I was off on vacation this past week, so I had a fellow librarian give my storytime, and I treated everyone to a collection of "beach reads" so they'd all be properly jealous of me. :)
The Twelve Days of Summer
Elizabeth Lee O'Donnell, illustrated by Karen Lee Schmidt
ISBN: 0688082025
Cartoonish illustrations with vibrant colors and careful plotting to get the numbers all counted in.
Our protagonist character is a cute little girl visiting the beach with her family, and she counts up from "a little purple sea anemone" along with the tune from The Twelve Days of Christmas. The rhymes are cute, the meter is solid, and the illustrations are adorable. An excellent silly summer read.
An Island in the Sun
Stella Blackstone, Nicoletta Ceccoli
ISBN: 1841481939
Dreamy fanciful illustrations (think Kinuko-Craft-light) are the star of an "I spy" building rhyme.
Another co-opted rhyme sequence, this one based on the old "I spy with my little eye" format mixed with the "the house that Jack built" cumulative concept. Despite the cumulative nature, this one is still easily short enough to be the middle book, and to flow quickly and nicely with few tongue-twisters or trip-up meters.
Three By the Sea
Mini Grey
ISBN: 9780375867842
Mini Grey's trademark faux-collage and quirky cartoon detailing.
The "three" of the title are a dog, cat, and mouse, who all live together in a shack by the sea, and have worked out an arrangement of chores and labor that all are happy with - until a slick foxy salesman stops by and insidiously manages to get everyone thinking they do more work, and their housemates are slackers or incompetent. After a heated argument, things get sorted out (mainly through the ejection of the slick fox) and while things do change, they do so organically, and with goodwill and mutual appreciation. I'm tempted to give this book to college students in shared housing.
Just one more regular storytime before our official start of Summer Reading Themes - it was a patchwork mess this year, making it difficult for me to find any extra titles to start at the top of June like I usually try to do. Oh well - gives me a chance to use some of the beach/summer titles that I rarely get to showcase.
Showing posts with label Karen Lee Schmidt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karen Lee Schmidt. Show all posts
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Tuesday Storytime: Going to the Beach
Posting late this week, can you tell summer is coming? O.o
The Twelve Days of Summer
Elizabeth Lee O'Donnell, illustrated by Karen Lee Schmidt
ISBN: 0688082033
Whimsical colorful drawings of a beach, with clever uses of borders for the increasing menagerie.
Instead of the twelve days of christmas "fiiiiiive golden rings" and etc., here we have the days of summer, notated by increasing amounts of various beach animals (plus waves, oddly enough). It's well-written, the lines scan, the wordplay is interesting without being tongue-tying (six squid a-swimming) and the scenes depicted continually get zanier and zanier as the animal numbers grow. As a bonus, our "little purple sea anemone" (which I've been humming since Tuesday, thanks ever so) is hidden on each page, regardless of the scope of the composition. Well played.
Penguin on Vacation
Salina Yoon
ISBN: 9780802733979
Cute blocky "newsprint comic" style artwork enlivens a slender tale of a Penguin and Crab.
Penguin is sick of snow. Snowballs, snow forts, snowskiing, snowsledding, all of it. He's headed somewhere tropical! Sadly, he's not exactly prepared for the reality of the beach - you can't skate on sand, after all. A helpful crab wanders in to the story, teaches some good beach games, and then heads off to the pole for his own winter vacation. The ending is strangely done - Crab visits the pole, leaves, then comes back again a year later for another visit, while Penguin doesn't travel back to the beach. Kids won't notice, but I did, and wondered why the story was structured like that? Regardless, adorable and a very short read.
The Seashore Book
Charlotte Zolotow, painted by Wendell Minor
ISBN: 0060202149
Beautiful paintings of serene seascapes adorn a sweet but slow narrative.
I really hesitated over this one, and I'm glad I had a smaller, more sedate group for Storytime, because with a larger crowd, or with some of my more energetic kids, this would have gone over like a lead balloon. It's beautiful, and descriptive, and not actually very long, but it's all essentially a dream sequence, and it's simply not very exciting - it just narrates a stereotypical "platonic ideal" of a day at the beach, from before sunrise to after dark. It worked, and everything was lovely, but it very easily could have been simply too sedate.
The Twelve Days of Summer
Elizabeth Lee O'Donnell, illustrated by Karen Lee Schmidt
ISBN: 0688082033
Whimsical colorful drawings of a beach, with clever uses of borders for the increasing menagerie.
Instead of the twelve days of christmas "fiiiiiive golden rings" and etc., here we have the days of summer, notated by increasing amounts of various beach animals (plus waves, oddly enough). It's well-written, the lines scan, the wordplay is interesting without being tongue-tying (six squid a-swimming) and the scenes depicted continually get zanier and zanier as the animal numbers grow. As a bonus, our "little purple sea anemone" (which I've been humming since Tuesday, thanks ever so) is hidden on each page, regardless of the scope of the composition. Well played.
Penguin on Vacation
Salina Yoon
ISBN: 9780802733979
Cute blocky "newsprint comic" style artwork enlivens a slender tale of a Penguin and Crab.
Penguin is sick of snow. Snowballs, snow forts, snowskiing, snowsledding, all of it. He's headed somewhere tropical! Sadly, he's not exactly prepared for the reality of the beach - you can't skate on sand, after all. A helpful crab wanders in to the story, teaches some good beach games, and then heads off to the pole for his own winter vacation. The ending is strangely done - Crab visits the pole, leaves, then comes back again a year later for another visit, while Penguin doesn't travel back to the beach. Kids won't notice, but I did, and wondered why the story was structured like that? Regardless, adorable and a very short read.
The Seashore Book
Charlotte Zolotow, painted by Wendell Minor
ISBN: 0060202149
Beautiful paintings of serene seascapes adorn a sweet but slow narrative.
I really hesitated over this one, and I'm glad I had a smaller, more sedate group for Storytime, because with a larger crowd, or with some of my more energetic kids, this would have gone over like a lead balloon. It's beautiful, and descriptive, and not actually very long, but it's all essentially a dream sequence, and it's simply not very exciting - it just narrates a stereotypical "platonic ideal" of a day at the beach, from before sunrise to after dark. It worked, and everything was lovely, but it very easily could have been simply too sedate.
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