everyone to a collection of "beach reads" so they'd all be properly jealous of me.  :)

The Twelve Days of Summer
Elizabeth Lee O'Donnell, illustrated by Karen Lee Schmidt
ISBN: 0688082025
Cartoonish illustrations with vibrant colors and careful plotting to get the numbers all counted in.

Our protagonist character is a cute little girl visiting the beach with her family, and she counts up from "a little purple sea anemone" along with the tune from The Twelve Days of Christmas.  The rhymes are cute, the meter is solid, and the illustrations are adorable.  An excellent silly summer read.


An Island in the Sun
Stella Blackstone, Nicoletta Ceccoli
ISBN: 1841481939
Dreamy fanciful illustrations (think Kinuko-Craft-light) are the star of an "I spy" building rhyme.

Another co-opted rhyme sequence, this one based on the old "I spy with my little eye" format mixed with the "the house that Jack built" cumulative concept.  Despite the cumulative nature, this one is still easily short enough to be the middle book, and to flow quickly and nicely with few tongue-twisters or trip-up meters.


Three By the Sea
Mini Grey
ISBN: 9780375867842
Mini Grey's trademark faux-collage and quirky cartoon detailing.

The "three" of the title are a dog, cat, and mouse, who all live together in a shack by the sea, and have worked out an arrangement of chores and labor that all are happy with - until a slick foxy salesman stops by and insidiously manages to get everyone thinking they do more work, and their housemates are slackers or incompetent.  After a heated argument, things get sorted out (mainly through the ejection of the slick fox) and while things do change, they do so organically, and with goodwill and mutual appreciation.  I'm tempted to give this book to college students in shared housing.  

Just one more regular storytime before our official start of Summer Reading Themes - it was a patchwork mess this year, making it difficult for me to find any extra titles to start at the top of June like I usually try to do.  Oh well - gives me a chance to use some of the beach/summer titles that I rarely get to showcase.