Tuesday Storytime: Winter is Coming

It's finally starting to get a little chilly, so my coworker has picked out a very good set of "fall turns into winter" books to get us transitioned over, just in time for Christmas!

Every Autumn Comes the Bear

Jim Arnosky

ISBN: 0399225080

Lyrical text with powerful, almost frightening oversized illustrations of a territorial bear arriving before his winter's hibernation. 

Penguin and Pumpkin

Salina Yoon

ISBN: 9780802737335

A nice tone shift back to the light-hearted, Yoon gives us another cute story of Antarctic penguins traveling to see the world of fall colors and plants (we'll skip over the geographic improbability that entails with the whole southern hemisphere being in late spring), and Penguin brings back a crate of pumpkins and fall leaves for his fledgling sibling.

Shelter

Celine Claire, illustrated by Qin Leng

ISBN: 9781771389273

Sweet and (for adults at least) somewhat pointed story about offering shelter to the needy in the cold hard winter, set with forest animals, and not an overt hint of the Christmas story to be found, similarities notwithstanding (and probably intentional). Sweet for the kids, and hopefully hard-hitting for the adults. 

Tuesday Storytime: Blizzard!

We got whomped by winter weather this week, and had a small crowd, but the books were right on target!

These books were selected by my coworker.

Snowballs
Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 0152000747
Ehlert's signature blend of collage and found items in a wintry installment focused on snowmen and the fun of building them, and the curious supplies and random objects that can make up their expressions and ornaments. Busy and folksy.

Penguin and Pinecone, a friendship story
Salina Yoon
ISBN: 9780802728432
Ok, the anthropomorphized pinecone (who never talks or moves) and the resulting "friends" the pine trees... a little odd. But it's still a cute story of helping things (or people) get to where they belong, and of cultivating friendships even over time and space, and in thinking of others in a loving way. Even if the other is a pinecone. Sweet but strange.

Blizzard
John Rocco
ISBN: 9781423178651
Rocco's hometown was swamped by a blizzard when he was a child, so he created this picture book as a memoir and a record of that event. The illustrations are only a BIT dated, but the story of adventure and boredom (and parental worry) is pretty timeless, even if the setting and protagonist are solidly stereotypical mid-century americana. Dramatic and funny.

Tuesday Storytime: October Already!

The month of October is a happy time for my storytime selecting; as it becomes essentially a month-long celebration of Halloween and all things spooky. This is my partner's first October, and she's off to a great start:

Me and My Dragon: Afraid of Halloween
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580896580
The boy and his adorable bright red dragon confront the frights and startlements of Halloween, and decide it's not that bad after all.

Penguin and Pumpkin
Salina Yoon
ISBN: 9780802737335
A little longer than it seems like it should be: Penguin heads out away from the ice with a pack of friends to see what "fall" is like, but baby brother Pumpkin has to stay home, as he's not quite big enough. (Serious questions about given names in this world remain unanswered) When Penguin and crew come back with fall leaves and pumpkins for all, they do what they can to give baby Pumpkin a chance to experience fall himself.

Crankenstein
Samantha Berger, illustrated by Dan Santat
ISBN: 9780316126564
Crankenstein is a very scary monster. Have you seen it? Check around when there are annoying or disappointing situations, or when life just doesn't go quite right. Crank will vanish sometimes, but it will always be back. A funny sideways view of childhood fits and grumps works perfectly for this time of year.

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.