One week til Halloween, and because of the shared schedule, it's the first time in about 10 years that I will NOT be doing a storytime on Halloween. So I did some really cute Halloween prep books this week instead.
And Then Comes Halloween
Tom Brenner, illustrated by Holly Meade
ISBN: 9780763636593
This is an excellent Halloween book. It has a lot of atmospheric fall details, and lots of focus on the seasons changing and on very generic fall decorating with corn stalks and scarecrows, and only really gets into the Halloween-specific stuff right at the end. The focus is also on the creative process of thinking up and creating your own costume, and on the community fun of trick-or-treating in a group and sorting and swapping candy together. Very lighthearted and informative, with really lovely language.
Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin
Tad Hills
ISBN: 9780375858130 (board book)
I was lucky that this was a very small group, because this is a pretty small board book format. Duck and Goose and Thistle appear in this really short story, and I ask for a lot of audience interaction to drag it out a bit longer. Thistle has a very nice pumpkin, and Duck and Goose decide they want one too, so they go in search of it, with not much luck until Thistle reappears with a hint.
Happy Halloween, Biscuit!
Alyssa Satin Capucilli, illustrated by Pat Schories
ISBN: 9780694012206 (page-end-flaps)
Biscuit and his little girl are prepping for Halloween, which means the little girl is prepping, and Biscuit is getting into messes and generally being an adorable pest, revealed by the flaps on each of the far left side pages. Sweet and gentle and with cute little "mysteries" to solve or questions to ponder on each spread.
Showing posts with label Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Tuesday Storytime: Pumpkins
Continuing our month-long Halloween party;
Pumpkin Soup
Helen Cooper
ISBN: 0374361649
Lush oversized oils and wild imaginative scenes.
I really love this book a lot. It's perfect for halloween storytimes for my area and age-group because it isn't about halloween or pumpkins, it's about friendship and quarrels and wild imagination and regrets and sacrificing and compromise, but it's GOT pumpkins and wild imaginations and scary possibilities, and walking out in the dark, so it gets at many of the same fears from an oblique approach. Similar, but a bit more obvious, is Bear Feels Scared, by Karma Wilson (another potential for later this month). Anyway, it's beautiful and sweet and if I didn't always use it for pumpkins and halloween every year, it would go very well with Three By the Sea, by Mini Grey, which deals with essentially the same plot, and possibly The Lapsnatcher, by Bruce Coville or On Mother's Lap, by Ann Herbert Scott.
Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin (boardbook)
Tad Hills
ISBN: 9780375858130
Duck & Goose series in miniature. Cute, innocent, and faux-naive drawings.
Short and sweet. Duckling and Gosling see Thistle (a swan cygnet, I believe?) wander by with a pumpkin, and they head off in an industrious search for one of their own, looking in allll the wrong places. Kids find it impossible to resist answering the series of questions with forceful "NO"s that get even louder and more excited and exasperated the longer the hapless babies look in silly places. Thistle re-appears at the end to offer a pointed tip, and the quest ends in success.
Pumpkin Cat
Anne Mortimer
ISBN: 9780061874857
Sweet naturalistic drawings show the life-cycle of a pumpkin, from seed to jack-o-lantern.
Cat and Mouse are growing a pumpkin, and they walk through all the steps necessary to create a home for a plant and then make it grow. It gets a bit repetitive, as the call-and-response of "What now?" doesn't change AT ALL through the whole book. Regardless, a very simple and factual explanation of where pumpkins come from, for the very littlest listeners, and the Cat and Mouse make for sweet and adorable narrators and proxies to watch. The final page does say "Happy Halloween" as the Mouse makes the pumkin into a "surprise" for Cat (a jack-o-lantern), so be aware.
Pumpkin Soup
Helen Cooper
ISBN: 0374361649
Lush oversized oils and wild imaginative scenes.
I really love this book a lot. It's perfect for halloween storytimes for my area and age-group because it isn't about halloween or pumpkins, it's about friendship and quarrels and wild imagination and regrets and sacrificing and compromise, but it's GOT pumpkins and wild imaginations and scary possibilities, and walking out in the dark, so it gets at many of the same fears from an oblique approach. Similar, but a bit more obvious, is Bear Feels Scared, by Karma Wilson (another potential for later this month). Anyway, it's beautiful and sweet and if I didn't always use it for pumpkins and halloween every year, it would go very well with Three By the Sea, by Mini Grey, which deals with essentially the same plot, and possibly The Lapsnatcher, by Bruce Coville or On Mother's Lap, by Ann Herbert Scott.
Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin (boardbook)
Tad Hills
ISBN: 9780375858130
Duck & Goose series in miniature. Cute, innocent, and faux-naive drawings.
Short and sweet. Duckling and Gosling see Thistle (a swan cygnet, I believe?) wander by with a pumpkin, and they head off in an industrious search for one of their own, looking in allll the wrong places. Kids find it impossible to resist answering the series of questions with forceful "NO"s that get even louder and more excited and exasperated the longer the hapless babies look in silly places. Thistle re-appears at the end to offer a pointed tip, and the quest ends in success.
Pumpkin Cat
Anne Mortimer
ISBN: 9780061874857
Sweet naturalistic drawings show the life-cycle of a pumpkin, from seed to jack-o-lantern.
Cat and Mouse are growing a pumpkin, and they walk through all the steps necessary to create a home for a plant and then make it grow. It gets a bit repetitive, as the call-and-response of "What now?" doesn't change AT ALL through the whole book. Regardless, a very simple and factual explanation of where pumpkins come from, for the very littlest listeners, and the Cat and Mouse make for sweet and adorable narrators and proxies to watch. The final page does say "Happy Halloween" as the Mouse makes the pumkin into a "surprise" for Cat (a jack-o-lantern), so be aware.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Tuesday Storytime: Prepping for Halloween
I Am a Witch's Cat
Harriet Muncaster
ISBN: 9780062229144
Meticulous miniature dioramas are adorable mundane counterparts to the wild claims in the text.
Previously reviewed here. Still adorable. No worries from any parents or kids, and a few chuckles at the conflation of the "mommy book club" with a coven.
Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin
Tad Hills
ISBN: 9780375858130
(Board Book) Short and sweet in the Duck and Goose tradition, good for audience interaction.
Duck and Goose books are usually just a smidge too basic for me to use in storytimes. I'm sure the kids would love it, but I try not to subject myself or the parents to very simplistic "baby books" any more than I have to. This one is an exception because I try very hard for my Halloween books to be lighthearted, family-centric, and generally utterly inoffensive. Very simple set up has Thistle (Duck and Goose's occasional friend) wandering by with a pumpkin, spurring the young friends to acquire one of their own. A series of spreads has them looking in all sorts of unlikely places, until Thistle reappears at the end to drop a much-needed hint about the pumpkin patch.
Hedgehug's Halloween
Text by Benn Sutton, concept and art by Dan Pinto
ISBN: 9780061961045
Colorful and blocky collage in textural swathes of bright or moody colors.
I'm not super thrilled about the artwork here, as I feel it's a bit too small for as busy and stylized as it is. I wish it were a larger book. That said, the story is adorable, and the pictures are very clear and understandable despite the blocky collage and rough-edged textures. Hedgehug has forgotten about the yearly Halloween party in the forest, and he and his friends are desperately trying to find him a costume, but his prickles keep ruining things. As the party begins, and he's still sans costume, he trudges through the forest sadly, but there's a three-headed big thing chasing after him! It's his friends, with one last super-duper attempt at a costume, but this time they're prepared for the spikes.
Harriet Muncaster
ISBN: 9780062229144
Meticulous miniature dioramas are adorable mundane counterparts to the wild claims in the text.
Previously reviewed here. Still adorable. No worries from any parents or kids, and a few chuckles at the conflation of the "mommy book club" with a coven.
Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin
Tad Hills
ISBN: 9780375858130
(Board Book) Short and sweet in the Duck and Goose tradition, good for audience interaction.
Duck and Goose books are usually just a smidge too basic for me to use in storytimes. I'm sure the kids would love it, but I try not to subject myself or the parents to very simplistic "baby books" any more than I have to. This one is an exception because I try very hard for my Halloween books to be lighthearted, family-centric, and generally utterly inoffensive. Very simple set up has Thistle (Duck and Goose's occasional friend) wandering by with a pumpkin, spurring the young friends to acquire one of their own. A series of spreads has them looking in all sorts of unlikely places, until Thistle reappears at the end to drop a much-needed hint about the pumpkin patch.
Hedgehug's Halloween
Text by Benn Sutton, concept and art by Dan Pinto
ISBN: 9780061961045
Colorful and blocky collage in textural swathes of bright or moody colors.
I'm not super thrilled about the artwork here, as I feel it's a bit too small for as busy and stylized as it is. I wish it were a larger book. That said, the story is adorable, and the pictures are very clear and understandable despite the blocky collage and rough-edged textures. Hedgehug has forgotten about the yearly Halloween party in the forest, and he and his friends are desperately trying to find him a costume, but his prickles keep ruining things. As the party begins, and he's still sans costume, he trudges through the forest sadly, but there's a three-headed big thing chasing after him! It's his friends, with one last super-duper attempt at a costume, but this time they're prepared for the spikes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)