Tuesday Storytime: Splashy Summer

I have such fun picking out themes for storytimes.

All-Weather Friends
Udo Weigelt, illustrated by Nicolas D' Aujourd'hui
ISBN: 0735810486 (library)
A German wives' tale gets Moss the frog into weather forecasting trouble, before a new friend sets him straight.

Moss is flustered when his friend Hedgehog demands that he forecast the weather, and in his panic, he makes up stories.  None of his forecasts come true (this book has the record for the weirdest-weather day ever!) and in despair, after ruining his friends' plans for the day, he sets off for the weather frog in the human house to learn forecasting.  What he learns instead, is how to be a friend, and how to be truthful, even when people are very demanding.


Down by the Cool of the Pool
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 0439309158
A lively barnyard song-and-dance sparked by the frog at the farm pond.

This one is quick and lively and super-fast-paced, and the illustrations are likewise loose and bright and vibrant and full of action.  The text is incorporated into the illustrations, which makes a couple of pages a bit hard to process in front of an audience, but the words and the escalation of the rhyme is fairly predictable.  I do find the ending a bit abrupt, but otherwise it's a bright fun read.


Water in the Park: a book about water and the times of the day
Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin
ISBN: 9780375970023
A city park, with pond, playground, sprinklers, and grassy field, sees a full day of visitors.

This is an interesting premise, and it feels just a little bit forced, to be totally honest, but the close focus on individuals (from a child's perspective - so we have the names of children and dogs, but not of any adults) and on the ebb and flow of visitors to the park saves it from being tedious.  We start at 6 am, with a quiet park, where turtles enjoy the first rays of sunlight on the rocks.  Through the day, various people and animals enjoy the park and interact with water in lots of different ways, from dogs splashing in the pond to kids schlepping water in buckets over to the sandboxes, to babies playing in the sprinklers, to birds bathing in the puddles left over from the workers watering the flowers, until nighttime, when the last dogs finish their walks and a torrential storm soaks everything.