Despite technical difficulties and scheduling conflicts, our very last 2018 summer reading program went off without a hitch. We read some books, danced some dances (courtesy KidzBop) and had a big flashy final event that the kids really enjoyed.
Books read for the Storytime Dance Party:
Dancing Feet!
Lindsey Craig, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 9780375861819
A fun "identify the animal" progression, using cute little dancing rhymes about various kinds of dancing feet. At the end, it's revealed that all the dancers are kids, acting out dances in the style of "their" animal. It's fun to match them by pose and costume to their particular creature.
Amazing Me! Music!
Carol Thompson
ISBN: 9781846439612
This book wins the "arrived just in time" award, having shown up on the Friday before this last program. I was thrilled to see it, because even though it's short, it's got great representation and rhythm and a good solid set of fun, lively illustrations.
Feel the Beat: dance poems that zing from salsa to swing
Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Kristi Valiant
ISBN: 9780803740211
Shoutout to Valiant for her amazing body and facial expressions all through this book. It really takes a good solid poetry entry and just slides it up into a really really great read. There are LOTS of poems, and so I cheated: we only read the doubled poem: All of the World, Dancing is Joy; Hip-Hop; Merengue; Square Dance; Conga; Waltz (so LOVELY to see a strong black boy dancing); Bhangra; and ended with Swing Dance. There's quite a few more, and also a fun CD of the author reading the poems with the rhythm and mood of the dance style in question. Very cool.
Books read for the Summer Reading Dance Party:
Jazz on a Saturday Night
Leo and Diane Dillon
ISBN: 9780590478939
Moody and jazzy imaginary scene of many of the jazz greats playing all together in a fictional club. Comes with a CD of music either by or inspired by the particular artists featured: Miles Davis, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Stanley Clarke, Ella Fitzgerald,
Hip Cat
Jonathan London, illustrated by Woodleigh Hubbard
ISBN: 0811814890
Practically a jazz improv in book form. Love the colors and the big bold chunky shapes and shimmies of the paintings, love the beat-poetry form of the text on the page, love the visuals and imagery of the Hip Cat wandering through his city.
Showing posts with label Marc Brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marc Brown. Show all posts
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Tuesday Storytime: Zingy Blingy Rhythm
The Ring Went Zing! a story that ends with a kiss
Sean Taylor, illustrated by Jill Barton
ISBN: 9780803733114
Scratchy colored-pencil and watercolor anthropomorphic animals chase a ring, in growing numbers.
I Got the Rhythm
Connie Schofield-Morrison, illustrated by Frank Morrison
ISBN: 9781619631786
A delightful AA child beat-bops through a park associating rhythms with different senses and sounds.
Dancing Feet!
Lindsay Craig, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 9780375861819
A series of animal-feet-based "who does this" pages get kids involved, and then a splash page at the end has children and animals all dancing together.
Sean Taylor, illustrated by Jill Barton
ISBN: 9780803733114
Scratchy colored-pencil and watercolor anthropomorphic animals chase a ring, in growing numbers.
I Got the Rhythm
Connie Schofield-Morrison, illustrated by Frank Morrison
ISBN: 9781619631786
A delightful AA child beat-bops through a park associating rhythms with different senses and sounds.
Dancing Feet!
Lindsay Craig, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 9780375861819
A series of animal-feet-based "who does this" pages get kids involved, and then a splash page at the end has children and animals all dancing together.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Tuesday Storytime: Animals Read Books
Because why not?
Three really long ones today, and a very active group, but the tone and the cadence of all of these was really good for a lovely quick flow. Two of these are first-time storytime books, and I'm really happy with how they read for a group. Nice to have more good books added to my backlist.
Wild About Books
Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 037582538X
Seussical rhymes and exuberant colored-pen spreads with lots of action and movement.
Molly the librarian accidentally drives the bookmobile into the zoo, and slowly introduces the resident animals to reading, to caring for books properly, and finally to creating their own works themselves. On the readers to writers angle, would go very well with Daniel Kirk's Library Mouse for an older group. This book is long, but juuust barely doable because of the trippy language, the packed and colorful pages, and how quickly the rhymes work (also I skipped the page of haiku).
A Library Book for Bear
Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (The Sniffles for Bear)
ISBN: 9780763649241
Grumpy Bear and perky Mouse head off to the library, over Bear's strenuous (and ever louder) objections.
I admit to partly liking this book because I get to yell in the library and enjoy the horrified expressions of all the kids as I do. What can I say, get your thrills where you can! Bear promised Mouse that he would go to the library, but he's really regretting it. Mouse insists, but Bear ONLY wants a book about pickles, and gets very vocal about his not being happy about coming to the library in the first place. When he gets shushed by a pair of moms sitting in on storytime, he loses it for real, but a chipper librarian and Mouse's persistence win him over in the end. (Also, he gets a book about pickles, which helps.)
The Snatchabook
Helen Docherty, illustrated by Thomas Docherty
ISBN: 9781402290824
Weirdly-proportioned forest animals in scribbly environments remind me of a darker Steven Kellogg.
Every night the forest animal children settle into bed with a good book, until they start vanishing! Brave Eliza sets a trap for the book thief, figures out the problem, and works with the mysterious (and frankly adorable) Snatchabook to work out a better approach for the future. Cute, straightforward, and the rhyme sequence gets your tongue moving double-quick, which is very helpful for the last book of the day.
Three really long ones today, and a very active group, but the tone and the cadence of all of these was really good for a lovely quick flow. Two of these are first-time storytime books, and I'm really happy with how they read for a group. Nice to have more good books added to my backlist.
Wild About Books
Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 037582538X
Seussical rhymes and exuberant colored-pen spreads with lots of action and movement.
Molly the librarian accidentally drives the bookmobile into the zoo, and slowly introduces the resident animals to reading, to caring for books properly, and finally to creating their own works themselves. On the readers to writers angle, would go very well with Daniel Kirk's Library Mouse for an older group. This book is long, but juuust barely doable because of the trippy language, the packed and colorful pages, and how quickly the rhymes work (also I skipped the page of haiku).
A Library Book for Bear
Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (The Sniffles for Bear)
ISBN: 9780763649241
Grumpy Bear and perky Mouse head off to the library, over Bear's strenuous (and ever louder) objections.
I admit to partly liking this book because I get to yell in the library and enjoy the horrified expressions of all the kids as I do. What can I say, get your thrills where you can! Bear promised Mouse that he would go to the library, but he's really regretting it. Mouse insists, but Bear ONLY wants a book about pickles, and gets very vocal about his not being happy about coming to the library in the first place. When he gets shushed by a pair of moms sitting in on storytime, he loses it for real, but a chipper librarian and Mouse's persistence win him over in the end. (Also, he gets a book about pickles, which helps.)
The Snatchabook
Helen Docherty, illustrated by Thomas Docherty
ISBN: 9781402290824
Weirdly-proportioned forest animals in scribbly environments remind me of a darker Steven Kellogg.
Every night the forest animal children settle into bed with a good book, until they start vanishing! Brave Eliza sets a trap for the book thief, figures out the problem, and works with the mysterious (and frankly adorable) Snatchabook to work out a better approach for the future. Cute, straightforward, and the rhyme sequence gets your tongue moving double-quick, which is very helpful for the last book of the day.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 7: Food Science Rejects; Round Four
Final round of rejected Food Science books - I was very close to choosing all of these, and on a different day, or in a slightly different mood, I may have actually used any of them instead.
The Gulps
Rosemary Wells, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 9780316014601
I really wanted to hate this book when I saw it first, but I just couldn't. The story is hokey and more than a little heavy-handed, but the family is so good-natured that despite it all, they're easy to root for. The Gulps are a family of obese rabbits (minus one health-conscious daughter) heading off on their vacation in their oversized mobile home, ready to stop at every fast-food place they can find. Instead, their RV breaks down in a field, and they are forced to live and work with a farming family (thin and hardworking, of course) for the summer, eating organic foods and pitching in on the farm. They aren't much use at first, being both fat and unused to physical labor, but over time they toughen up, slim down, and begin to enjoy their newfound energy. The summer finally over, they fix up the RV and head back onto the road home, stopping at an all-you-can-eat salad buffet to cement their new lifestyle. It's cute, that's all I can say. Somehow the heavy-handed message seems more funny and tongue-in-cheek than punitive, and no characters engage bashing either lifestyle or food-choice. A serious contender, but I felt like I wanted to keep the focus on food itself, not people's relationship with food.
Eat Like a Bear
April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Steve Jenkins
ISBN: 9780805090390
I really wanted to make this work, but it was up against stiff competition and just barely didn't make it (apologies for the pun). So, now I just have to do an animal habitat or animal diet storytime so I can use it then! We follow a lovely collage-of-textural-materials bear through the year, month by month, through a lovely tripping rhyme sequence that covers the major food that the bear will eat that month; new spring shoots and long-dead animals in early spring through ants and clovers and trout in the summer to roots and groundhogs and moths and honey in fall. I especially like that the story doesn't shy away from the omnivorous nature of a bear, and spends as much time on the insects as it does on plants and animal food sources. A spread at the end passes on more factual info, broken into different sub-topics. Really really lovely and enjoyable. Can't wait to read it for the kids!
Cook-A-Doodle-Doo!
Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel, illustrated by Janet Stevens
ISBN: 0152056580
I have loved this book since I first encountered it for storytime a few years ago. I try to read it at least once a year. The grandson of the Little Red Hen (you know, the one who couldn't get any help baking?) finds grandma's old recipe book in his coop, and decides to try it out. The traditional lazybones remain unwilling to assist, but he's got new friends now, and a turtle, iguana, and pot-bellied pig stand ready and (somewhat) able to help out! His friends are invested and eager helpers, but not so great at cooking. They misunderstand the directions, fetch the wrong things, and want to continually taste the in-process recipe. Despite setbacks, and one calamity, the foursome rally and create a beautiful strawberry shortcake. The illustrations are delicious, the animals are hysterical, and the casual nod to the classic childhood story just make me all sorts of happy inside. Sidebars on most of the pages pass on short factoids about ingredients or utensils or processes. As a bonus, after you've drooled over the lovely shortcake, you can use the enclosed recipe to make your own! Love this book forever!
The Gulps
Rosemary Wells, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 9780316014601
I really wanted to hate this book when I saw it first, but I just couldn't. The story is hokey and more than a little heavy-handed, but the family is so good-natured that despite it all, they're easy to root for. The Gulps are a family of obese rabbits (minus one health-conscious daughter) heading off on their vacation in their oversized mobile home, ready to stop at every fast-food place they can find. Instead, their RV breaks down in a field, and they are forced to live and work with a farming family (thin and hardworking, of course) for the summer, eating organic foods and pitching in on the farm. They aren't much use at first, being both fat and unused to physical labor, but over time they toughen up, slim down, and begin to enjoy their newfound energy. The summer finally over, they fix up the RV and head back onto the road home, stopping at an all-you-can-eat salad buffet to cement their new lifestyle. It's cute, that's all I can say. Somehow the heavy-handed message seems more funny and tongue-in-cheek than punitive, and no characters engage bashing either lifestyle or food-choice. A serious contender, but I felt like I wanted to keep the focus on food itself, not people's relationship with food.
Eat Like a Bear
April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Steve Jenkins
ISBN: 9780805090390
I really wanted to make this work, but it was up against stiff competition and just barely didn't make it (apologies for the pun). So, now I just have to do an animal habitat or animal diet storytime so I can use it then! We follow a lovely collage-of-textural-materials bear through the year, month by month, through a lovely tripping rhyme sequence that covers the major food that the bear will eat that month; new spring shoots and long-dead animals in early spring through ants and clovers and trout in the summer to roots and groundhogs and moths and honey in fall. I especially like that the story doesn't shy away from the omnivorous nature of a bear, and spends as much time on the insects as it does on plants and animal food sources. A spread at the end passes on more factual info, broken into different sub-topics. Really really lovely and enjoyable. Can't wait to read it for the kids!
Cook-A-Doodle-Doo!
Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel, illustrated by Janet Stevens
ISBN: 0152056580
I have loved this book since I first encountered it for storytime a few years ago. I try to read it at least once a year. The grandson of the Little Red Hen (you know, the one who couldn't get any help baking?) finds grandma's old recipe book in his coop, and decides to try it out. The traditional lazybones remain unwilling to assist, but he's got new friends now, and a turtle, iguana, and pot-bellied pig stand ready and (somewhat) able to help out! His friends are invested and eager helpers, but not so great at cooking. They misunderstand the directions, fetch the wrong things, and want to continually taste the in-process recipe. Despite setbacks, and one calamity, the foursome rally and create a beautiful strawberry shortcake. The illustrations are delicious, the animals are hysterical, and the casual nod to the classic childhood story just make me all sorts of happy inside. Sidebars on most of the pages pass on short factoids about ingredients or utensils or processes. As a bonus, after you've drooled over the lovely shortcake, you can use the enclosed recipe to make your own! Love this book forever!
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