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.

Tuesday Storytime: Hippos!

And before you ask, yes there are LOTS of hippopotamus stories.  So many.  Here are my favorite three:

The Hippo-NOT-amus
Tony and Jan Payne, illustrations by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 0439564182
Boisterous colors and compositions enliven an already silly story about accepting who you are.

Portly is a baby hippo (love the name) who is sick of boring lying in the water, and boring old grass to eat.  He's going out into the world to see whether any other animals have it better.  By the end of the story, he's not a hippo any longer, he's a hippo-ger-ele-bat-onoceros, tottering around on stilts, with bananas hanging from each foot, and wooden horns and a vine trunk hanging from his nose.  How he gets to that point is the fun of the story, and I love that the parents are kind and accepting of their kid's explorations of his identity.


Hilda Must Be Dancing
Karma Wilson, illustrated by Suzanne Watts
ISBN: 0689847882
Vibrant but soft-edged paintings feature lots of purples and blues.

Hilda Hippo loves to dance, but her moves are causing earthquakes and giant messes.  Her jungle friends try to get her into various sedate hobbies: knitting, singing... until they try swimming, which she interprets as water ballet, to her and everyone elses' newfound happiness.  Really cute, and fairly short for the story involved.  Lots of dancy noises and onomatopoeic words tho.


The Hiccupotamus
Aaron Zenz
ISBN: 9780761456223
Zany fun with exaggerated animals in primary colors, with expressive bodies and faces.

Our unnamed hippo hero has a horrid case of the hiccups, which is causing havoc.  (I'll stop now.)  In desperation, after several messy (and tongue-twisting) accidents, his friends get together to cure him, to no avail, until the hiccups finally fade out of their own accord - just in time to spring up somewhere else!  Seriously difficult to get through, because of the made-up combined singsong words.  An example: "She chased him toward a centipede/Pouring new cemetipede/He hic'ed by accidentipede/And tripped the elephantipede."  Sheesh.  Despite the challenge, it's great fun to read and to see the kids giggle at the silly situations and sillier language.

Tuesday Storytime: Dancing

I found so many nice dancing books that just didn't quite fit my last dance storytime that I figured I could do a second round, and here we are!

Again, we were a little on the long side, and man did we have some active (and loud) kids today.  Lots of energy, maybe a bit less on the attentive side.  :)

Miss Lina's Ballerinas and the Prince
Grace Maccarone, illustrated by Christine Davenier
ISBN: 9780312649630
Very Eloise/Madeline drawings, lots of ballet terms and poses, tongue-twisting repetitive names.

I was torn between the original (Miss Lina's Ballerinas) and this one, because the original has no boys at all, and I try not to have books that exclude one gender or population entirely, but the original ALSO has a much better flow and storyline than this one.  I went with this one in the end for representation, but honestly, the group was so crazy today, and we had so many latecomers that I don't know that any of the kids even followed the story that closely.  I do still want to do Miss Lina's Ballerinas, but I'll wait a while, and perhaps save it for a class or a special event - hurrying through the names nearly killed me.


Deer Dancer
Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by Lauren Stringer
ISBN: 9781442434219
Reviewed here.

Again, with such an energetic group, I'm not sure how much of the story got through, but at least by the time we got to this book, everyone was mostly settled in and were paying attention to the pictures (which are amazing).  I love the flow of this story, but it wasn't well suited for the energy levels today.


Giraffes Can't Dance
Giles Andreae, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees (Dinosaurumpus)
ISBN: 184121681X
Vivid colors, similar to Dinosaurumpus, just sub-out jungle animals and add a dash of pathos.


Gerald the Giraffe is headed to the annual Jungle Dance, but he really can't dance, and the other animals aren't very polite about informing him.  He heads off into the moonlit night to be sad and alone (did I mention pathos) but a friendly cricket helps him find his own music and his own dance, and eventually the other animals also realize that he's got flair.  Short and snappy, gets right to the point, and the illustrations are wild and zany, even when the text is sad or quiet, so the kids have lots of bright colors and vivid compositions to look at.  This was the best tonal fit for my group's energy levels today, and I wish I'd had a whole set of books like it to match their energy.


Ahh well, if I knew the future, there'd be lots of other things I'd do instead of rigging my storytime books.

Next week:  either lions or penguins, haven't decided yet.