These were selected by my coworker!
An Island in the Sun
Stella Blackstone, illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli
A "House that Jack built" narrative structure, and a lovely rhyming flow make this sweet but fairly empty story move along quickly, held largely together by the utterly beautiful illustrations of sun and wind and water and islands in a tropical imagination of a world. Beautiful but slight.
North, South, East, West
Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Greg Pizzoli
An unpublished little gem from Margaret Wise Brown has a little bird fluttering off into different climates as she flies in each cardinal direction to discover where she most wants to be - finally (seemingly) returning home to settle and raise a family who end the story by taking wing in all different directions just like their mother.
Leo Can Swim
Anna McQuinn, illustrated by Ruth Hearson
Leo is Lola's little brother, a Black British child who has family-and-child-centered real-life adventures with his family and father, much as Lola does in her books. In this story, Leo and his dad go to a swim class at a local pool, and encounter locker rooms, swimming gear, a swimming lesson, and a nice rest after class. Perfect little books for explaining life experiences for kids about to start on them personally, or for kids who may never have that experience to learn about them in a realistic way.
Showing posts with label Nicoletta Ceccoli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicoletta Ceccoli. Show all posts
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Tuesday Storytime: Beach Reads
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Tuesday Storytime: Firefighters
I love firefighter books. They're exciting, the kids adore them, and they're just on that edge of being scary, while still providing a comforting reassurance that the heroes win and the fires always go out in the end.
The Firefighters
Sue Whiting, illustrated by Donna Rawlins
ISBN: 9780763649975
Australian class plays "pretend" firefighters, before getting a visit from the real deal.
I've used this several times as a storytime book, but not for a while now - I do try not to use my favorites too very often. This one especially, since it's such a stand-out in tone and story from other fire-fighting books, I feel it's fairly memorable, and really try to save it for every few years. That said, it is my single most favorite firefighter book to present to kids.
Why? It starts off with a trio of kids and their teacher, gamely along for the pretend adventure, traveling around in cardboard box firetrucks to put out a fire (a half-painted red wall) with corrugated-perforated drainpipe "hoses" and bandana oxygen masks. Heck yes! I love any picture book that references the fun of imaginative play. But really we get two books in one, because after our game of pretend firefighting, the real firefighters come by in their truck (a guy and a girl) to show off the vehicle, to demonstrate escape methods (the Aussie method is "get down low and go go go" which is repeated several times), and to generally be awesome role models.
The illustrations are likewise lovely - Rawlins has done a really good job creating vibrant and lively faces and postures. I could wish for a bit more diversity - there's the requisite token audience member but that's all. On the other hand, the gender split is equitable - our main quartet are two boys and a girl and a woman teacher, and our firefighters are also evenly split. There are bright colors and exciting compositions, but everything is very clear and specific - easy to focus on, and easy to understand the emotions and context of the pictures.
Just an excellent book all around.
This is the Firefighter
Laura Godwin, illustrated by Julian Hector
ISBN: 9781423108009
Rhyming sequence follows a firefighter from the station through a completed rescue.
This one is also a repeat use for me. It's hard to find firefighting books that are interesting but not too scary for really tiny ones, and this one goes right up to that line for me. "This is the firefighter, these are his clothes" is the first page, and then the next spread introduces us "this is his truck, and this is it's hose" on the ground floor of the station. We then follow an alarm bell to a fire in an apartment building with flames licking out of the windows. We get some real excitement here that might be a bit much for some delicate or sheltered or very emotional kids - the firefighters use their axes to break down the doors to rescue people from inside, to rescue a cat from a burning apartment, and to ride the tall ladder up to the top floor to rescue a couple from a smoky window. All ends well back down on street level with the film-crew recording, the requisite reunion between cat and child, and we end with a spread overview of the city from the distance with black smoke fading away into a sunset "This is the smoke as it drifts far away. This is the glow at the end of the day," before pulling back to the station to show the company "This is the firefighter. This is the hero."
Firefighters in the Dark
Daskha Slater, illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli
ISBN: 9780618554591
A young girl drifts off to sleep while the sounds of the nearby fire station influence her dreams.
I love this one, and it also is a repeat. Firstly, we have a slight difference for the firefighting stories so far - our narrator is a girl. Secondly, we're in the realm of imagination and dreams here, which is also a difference from the usual. Finally, the stories that she makes up as to why things are on fire are delightful exercises in child-logic and are also fairly innocuous - nothing is really frightening here, just occasionally peculiar. As the girl falls asleep, she can hear the sirens of the firefighters, and she is sure she knows where they're going: first to a castle with fifteen baby princesses that was set on fire accidentally when a dragon (invited for dinner) tried to blow on his food to cool it - and of course set the table on fire. Next up, the sirens are fainter, so naturally they're off in Mexico, where the red-hot-chili peppers cause a lady to drip fire embers from her mouth before she and the resulting fire flowers are doused by the firefighters. Finally we have a rescue - a young boy bounces on his bed so high that he ends up next to Pluto, and the firefighters use their ladder truck to bring him back down because it's his bedtime. Dreamy colors and impressionistic landscapes and framing makes this a very different sort of firefighting book, and one that is really fun to show to kids, because they are quick to announce that this girl is imagining or dreaming all these crazy things.
The Firefighters
Sue Whiting, illustrated by Donna Rawlins
ISBN: 9780763649975
Australian class plays "pretend" firefighters, before getting a visit from the real deal.
I've used this several times as a storytime book, but not for a while now - I do try not to use my favorites too very often. This one especially, since it's such a stand-out in tone and story from other fire-fighting books, I feel it's fairly memorable, and really try to save it for every few years. That said, it is my single most favorite firefighter book to present to kids.
Why? It starts off with a trio of kids and their teacher, gamely along for the pretend adventure, traveling around in cardboard box firetrucks to put out a fire (a half-painted red wall) with corrugated-perforated drainpipe "hoses" and bandana oxygen masks. Heck yes! I love any picture book that references the fun of imaginative play. But really we get two books in one, because after our game of pretend firefighting, the real firefighters come by in their truck (a guy and a girl) to show off the vehicle, to demonstrate escape methods (the Aussie method is "get down low and go go go" which is repeated several times), and to generally be awesome role models.
The illustrations are likewise lovely - Rawlins has done a really good job creating vibrant and lively faces and postures. I could wish for a bit more diversity - there's the requisite token audience member but that's all. On the other hand, the gender split is equitable - our main quartet are two boys and a girl and a woman teacher, and our firefighters are also evenly split. There are bright colors and exciting compositions, but everything is very clear and specific - easy to focus on, and easy to understand the emotions and context of the pictures.
Just an excellent book all around.
This is the Firefighter
Laura Godwin, illustrated by Julian Hector
ISBN: 9781423108009
Rhyming sequence follows a firefighter from the station through a completed rescue.
This one is also a repeat use for me. It's hard to find firefighting books that are interesting but not too scary for really tiny ones, and this one goes right up to that line for me. "This is the firefighter, these are his clothes" is the first page, and then the next spread introduces us "this is his truck, and this is it's hose" on the ground floor of the station. We then follow an alarm bell to a fire in an apartment building with flames licking out of the windows. We get some real excitement here that might be a bit much for some delicate or sheltered or very emotional kids - the firefighters use their axes to break down the doors to rescue people from inside, to rescue a cat from a burning apartment, and to ride the tall ladder up to the top floor to rescue a couple from a smoky window. All ends well back down on street level with the film-crew recording, the requisite reunion between cat and child, and we end with a spread overview of the city from the distance with black smoke fading away into a sunset "This is the smoke as it drifts far away. This is the glow at the end of the day," before pulling back to the station to show the company "This is the firefighter. This is the hero."
Firefighters in the Dark
Daskha Slater, illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli
ISBN: 9780618554591
A young girl drifts off to sleep while the sounds of the nearby fire station influence her dreams.
I love this one, and it also is a repeat. Firstly, we have a slight difference for the firefighting stories so far - our narrator is a girl. Secondly, we're in the realm of imagination and dreams here, which is also a difference from the usual. Finally, the stories that she makes up as to why things are on fire are delightful exercises in child-logic and are also fairly innocuous - nothing is really frightening here, just occasionally peculiar. As the girl falls asleep, she can hear the sirens of the firefighters, and she is sure she knows where they're going: first to a castle with fifteen baby princesses that was set on fire accidentally when a dragon (invited for dinner) tried to blow on his food to cool it - and of course set the table on fire. Next up, the sirens are fainter, so naturally they're off in Mexico, where the red-hot-chili peppers cause a lady to drip fire embers from her mouth before she and the resulting fire flowers are doused by the firefighters. Finally we have a rescue - a young boy bounces on his bed so high that he ends up next to Pluto, and the firefighters use their ladder truck to bring him back down because it's his bedtime. Dreamy colors and impressionistic landscapes and framing makes this a very different sort of firefighting book, and one that is really fun to show to kids, because they are quick to announce that this girl is imagining or dreaming all these crazy things.
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