Summer Reading Storytime: space, week 4

My coworker picked these out, they're super cute!

Planet Kindergarten
Sue Ganz-Schmitt, illustrated by Shane Prigmore
ISBN: 9781452118932
Really cute gloss of the first day of kindergarten as a mission to space, and it holds together quite nicely. I especially like the touches of having various kindergartners be various types of aliens just through hair and clothing and poses. Very fun, and lots of nudge-nudge wink-wink about what things "really" are. Short and cute.

Kitten's First Full Moon
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: 9780060588281
Kitten roams outside at night and discovers the moon, the night, and a nice puddle of what looks like milk, but is in fact the reflection of the beautiful moon. Soft, gentle, and sweet. A classic.

On the Launch Pad: A Counting Book About Rockets
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Derrick Alderman and Denise Shea
ISBN: 1404805818
Lovely little counting book with BRIGHT simple illustrations of rockets getting ready to blast into space. Super short and sweet, with lovely primary colors and nice textural color washes and collage pieces to add depth and visual interest. An excellent visual walkthrough of the process (very simplified) of getting a rocket ready to liftoff and head off into space, centered into a counting book where the visual elements match the number of that particular page. Hard work to set it up, but it's a breeze to read through, and a delight to look at the finished design.

Tuesday Storytime: Candy!

I've wanted to do this storytime for a LOOONG time, ever since we got the book Ganesha's Sweet Tooth, but it's been hard to find a good time. Easter is approaching, and at least in the US, it's become secular enough that I can get away with having a somewhat tangentially related storytime - so candy it is!

Ganesha's Sweet Tooth
Sanjay Patel and Emily Haynes, illustrated by Emily Haynes
ISBN: 9781452103624
A ... creative re-creation of the myth of the writing of the Mahabharata has a child Ganesha breaking his tusk on an interesting ladoo (indian temple sweet) - a jawbreaker! Frustrated by his tooth loss, he tries to throw it into the moon (referencing a different myth) but misses and bonks Vyasa (the legendary/mythic poet) on the head. Vyasa is intrigued by this god-child's tusk, and they strike a deal for Ganesha to write out the poem as Vyasa recites it, as long as he can eat all the candy he wants in the mean-time. Many lots later, the poem is completed, Ganesha is happy with his magical writing tusk, and there's sooooo much candy to eat!

Owen's Marshmallow Chick
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: (board book, no isbn listed, HarperFestival 2002)
I love how sweet and innocent this Easter story is. Baby mouse Owen has a full Easter basket of all sorts of traditional candies, and each one is pronounced his "favorite" as he gobbles them all up one after the other - except for the bright yellow marshmallow chick (it's a peep, but branding issues I'm guessing?) that matches his blanket and looks like a toy. That one gets played with all day (trying not to think about the sugar and sticky fallout of that choice) and put in pride of place with his other treasured toys that night, and dreamed about - and that one is of course, his "favorite."

I pulled Fairy Floss (Ann Ingalls, Migy Blanco, ISBN: 9781499802382in case we had an older crowd (still somewhat unlikely this time of year, but always a possibility) which is a pretty fast-moving but somehow slightly staid stroll through the Chicago World Fair where the delights of electric motors make treats like cotton candy (then known as Fairy Floss (among other amusing names) possible for a mass audience. Cute, but it was just a bit long and just a bit... boring? Which seems really impressive for a book about the World Fair AND cotton candy.

So instead we went with:

Bad Kitty Does NOT Like Candy (Yes I Do)
Nick Bruel
ISBN: 9781626722309
I try to not use a lot of "branded" characters (Elena/Doc McStuffins, Bad Kitty, Caillou (mostly because Caillou makes me feel homicidal) because I want to encourage kids to realize there's lots of books out there that don't have anything to do with the TV (or whatever streaming device they're watching their shows on now) - but every once in a while there's a cute enough book (or a hard enough theme) that makes me step into the branded world for a bit. This one did it for me - Bad Kitty is hungry, but not realllly hungry - she just wants candy because it looks so tasty and sweet and fun. Of course candy is bad for cats, but she eventually snags some (because bad kitty) and has to get her teeth brushed to clear out all the candy that has stuck her mouth closed. Now kitty IS hungry, and is perfectly happy with fish, because now she knows that she does NOT like candy after all.



 

Tuesday Storytime: Spring is Coming

South Carolina is weird. There's a joke floating around the internet about all the different seasons "false spring" "second winter" "mud season" "ice week" and that's been true here - but despite it all, the flowers are starting to bloom and the temperatures are starting to consistently creep upward, even if the graph looks a bit bi-polar about it from day to day.

These books were picked out by my coworker.

Something to Crow About
Megan Halsey Lane
ISBN: 0803706987 (library binding)
Randall and Cassie are chicks together in the barnyard, and Cassie is just about perfect. She struts better, she scratches better, she can even find worms better. Poor Randall just wants to find SOMETHING he can be good at. When he finds it, both Cassie and Randall are surprised!

When Spring Comes
Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek
ISBN: 9780062331397
Sweet vignettes of the colors and sounds and sights and activities (by people and by plants and animals and nature in general) of spring. Really sweet, very good for the center position, because there's no real plot to it, but it just flows gently along through sweet and colorful scenes.

If You're Hoppy
April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic
ISBN: 9780061566349
Along the rhythm and pattern of the original song, this jubilant book runs through all the various happy and exuberant animals that one could be if one were "hoppy" or "sloppy" or "flappy," from the standard storytime fare to some that are way more exotic or unexpected.

Tuesday Storytime: It's Cold Outside!

I'm finally back on my feet after a two-week long cold, and I've jumped into the winter wilderness with three books focusing on the chills and thrills of wintertime.

Pablo in the Snow
Teri Sloat, illustrated by Rosalinde Bonnet
ISBN: 9781627794121

Winter is Here
Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek
ISBN: 9780062747198

Winter is the Warmest Season
Lauren Stringer
ISBN: 0152049673

Tuesday Storytime: Last Fall Storytime!

It's finally getting cold out (now that it's December, of course) and so we're wrapping up with one final salute to fall. These titles were chosen by my coworker.

Fall Leaves Fall
Zoe Hall, illustrated by Shari Halpern
ISBN: 0590100793
Oddly-textured papercuts give this an old-fashioned stop-motion animation feel, with flat matte textures for people and backgrounds, and vibrant painterly textures for leaves and natural objects. Factual and quite short.

In The Middle of Fall
Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek
ISBN: 9780062573117
This newest from Keven Henkes moves away from mice into a lovely exploration of fall and the activities and events that epitomize it.

Leaves
David Ezra Stein
ISBN: 9780399254970
Bear wanders around the woods, gently confused and saddened by the falling leaves all around. He gathers them up as he drifts gently toward hibernation, and when he wakes he sees the new leaves budding on the trees and is comforted.

Tuesday Storytime: Peaceful Moon

A trio of peaceful, gentle, moon-centered stories. Another that would have gone delightfully with this theme is Floyd Cooper's beautiful sepia-toned Max and the Tag-Along Moon, but it was just a smidge too long, and I wanted to try and include a nonfiction title as often as I could with these themed storytimes.

Footprints on the Moon 
Mark Haddon, illustrated by Christian Birmingham
ISBN: 9780763644406
The author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time presents a lyrical  (and hella long, but we skipped pages like mad) exploration of watching the original moon landing, and being comforted by knowing that regardless of the changes here on earth, the footprints on the moon will endure for centuries.

Moon Plane
Peter McCarty
ISBN: 0805079432
A small boy watches a plane fly at night and spins a fantasy about flying up to the moon.


Kitten's First Full Moon
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: 9780060588281
Kitten wanders around in a luminous night and has kitten-sized adventures chasing after the "little bowl of milk" that is the full moon, having a few accidents, but ending safely at home.

Tuesday Storytime. Excellent Eggs

This was supposed to be the storytime for the Tuesday after Easter, but we had a slight technical difficulty and so it got used today. Example #three-million-and-one for why I do slightly off-note storytimes when I can for holidays or themed days; I can re-use general egg storytimes, but Easter storytimes are a little harder to explain three weeks after the fact. :)


An Egg is Quiet
Dianna Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long
ISBN: 9780811844284
Beautiful nonfiction picture book showcasing the diversity and beauty of eggs. Really lovely and lyrical and fantastic; while being absolutely grounded in reality and information. Perfect layout to choose what age-group or complexity-level to engage with, which makes it a great school pick.

Egg
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: 9780062408723
Almost wordless picture book with comic-book framing on several pages (it's like a gentle version of a Mo Willems Pigeon book) tell the story of four eggs and their slightly diverging paths through life. The "mystery" got a lot of traction from my audience, and there were several exlaims of shock and interest. Always a great thing to get from a storybook.

The Egg
M. P. Robertson
ISBN: 0803725469
While I appreciate the mystery of the egg-hatching as much as anyone (especially when it makes an impact like it did today on an appreciative audience) I have to say that this particular book for some reason is THE HARDEST to find when you don't remember the author's name! Librarian Problems. Anyway. George (first clue) finds a GIANT egg under his mom's favorite chicken (love that detail) and proceeds to play mommy for the fantastic find. A really sweet and funny and beautifully illustrated fairy tale ensues, and one that's actually short enough to read during storytime! One of my all-time favorite picture books, even if I do forget the author's name all the time.

Tuesday Storytime: Spring!

Now that we're solidly into warm weather, I wanted to do some traditional "season" books, and I found a nice set of them: two weeks of spring books, and then a week about rain and mud!

It's Spring!
Linda Glaser, illustrated by Susan Swan
ISBN: 0761313451
Cut-paper dioramas in bright but naturalistic colors.  Amazingly intricate illustrations.

The rhyme scheme in this book is a little clunky at times, or perhaps I just wasn't feeling the rhythm properly, because it made me stutter a few times in storytime despite pre-reading and practicing beforehand.  Glaser has put together a perfect intro to how spring progresses, with straightforward but lyrical descriptions of natural processes and how the season progresses.  Swan's intricate and colorful dioramas and scenes enhance the immediacy of what is being narrated, and helps to ground the info in the real world.  It's not even that long!  Very good season book - probably one of the best I've read, despite the bad fit of the rhymes to my speaking cadence.


When Spring Comes
Kevin Henkes,illustrated by Laura Dronzek
ISBN: 9780062331397
Pastels and fluffy indistinct borders make everything seem fuzzy and soft and new.

This is a much more fanciful approach to spring, but still in the realm of the naturalistic.  The drawings are a lot more loose, and take a few liberties, but overall remain true to life and focused on nature.  This book's theme is waiting: if you wait, spring will do this, and that, and that other thing.  It also directly addresses the reader "I hope you like umbrellas" & etc, which I always like when that happens.  Makes the storytime seem more directly interactive and attentive to the focus of the children listening/watching.  Sweet and short.  A good length here: long enough to be a final book on it's own, and short enough that it can fit in the middle with a set of other shorter books.


And then it's spring
Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin E. Stead
ISBN: 9781596436244
Colored pencils and scraggly people and environments focus on the wait for spring to green up the landscape.

I don't like this one quite as much as the others, because the illustrations, while interesting, aren't as visually stimulating for little ones (there's a lot of detailed info and cute little grace notes for older or individual readers to pick up).  The narrative is entirely about the long wait for spring to come through and change the brown of the landscape to green. The only thing I don't like about this one is that the focus through the book is on seeds that were planted (presumably a garden plot from the illustrations) and the very end has the green flooding over the landscape, but doesn't show the garden plot we've been concerned about throughout the book.  It's a bit jarring to end without seeing whether the seeds have come up or not!

 

Tuesday Storytime; Spring through the Seasons

A trio of very nice books that hit on all the seasons changing, but all with some level of focus on springtime.

Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature

Nicola Davies, illustrated by Mark Hearld

ISBN: 9780763655495

Book of short meditations on natural occurances through the seasons.  

This is a LONG book - it's a large-format picture-book, mostly in spreads (lovely lovely spreads) with about 10 or so rhymes or short lyrical descriptions of events or sights to see in that particular season.  I read one each from Summer, Fall, and Winter, and then read most of Spring (skipping the first set, the sea-gulls, which are more of a summer thing for us, and the lamb's tails, mostly because it was my least favorite, and I had to cut so many for time).  The little short poems or stories are sweet and nature-based, and each is tangible and specific, and grounded in the beautiful large painterly spreads.  Excellent for this age-group in small doses, and would be perfect to use repeatedly through the year as the different seasons come and go.

Listen, Listen

Phillis Gershator, illustrated by Alison Jay

ISBN: 9781846860843

Rounded cameo paintings fill the centers of the pages, with the poem unfolding around the edges.

I like this one, but I had to tape off the last few pages, because it pretty seamlessly merges into a more interactive "seek and find" section at the very end, encouraging readers to search the pages "Where's Waldo"-style to find various animals or items.  The conceit here is using the sounds of each season to make a throughline - which works fairly well for some seasons; summer is all bugs, fall is leaves and nuts, and spring is birds chirping away, but winter was a bit of a reach, and some of the inclusions to make the rhyme scheme work seem a bit forced.  Overall, it's sweet and an interesting approach to sensing the seasons instead of looking at them.

Old Bear

Kevin Henkes

ISBN: 9780061552052

Bear falls asleep and dreams of technicolor fever-dream seasons, before waking into a delightful real spring.

The ONLY objection I have to this adorable book is that the bear comes out of hibernation in the full bloom of riotous spring (for the narrative to work well) and that's not in the least accurate.  Despite that one niggle, this is a beautiful book that showcases dreams and imagination, and reads quickly and clearly.  The colors and stylization of the dream spreads are simply gorgeous, and the bear is roly-poly and fuzzy and adorable.  Excellent length to be either an ending book or a middle book between two not-as-long offerings.  

   

Storytime Potentials: Sophie Sleeps Over, Marisabina Russo

Sophie Sleeps Over
Marisabina Russo
ISBN: 9781596439337
Flattened, slightly exaggerated bunny characters against white backgrounds or minimal scenery.

Sophie and Olive are best bunny friends at school, and Sophie is super excited to go to Olive's birthday party - her very first sleepover!  Her parents offer good advice about what to bring, but Sophie doesn't want to bring her lovie - she's afraid Olive will think she's a baby.

Conflict looms when Olive's door is opened by a different bunny - Penelope - who claims that SHE is Olive's best friend!  What's a bunny to do?  Over the course of the afternoon, Sophie wavers between feeling like she's Olive's best friend to feeling like an unwanted third-wheel, and when the lights go out, she's way too worked up to sleep.

Resolution is a calm, moonlit meeting between Sophie and Penelope, who also is having trouble sleeping - it's her first sleepover too, and she's also a little worried about sharing Olive's friendship.  When it's finally bedtime, the two of them have built a connection of their own, and are more at peace with the idea of being a trio, instead of two twoesomes.

This one is very much on the long side for me, but until complicated friendships and sleepovers are extinct, there's always going to be a need for sweet comforting informational books to help guide kids through their earliest forays into socialization.

I won't be using it for regular storytimes, but when I have a school tour or an older group, it's just about perfect.  I will probably pair it with some of Kevin Henke's work, or the ever-maddening Betty Bunny by Michael Kaplan.

Picture Book Bonanza 3/3: Kevin Henkes' Penny and Her Marble, Mo Willems' A Big Guy Took My Ball!

Penny and Her Marble
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: 9780062082039
Read February 3, 2014

Small-format picture book

Penny is a mouse (as are most of Henkes' characters) and she fights a great moral battle here, and comes off victorious in the end.  While taking a walk, Penny happens upon a marble in the grassy verge of the sidewalk, in front of a neighbor's house.  Penny covets the marble, and takes it.  Afterwards, she suffers very noticeable pangs of guilt about having done so, culminating in a set of nightmares.  In the morning, Penny (without intervention or advice from any adults or other characters at all, which I LOVE) heads back to her neighbor's yard to return the marble to whence it came.  At this point, reality and picture book plots diverge, as the neighbor informs Penny that she had placed the marble there for someone to find, and Penny gets to keep the marble with a clear conscience.  Adorable, and with a nice gently delivered message, as are all of Henkes' stories.


A Big Guy Took My Ball!
Mo Willems
ISBN: 9781423174912
Read February 3, 2014

An observant or devious reader will notice the catch slipping right on by at the beginning, but Piggy has a problem because a BIG GUY came and took "his" ball.  Elephant is ready to leap to the rescue, until he realizes just HOW BIG this guy really is.  Their avenging fury is averted when the big guy sweetly thanks Piggy for finding his ball for him, and all is well again.  This one is not nearly as epic as Should I Share My Ice Cream (which should be required reading for everyone ever) but it's worth it to see Elephant (normally so unflappable) waxing dramatic about the size differential between him and the big guy in question.

Tuesday Storytime: Baby it's COLD Outside!!

I'm starting this year with listing the titles of picture books that I use for Storytime each Tuesday.
For the record, I do a "Family-Style Storytime" aimed at babies-in-arms to age 4, and usually have between 10 and 20 attendees (including parents/guardians).

Oh! by Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek
Greenwillow, 1999
ISBN: 9780688170530
Various animals and children exclaim in delight at a fresh snowfall, cavort all morning and afternoon, and then head back home at night to rest for the next day of fun.  Sweet pastel short page-vignettes for each different animal all smush together at the end in a satisfying manner.

Snowballs by Lois Ehlert
HMH for Young Readers, 1995
ISBN: 9780152000745
Bright "found object" collages combine to create layered snow-creatures, from family members to cats and dogs.  High interest-value for identifying the snow-creature components (acorns, carrots, buttons...).  The endpapers feature actual snowmen created by the Ehlert family.

Utterly Otterly Night, by Mary Casanova, illustrated by Ard Hoyt
Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2011
ISBN: 9781416975625
Little otter is growing up fast (from his first appearance in Utterly Otterly Day) and during a winter night frolic, he proves his maturity by taunting and evading a pack of wolves while his family slips into their den to safety.  Snappy non-consecutive rhymes and onomatopoeic words make this a good one to practice a few times before reading to the kids.