With school getting out, there's lots of travel on the horizon, and air travel is stressful for lots of adults. Books about the process can help kids understand what's going on, and provide a sense of control and familiarity with the system, even if the adults are still longing for those mini-bottles.
The Airport Book
Lisa Brown
ISBN: 9781626720916
Really detailed comic-strip format (almost reminds me of a Richard Scarry book) follows a family (and a "lost" stuffed Monkey) through the process of getting to, through, and waiting in an airport, then getting onto, into, and settled into a flight, and then back out the other side. VERY detailed, and very darkly humorous about the lines and the waiting and the boredom.
Airport
Byron Barton
ISBN: 0690041691
Same idea as the first book, but much more simple. We also have more impressive clear blocky illustrations of airplanes, cockpits, and radio-control towers in this book, which leaves a more powerful visual impression. This simplified version really streamlines the human-centered portion of the process.
Miss Mouse Takes Off
Jan Ormerod
ISBN: 0688178715
From the perspective of a stuffed mouse lovey, we get the same process one final time. This time we really feel the boredom and time spent in the air, as well as the ample opportunities for things to get lost or mislaid along the way. We also get our first view of an airplane bathroom, which was VERY interesting to the kids. Details were about midway between The Airport Book and Airport, which works well for a final impression.
Showing posts with label Jan Ormerod. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jan Ormerod. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Tuesday Storytime: Travel
This week's theme is entirely due to finding Miss Mouse Takes Off in the delivery one day by chance and loving it.
Miss Mouse Takes Off
Jan Ormerod
ISBN: 0688178715
Miss Mouse is a long-armed, long-legged stuffed mouse, and she engagingly narrates her airplane trip to visit Grandma, from check-in through the in-flight movie and back to the ground again. I love this so much because it's entirely factual, and doesn't over-glamorize or add fantastic or fantasy touches to the trip - it just stands on it's own as a mundane real life adventure.
Rattle and Rap
Susan Stegall
ISBN: 9781845077037
This one is super super short. Excellent choice for today, because I had a bunch of wiggle-worms. This might be better as a one-on-one book, because the illustrations are hugely detailed and interesting, but the word-count is so low that I'm not able to linger on them as much as I'd like because I have to keep the story (such as it is) flowing along. Essentially this is just an onomatopoeic journey on a train ride, from start "Tickets please, tickets please" to stop "End of the line, end of the line" with lots of train noises in between "rattle and rap" and "whistle and whine" and some basic descriptions "hurrying, hurrying, hurtling by" "skimming the sky, skimming the sky." Notable also for casual inclusion of multi-ethnic, multi-able characters.
Bear on a Bike
Stella Blackstone
Debbie Harter
ISBN: (Board Book) 9781841483757
There is supposed to be a hardcover edition of this, but I wasn't able to find one through our consortium, sadly. (Hardcover ISBN: 978190122491) A rhyming book, with paired page-spreads - one with the bear on a form of transport (bike, raft, boat, rocket), the second spread shows where the bear went. Ends with Bear on a rocket-ship heading out into space. Very sweet, very short. The rhymes are easy, but some of them don't scan particularly well for me: "I'm going to the seaside, / Where children love to play, / Where young friends dig and race / And swim, while fishes dart away."
Overall a nice set of short easy reads for our little ones today.
Miss Mouse Takes Off
Jan Ormerod
ISBN: 0688178715
Miss Mouse is a long-armed, long-legged stuffed mouse, and she engagingly narrates her airplane trip to visit Grandma, from check-in through the in-flight movie and back to the ground again. I love this so much because it's entirely factual, and doesn't over-glamorize or add fantastic or fantasy touches to the trip - it just stands on it's own as a mundane real life adventure.
Rattle and Rap
Susan Stegall
ISBN: 9781845077037
This one is super super short. Excellent choice for today, because I had a bunch of wiggle-worms. This might be better as a one-on-one book, because the illustrations are hugely detailed and interesting, but the word-count is so low that I'm not able to linger on them as much as I'd like because I have to keep the story (such as it is) flowing along. Essentially this is just an onomatopoeic journey on a train ride, from start "Tickets please, tickets please" to stop "End of the line, end of the line" with lots of train noises in between "rattle and rap" and "whistle and whine" and some basic descriptions "hurrying, hurrying, hurtling by" "skimming the sky, skimming the sky." Notable also for casual inclusion of multi-ethnic, multi-able characters.
Bear on a Bike
Stella Blackstone
Debbie Harter
ISBN: (Board Book) 9781841483757
There is supposed to be a hardcover edition of this, but I wasn't able to find one through our consortium, sadly. (Hardcover ISBN: 978190122491) A rhyming book, with paired page-spreads - one with the bear on a form of transport (bike, raft, boat, rocket), the second spread shows where the bear went. Ends with Bear on a rocket-ship heading out into space. Very sweet, very short. The rhymes are easy, but some of them don't scan particularly well for me: "I'm going to the seaside, / Where children love to play, / Where young friends dig and race / And swim, while fishes dart away."
Overall a nice set of short easy reads for our little ones today.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Storytime Potentials: Miss Mouse Takes Off, Jan Ormerod - airplane travel
Miss Mouse Takes Off
Jan Ormerod
ISBN: 0688178715
Read Feb 24, 2014
I spotted this little gem by chance while processing library transits, and I'm so glad I spotted it. Travel books aimed at the very very young are often way too cutesy or repetitive for my taste, or they gloss over the actual realities of travel (it's long, it's boring, you're stuck in a chair or berth) in favor of more fantastical adventures.
This little guy is perfect. Written from the perspective of Miss Mouse, a stuffed lovey, a trip to visit grandma becomes a straightforward adventure in it's own right, with no mystical trappings or elisions. I do feel a bit sorry for the other passengers on the flight who have to deal with Miss Mouse's antics (she ends up in some poor gentleman's soup!).
Now I just have to find two more nifty travel or airplane titles to pair it up with. I'm tempted to go with a travel theme rather than an airplane theme, since the travel aspects are hit so hard and so well. I'll just have to see what I turn up, and you can be sure you'll see this title popping up under the Storytime tag in the next few months!
Jan Ormerod
ISBN: 0688178715
Read Feb 24, 2014
I spotted this little gem by chance while processing library transits, and I'm so glad I spotted it. Travel books aimed at the very very young are often way too cutesy or repetitive for my taste, or they gloss over the actual realities of travel (it's long, it's boring, you're stuck in a chair or berth) in favor of more fantastical adventures.
This little guy is perfect. Written from the perspective of Miss Mouse, a stuffed lovey, a trip to visit grandma becomes a straightforward adventure in it's own right, with no mystical trappings or elisions. I do feel a bit sorry for the other passengers on the flight who have to deal with Miss Mouse's antics (she ends up in some poor gentleman's soup!).
Now I just have to find two more nifty travel or airplane titles to pair it up with. I'm tempted to go with a travel theme rather than an airplane theme, since the travel aspects are hit so hard and so well. I'll just have to see what I turn up, and you can be sure you'll see this title popping up under the Storytime tag in the next few months!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)