Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 6: Space

This is our "make-up week" for the program that was superseded by our special magic show earlier in the summer.  We still have no AC, but the weather has been cooler, and so I didn't have to make any changes to the line-up this time around.

Storytime:

Toys in Space
Mini Grey
ISBN: 9780307978127
Bemused toys exist in a slightly skewed world with a faint English flavor.

I adore Mini Grey for her Traction Man series, and Toys in Space could very easily exist in the same universe, although Traction Man himself does not make an appearance - not even a cameo!  The toys are left outside on the lawn overnight for the first time, so WonderDoll decides to avert panic by telling an interactive story about how the toys are abducted by an alien who is looking for his own lost toy.

The meta-storytelling (me reading a book about a doll telling a story (with interruptions) to an audience of toys) is challenging as a reader.  I'm not sure whether the littlest ones realized that the story was supposed to be made-up all the way through.  Some of the language was a little spicy for my toddler audience (I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and excised the cowboy's "darns" and "dangits" in favor of a broader "cowboy" accent overall).  The story is cute, with just enough silly to counteract the potentially frightening elements - getting beamed into a spaceship, a giant closet filled with cataloged "lost toys," a potentially scary alien creature.  Everything is lampshaded, and some things are lampshaded, mocked, and then incorporated non-ironically into the storyline.  I also appreciate an alien that is named something interesting but still basically pronouncable.  (It's is, or is a (was never clear on whether that was it's name or it's species) "Hoctopize" which is a totally cromulent alien name (or species).

This one was also one of our featured Summer Reading books.


This Rocket
Paul Collicutt
ISBN: 0374374848
Bright blue and orange colors this exciting (but reality-based) simple opposites book featuring rockets.

I am really shocked that this book isn't better known and more used than it is.  The simple phrasing and related (mostly opposites) half spreads of this book really make it perfect for this age group.  Besides that - rockets!  Obviously a perennial favorite, just like dinosaurs and excavators and fire trucks.  I had to look outside the county for it (first when researching the theme, and again this time to use) so I think I'm just going to give in and buy myself a copy.  It really is perfect.  Very sparse text, very expressive and contrasting illustrations of actual rockets, with even more rockets and rocketry factoids on the endpapers.


Light up the Night
Jean Reidy, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine
ISBN: 9781423120247
Blocky, brushed/sponged-textural paintings pinpoint a boy's location, from space to his own bedroom.  

This is an excellent use of the "this is the house that Jack built" form of expanding poetry text, starting with a young boy at bedtime turning his quilt into a rocketship, and then zooming in from space "where stars glow bright / and light up the night" through the solar system, onto earth, a continent (left vague), and a country (likewise), town, street, house, bedroom, and bed, and then back out again to show the stars, and a small bed sitting on the earth in a very Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince" sort of image.




Summer Reading

For the older kids, I subbed out Aliens in Underpants Save the World for This Rocket, but kept Toys in Space and Light up the Night.  I probably could have gone with a longer book, but we had a time-consuming activity and a fun craft this time around, so I wanted to save some good time for those - programs need to be focused on the books, but I'm not one of those who thinks they should be ONLY about the books.

Aliens in Underpants Save the World
Claire Freedman, illustrated by Ben Cort
ISBN: 9781442427686
Aliens routinely steal underpants from Earth, until a meteorite threatens the planet, and the resourceful aliens make one final giant panty heist to make the biggest stretchiest underpants ever.

I have to say, still not a huge fan, but I do like this one better than the Dinosaurs one.  For some reason, the zany colors and silly sketchy art style works much better for me with aliens as the focus.  Maybe it reminded me of the monsters from Monsters, Inc/Monsters U?  So - similar idea.  Rhyming couplets on each spread document how aliens descended from the heavens, stole all the underpants, sewed them into a giant springy underpant net, and bounced a meteorite back into space, saving the earth.  Tada!


Next week is Food Science, and then we're all done with Summer Reading until next year: Superheroes!


  

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 4: Dinosaurs

We skipped the week of Fourth of July, and now we're back with a bang to celebrate the science of dinosaurs!

Super huge crowd today, really attentive and energetic kids, great parents.  I love my storytime families so much!

I Dreamt I Was a Dinosaur was our kickoff for my youngsters this morning.  I paired it with Dinosaur Roar! as I originally planned, but an AC outage left me mixing things up a bit - Dinosaurumpus was a little too energetic and long for the appalling heat, so we switched over to a cute new one I found a few weeks back called Dinosaur Kisses.

Dinosaur Roar!
Paul & Henrietta Stickland
ISBN: 0525452761
THE PERFECT book of opposites and dinosaurs, with slightly exaggerated colorful and personable dinos.

I LOVE this book.  I love this book so hard that I have to stop myself from using it every time I do a Dinosaur program.  I might like dinosaurs a lot - they're a great program topic, because I'm excited and the kids are thrilled.  I love this book so hard I bought it for my home library and I don't even have kids!  Very little coherent story, but we get a parade of various imaginative dinosaurs (no hard names here, which is part of the appeal) which nicely and smartly contrast each other, and rhyme across pages, so we have "Dinosaur fat and dinosaur tiny" on one page, and then the next shows us "Dinosaur clean (using a nail file) and dinosaur slimy."  LOVE LOVE LOVE.


Dinosaur Kisses
David Ezra Stein
ISBN: 9780763661045
Naive art, a blobby excited dinosaur baby romps through her world causing mayhem as she tries to "kiss" things.

I'm not totally thrilled with the artwork here, but I have to admit that it suits the tone of the story.  It's a little messy, a little blobby, a little scribbly.  Like a cross between Mo Willem's Pigeon books and David Shannon's No David books.  A newly hatched dinosaur (again, no names) goes around trying to kiss things, and messing up - instead stomping and chomping and whomping them, which is an issue really, until another baby dino hatches (a sibling?) whereupon the "kisses" of stomping and chomping and whomping work perfectly.  Interesting to me because it doesn't end with the baby mastering the art of kisses, but with her finding someone who is suited to her own brand of rough and tumble affection instead.



This afternoon, we've got the older kids, and I think with the heat (no AC in the room), I'm going to wimp out and only do two books with them today.

Our Summer Reading Featured Book is Dinosaurs Love Underpants, which I have to be honest, isn't my cuppa, but it's cute and fun, and the older kids will like that they're listening to an adult read to them about underwear.  Since I'm only doing two today, the second really needs to be a firecracker, so I'm pulling out Dinosaurumpus for the job.  



Dinosaurs Love Underpants
Claire Freedman and Ben Cort
ISBN: 9781416989387
Scruffy bearded cavemen hide from caricatured brightly-colored dinos, also underwear.

The rhymes flow nicely, and the story is silly and fun, but it's not my favorite.  T-Rex chases down a caveman and demands his underpants, which starts a fad, which starts a war, and as the dinos tussle over the underpants, they all get ripped up, and the dinos kill each other off.  Ends with a modern-day coda with a moral lesson: take care of your underpants because they saved our ancestors from the dinosaurs.


Dinosaurumpus!
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 9780439395144

This is a delightful book - when I can manage to get through it.  The story is zippy and silly, the wordplay is fast and furious, and the rhyming and rhythm are a quick syncopated drumbeat that propels you through the story - great for the listeners, great for energy, not so great when part of the rhymes are the names of the dinosaurs.  Stutter just once over "deinonychuses" (dino-night-chooses) and you're sunk!  With the proper preparation and a great deal of energy, this one is a fast-paced fun dinosaur read that I'm always happy to show off to a group of kids.

Tuesday Storytime: Jumpy

Add this one to my roster of "weird themes" - this one is about animals jumping.  It was great fun, if you're wondering, especially Jump! which seems created for wild and active toddlers.


Oops-a-Daisy!
Claire Freedman, illustrated by Gaby Hansen
ISBN: 1589250370
Pastels, soft edges, and a gentle "moral" to keep trying.

This one is very sweet.  Little Bunny is discouraged by her difficulties in learning to jump - it's so hard to get her feet to do what she asks, and there's so much to keep track of all at the same time!  Anyone, even adults learning a new physical skill, can sympathize with the frustration and despair of ever getting it "right."  But Mama Rabbit is always nearby, and she deflects worries and defeatism by pointing out the other "Little" animals learning to do things also; Mouse trying to climb a grass stem, Badger (with Daddy Badger!!) digging, Duck swimming in circles.  Daisy Bunny relaxes and continues to try, knowing that everyone tries and fails.
Good length for my little ones, with full-spread illustrations to keep their attention during the longer patches of reading.



Jump!
Scott M. Fischer
ISBN: 9781416978848
Super-bright cartoonish animals with exaggerated features and almost no text to clutter the page.

I LOVE IT!  Starting with a bug on a jug, the animals encounter something bigger and badder, each time JUMP!ing out of the way, til we get to the shark vs the whale, and we get a vertical spread instead of the normal horizontal flow.



If You're Hoppy
April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic
ISBN: 9780061566349
A very 'interactive' and non-traditional text, using the "If You're Happy and you Know It" rhyme to riff off of.

This one's cute, especially when it gets to "if you're slimy and scaly and mean, you're a... oh, never mind" with a multicolored shadow of a creepy monster on the page and reveals it at the end to be the frog from the start of the story.  Very fun, and a great ending for the day.  Any book with a surprise reveal pterodactyl is a good book.