The end of summer got away from me!
For this week, we had some cute stories picked out by my coworker:
Little Fox and the Missing Moon
Ekaterina Trukhan
After a nightmare where he eats the moon, Little Fox (and eventually his friends) head out into the dark night to find it. A bit wandering, but cute illustrations, and a sweet story.
No, No, Kitten!
Shelley Moore Thomas, illustrated by Lori Nichols
Kitten just needs a bowl and a basket and a laser pointer and a spaceship... What? Kitten wants to go to Jupiter, of course!
Roaring Rockets
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Ant Parker
Nonfiction content in a narrative form, with anthropomorphic animals as the cast, and wobby "crayon" faux naif illustrations. Super cute and I appreciate the attentiveness to veracity.
Showing posts with label Tony Mitton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tony Mitton. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Tuesday Storytime: SRP Space: Rockets Away!
First set of books bequeathed to my trainee: rocketry is cool and fun. I don't blame her at all for choosing these for her first round.
The Moon (a Bamboo and Friends book)
Felicia Law, illustrated by Nicola Evans
ISBN: 1404812822
Bamboo and friends admire the moon and then take an imaginary rocket journey up to see it.Very cute combo of nonfictional information and cute preschool thinking styles.
On the Launch Pad (a counting book about rockets)
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Derrick Alderman and Denise Shea
ISBN: 1404805818
Counting down the iconic 10, 9, 8 with really good pictures and informational text, and a fun horizontal spread at the end that requires you to turn the whole book sideways.
Roaring Rockets
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 061388857X
Trippy wordplay and anthropormorphic animals traveling up to the moon and back down into a splashdown in the ocean.
The Moon (a Bamboo and Friends book)
Felicia Law, illustrated by Nicola Evans
ISBN: 1404812822
Bamboo and friends admire the moon and then take an imaginary rocket journey up to see it.Very cute combo of nonfictional information and cute preschool thinking styles.
On the Launch Pad (a counting book about rockets)
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Derrick Alderman and Denise Shea
ISBN: 1404805818
Counting down the iconic 10, 9, 8 with really good pictures and informational text, and a fun horizontal spread at the end that requires you to turn the whole book sideways.
Roaring Rockets
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 061388857X
Trippy wordplay and anthropormorphic animals traveling up to the moon and back down into a splashdown in the ocean.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Tuesday Storytime: Splashy Summer
I have such fun picking out themes for storytimes.
All-Weather Friends
Udo Weigelt, illustrated by Nicolas D' Aujourd'hui
ISBN: 0735810486 (library)
A German wives' tale gets Moss the frog into weather forecasting trouble, before a new friend sets him straight.
Moss is flustered when his friend Hedgehog demands that he forecast the weather, and in his panic, he makes up stories. None of his forecasts come true (this book has the record for the weirdest-weather day ever!) and in despair, after ruining his friends' plans for the day, he sets off for the weather frog in the human house to learn forecasting. What he learns instead, is how to be a friend, and how to be truthful, even when people are very demanding.
Down by the Cool of the Pool
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 0439309158
A lively barnyard song-and-dance sparked by the frog at the farm pond.
This one is quick and lively and super-fast-paced, and the illustrations are likewise loose and bright and vibrant and full of action. The text is incorporated into the illustrations, which makes a couple of pages a bit hard to process in front of an audience, but the words and the escalation of the rhyme is fairly predictable. I do find the ending a bit abrupt, but otherwise it's a bright fun read.
Water in the Park: a book about water and the times of the day
Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin
ISBN: 9780375970023
A city park, with pond, playground, sprinklers, and grassy field, sees a full day of visitors.
This is an interesting premise, and it feels just a little bit forced, to be totally honest, but the close focus on individuals (from a child's perspective - so we have the names of children and dogs, but not of any adults) and on the ebb and flow of visitors to the park saves it from being tedious. We start at 6 am, with a quiet park, where turtles enjoy the first rays of sunlight on the rocks. Through the day, various people and animals enjoy the park and interact with water in lots of different ways, from dogs splashing in the pond to kids schlepping water in buckets over to the sandboxes, to babies playing in the sprinklers, to birds bathing in the puddles left over from the workers watering the flowers, until nighttime, when the last dogs finish their walks and a torrential storm soaks everything.
All-Weather Friends
Udo Weigelt, illustrated by Nicolas D' Aujourd'hui
ISBN: 0735810486 (library)
A German wives' tale gets Moss the frog into weather forecasting trouble, before a new friend sets him straight.
Moss is flustered when his friend Hedgehog demands that he forecast the weather, and in his panic, he makes up stories. None of his forecasts come true (this book has the record for the weirdest-weather day ever!) and in despair, after ruining his friends' plans for the day, he sets off for the weather frog in the human house to learn forecasting. What he learns instead, is how to be a friend, and how to be truthful, even when people are very demanding.
Down by the Cool of the Pool
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 0439309158
A lively barnyard song-and-dance sparked by the frog at the farm pond.
This one is quick and lively and super-fast-paced, and the illustrations are likewise loose and bright and vibrant and full of action. The text is incorporated into the illustrations, which makes a couple of pages a bit hard to process in front of an audience, but the words and the escalation of the rhyme is fairly predictable. I do find the ending a bit abrupt, but otherwise it's a bright fun read.
Water in the Park: a book about water and the times of the day
Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin
ISBN: 9780375970023
A city park, with pond, playground, sprinklers, and grassy field, sees a full day of visitors.
This is an interesting premise, and it feels just a little bit forced, to be totally honest, but the close focus on individuals (from a child's perspective - so we have the names of children and dogs, but not of any adults) and on the ebb and flow of visitors to the park saves it from being tedious. We start at 6 am, with a quiet park, where turtles enjoy the first rays of sunlight on the rocks. Through the day, various people and animals enjoy the park and interact with water in lots of different ways, from dogs splashing in the pond to kids schlepping water in buckets over to the sandboxes, to babies playing in the sprinklers, to birds bathing in the puddles left over from the workers watering the flowers, until nighttime, when the last dogs finish their walks and a torrential storm soaks everything.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Tuesday Storytime: Summer Reading, Rockets
I personally think that rockets are a little bit tenuous of a connection for Heroes, but I like rockets and space and astronauts, so I'm game for it regardless.
This first month, the actual Summer Reading Programs are all "event" programs instead of reading programs, which is nice from a work standpoint, and less nice from a literacy standpoint, so these very early childhood picture books are the only ones I've collected for this particular theme. Once July hits, these posts will either be a bit longer, or split up between morning and afternoon programs.
Roaring Rockets
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 0753451069
Sketchy "crayon"-like art hides skillfully framed compositions, enhanced by an excellent vocabulary.
This book is really very nice, and a great one to start off with. The illustrations are misleadingly childlike and simplistic, almost Boynton-esque with the big-eyed animals as our astronauts. However, the illustrations are correct and labeled, and the narrative is chock-a-block with excellent astronaut terms and concepts, all rendered in deceptively simplistic phrasing and word-choice. Some highlights "Rockets carry astronauts with cool white suits, oxygen helmets, and gravity boots." and "Down comes the lander with legs out ready and fiery boosters to hold it steady."
On the Launch Pad: a counting book about rockets
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Derrick Alderman & Denise Shea
ISBN: 1404805818
Bright colored collages count down to a liftoff with a beautifully diverse crew of workers.
I think my first favorite thing about this book is the vibrant clarity of the colors popping out in every page spread. My second favorite thing about this book is that the "cast" is made of men and women in equal measure, and of beautifully varied skin-tones and hair colors. From the workers cleaning the rocket, to the engineers in the control tower, to the truck-drivers, to the astronauts themselves... all the way through to the one lovely lady pulling the launch towers away in her little cart - it's just nice to see. An excellent primer on the various and numerous people and tasks necessary to get a rocket up into space, with a great visual twist at the very end.
This Rocket
Paul Collicutt
ISBN: 0374374848
Stunning paintings stand in contrast to showcase the diversity of rocketry science.
This is an absolutely beautiful book. Technically, it's only about as long as On the Launch Pad, so I could have used this in the middle, but I wanted to slowly work through the concept sequentially, and felt like this one would be better after the basics of rockets and flight science were established by the other two books. Beautifully-drafted illustrations contrast on each spread, with rockets that are either fast or slow, tall or short, rockets like cars, rockets like trains... The endpapers are equally stunning. The front has detailed vignettes of each rocket in the book accompanied by dense technical explanations, and the back has a complex and beautiful illustrated timeline of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. This book also shares On the Launch Pad's ending twist, but with a much more vibrant and lifelike interpretation. Absolutely stunning book to showcase to the kids.
This first month, the actual Summer Reading Programs are all "event" programs instead of reading programs, which is nice from a work standpoint, and less nice from a literacy standpoint, so these very early childhood picture books are the only ones I've collected for this particular theme. Once July hits, these posts will either be a bit longer, or split up between morning and afternoon programs.
Roaring Rockets
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 0753451069
Sketchy "crayon"-like art hides skillfully framed compositions, enhanced by an excellent vocabulary.
This book is really very nice, and a great one to start off with. The illustrations are misleadingly childlike and simplistic, almost Boynton-esque with the big-eyed animals as our astronauts. However, the illustrations are correct and labeled, and the narrative is chock-a-block with excellent astronaut terms and concepts, all rendered in deceptively simplistic phrasing and word-choice. Some highlights "Rockets carry astronauts with cool white suits, oxygen helmets, and gravity boots." and "Down comes the lander with legs out ready and fiery boosters to hold it steady."
On the Launch Pad: a counting book about rockets
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Derrick Alderman & Denise Shea
ISBN: 1404805818
Bright colored collages count down to a liftoff with a beautifully diverse crew of workers.
I think my first favorite thing about this book is the vibrant clarity of the colors popping out in every page spread. My second favorite thing about this book is that the "cast" is made of men and women in equal measure, and of beautifully varied skin-tones and hair colors. From the workers cleaning the rocket, to the engineers in the control tower, to the truck-drivers, to the astronauts themselves... all the way through to the one lovely lady pulling the launch towers away in her little cart - it's just nice to see. An excellent primer on the various and numerous people and tasks necessary to get a rocket up into space, with a great visual twist at the very end.
This Rocket
Paul Collicutt
ISBN: 0374374848
Stunning paintings stand in contrast to showcase the diversity of rocketry science.
This is an absolutely beautiful book. Technically, it's only about as long as On the Launch Pad, so I could have used this in the middle, but I wanted to slowly work through the concept sequentially, and felt like this one would be better after the basics of rockets and flight science were established by the other two books. Beautifully-drafted illustrations contrast on each spread, with rockets that are either fast or slow, tall or short, rockets like cars, rockets like trains... The endpapers are equally stunning. The front has detailed vignettes of each rocket in the book accompanied by dense technical explanations, and the back has a complex and beautiful illustrated timeline of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. This book also shares On the Launch Pad's ending twist, but with a much more vibrant and lifelike interpretation. Absolutely stunning book to showcase to the kids.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Tuesday Storytime: Trucks
Yeah, I know, why pick this theme for this time of year. I felt like it. :)
Tough Trucks
Tony Mitton (Dinosaurumpus), illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 0753456001
Anthro-animals work with slightly cartoonish trucks on jobs with very metered verse blocks.
I really like this one for the vocabulary: study, accelerate, "weave and wend," piston, liquids... really interesting and potentially unfamiliar words for little ones. The rhyme is solid (sometimes a bit too solid) and perhaps a bit plodding, but it works for the measured pace of the very loose framework of "trucks and truckers working at jobs." Because the characters are all various animals, there's no indication of gender, except for a waitress-cat wearing a frilly apron. I would have preferred to see frills on a couple of the truckers/workers or a gender-neutral apron on the wait-staffer, but at least they are animals, so one can plead that they are multi-gendered.
I Love Trucks!
Philemon Sturges, illustrated by Shari Halpern
ISBN: 0060278196
Multi-gendered, multi-ethnic drivers and characters fill a tiny town full of types of trucks.
Our narrator for this very short and simple trucking celebration is a kid playing with trucks in a sandbox, describing various types of truckish jobs that get done while the blocky, primary-colored artwork keeps the environment simple and straighforward and very appealing. The best-loved truck is an ice-cream truck, so if you're in a rural or ice-cream-truck-less area, be prepared for some really intense questions about trucks that dispense ice-cream.
Trucks Roll!
George Ella Lyon, illustrated by Craig Frazier (Stanley Mows the Lawn)
ISBN: 9781416924357
Abstracted and graphically-intense scenes in forced-perspective or otherwise intriguing compositions.
This is my favorite truck book from today, and might be my favorite truck book in general. Frazier's graphic art is just phenomenal, and everything from the endpapers (in that bright burnt-yellow industrial corrugated-iron pattern) to the movement and energy blasting out of his pages just makes me so energized and happy as a reader. The storyline isn't amazing - it isn't really a story, and is really very like Tough Trucks as far as ideas go, but here we stick with trucks on the road, and what they might carry (wild cargoes like rabbits or giant cookies under tarps) and it works much better to have our focus limited to road trucking. What also works much better is the rhyme and cadence here - we get shorter rhymes and so less interesting vocab, but the words and phrases just leap out, with the coda "Trucks roll" becoming more and more impressive til we reach the end. Finally, the idea of having the "Trucks stop" in the middle of the book, and ending at dawn (another bravura graphic design, with the shadows on the trucker, the steam on the coffee, and even the hood-ornament as a bird reaching for the sky, all with bright yellow and orange sun rays streaming across) is really brilliant, and a nice change from the usual choice of stopping at "bedtime." Love this book.
Tough Trucks
Tony Mitton (Dinosaurumpus), illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 0753456001
Anthro-animals work with slightly cartoonish trucks on jobs with very metered verse blocks.
I really like this one for the vocabulary: study, accelerate, "weave and wend," piston, liquids... really interesting and potentially unfamiliar words for little ones. The rhyme is solid (sometimes a bit too solid) and perhaps a bit plodding, but it works for the measured pace of the very loose framework of "trucks and truckers working at jobs." Because the characters are all various animals, there's no indication of gender, except for a waitress-cat wearing a frilly apron. I would have preferred to see frills on a couple of the truckers/workers or a gender-neutral apron on the wait-staffer, but at least they are animals, so one can plead that they are multi-gendered.
I Love Trucks!
Philemon Sturges, illustrated by Shari Halpern
ISBN: 0060278196
Multi-gendered, multi-ethnic drivers and characters fill a tiny town full of types of trucks.
Our narrator for this very short and simple trucking celebration is a kid playing with trucks in a sandbox, describing various types of truckish jobs that get done while the blocky, primary-colored artwork keeps the environment simple and straighforward and very appealing. The best-loved truck is an ice-cream truck, so if you're in a rural or ice-cream-truck-less area, be prepared for some really intense questions about trucks that dispense ice-cream.
Trucks Roll!
George Ella Lyon, illustrated by Craig Frazier (Stanley Mows the Lawn)
ISBN: 9781416924357
Abstracted and graphically-intense scenes in forced-perspective or otherwise intriguing compositions.
This is my favorite truck book from today, and might be my favorite truck book in general. Frazier's graphic art is just phenomenal, and everything from the endpapers (in that bright burnt-yellow industrial corrugated-iron pattern) to the movement and energy blasting out of his pages just makes me so energized and happy as a reader. The storyline isn't amazing - it isn't really a story, and is really very like Tough Trucks as far as ideas go, but here we stick with trucks on the road, and what they might carry (wild cargoes like rabbits or giant cookies under tarps) and it works much better to have our focus limited to road trucking. What also works much better is the rhyme and cadence here - we get shorter rhymes and so less interesting vocab, but the words and phrases just leap out, with the coda "Trucks roll" becoming more and more impressive til we reach the end. Finally, the idea of having the "Trucks stop" in the middle of the book, and ending at dawn (another bravura graphic design, with the shadows on the trucker, the steam on the coffee, and even the hood-ornament as a bird reaching for the sky, all with bright yellow and orange sun rays streaming across) is really brilliant, and a nice change from the usual choice of stopping at "bedtime." Love this book.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 4: Dinosaurs
We skipped the week of Fourth of July, and now we're back with a bang to celebrate the science of dinosaurs!
Super huge crowd today, really attentive and energetic kids, great parents. I love my storytime families so much!
I Dreamt I Was a Dinosaur was our kickoff for my youngsters this morning. I paired it with Dinosaur Roar! as I originally planned, but an AC outage left me mixing things up a bit - Dinosaurumpus was a little too energetic and long for the appalling heat, so we switched over to a cute new one I found a few weeks back called Dinosaur Kisses.
Dinosaur Roar!
Paul & Henrietta Stickland
ISBN: 0525452761
THE PERFECT book of opposites and dinosaurs, with slightly exaggerated colorful and personable dinos.
I LOVE this book. I love this book so hard that I have to stop myself from using it every time I do a Dinosaur program. I might like dinosaurs a lot - they're a great program topic, because I'm excited and the kids are thrilled. I love this book so hard I bought it for my home library and I don't even have kids! Very little coherent story, but we get a parade of various imaginative dinosaurs (no hard names here, which is part of the appeal) which nicely and smartly contrast each other, and rhyme across pages, so we have "Dinosaur fat and dinosaur tiny" on one page, and then the next shows us "Dinosaur clean (using a nail file) and dinosaur slimy." LOVE LOVE LOVE.
Dinosaur Kisses
David Ezra Stein
ISBN: 9780763661045
Naive art, a blobby excited dinosaur baby romps through her world causing mayhem as she tries to "kiss" things.
I'm not totally thrilled with the artwork here, but I have to admit that it suits the tone of the story. It's a little messy, a little blobby, a little scribbly. Like a cross between Mo Willem's Pigeon books and David Shannon's No David books. A newly hatched dinosaur (again, no names) goes around trying to kiss things, and messing up - instead stomping and chomping and whomping them, which is an issue really, until another baby dino hatches (a sibling?) whereupon the "kisses" of stomping and chomping and whomping work perfectly. Interesting to me because it doesn't end with the baby mastering the art of kisses, but with her finding someone who is suited to her own brand of rough and tumble affection instead.
This afternoon, we've got the older kids, and I think with the heat (no AC in the room), I'm going to wimp out and only do two books with them today.
Our Summer Reading Featured Book is Dinosaurs Love Underpants, which I have to be honest, isn't my cuppa, but it's cute and fun, and the older kids will like that they're listening to an adult read to them about underwear. Since I'm only doing two today, the second really needs to be a firecracker, so I'm pulling out Dinosaurumpus for the job.
Dinosaurs Love Underpants
Claire Freedman and Ben Cort
ISBN: 9781416989387
Scruffy bearded cavemen hide from caricatured brightly-colored dinos, also underwear.
The rhymes flow nicely, and the story is silly and fun, but it's not my favorite. T-Rex chases down a caveman and demands his underpants, which starts a fad, which starts a war, and as the dinos tussle over the underpants, they all get ripped up, and the dinos kill each other off. Ends with a modern-day coda with a moral lesson: take care of your underpants because they saved our ancestors from the dinosaurs.
Dinosaurumpus!
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 9780439395144
This is a delightful book - when I can manage to get through it. The story is zippy and silly, the wordplay is fast and furious, and the rhyming and rhythm are a quick syncopated drumbeat that propels you through the story - great for the listeners, great for energy, not so great when part of the rhymes are the names of the dinosaurs. Stutter just once over "deinonychuses" (dino-night-chooses) and you're sunk! With the proper preparation and a great deal of energy, this one is a fast-paced fun dinosaur read that I'm always happy to show off to a group of kids.
Super huge crowd today, really attentive and energetic kids, great parents. I love my storytime families so much!
I Dreamt I Was a Dinosaur was our kickoff for my youngsters this morning. I paired it with Dinosaur Roar! as I originally planned, but an AC outage left me mixing things up a bit - Dinosaurumpus was a little too energetic and long for the appalling heat, so we switched over to a cute new one I found a few weeks back called Dinosaur Kisses.
Dinosaur Roar!
Paul & Henrietta Stickland
ISBN: 0525452761
THE PERFECT book of opposites and dinosaurs, with slightly exaggerated colorful and personable dinos.
I LOVE this book. I love this book so hard that I have to stop myself from using it every time I do a Dinosaur program. I might like dinosaurs a lot - they're a great program topic, because I'm excited and the kids are thrilled. I love this book so hard I bought it for my home library and I don't even have kids! Very little coherent story, but we get a parade of various imaginative dinosaurs (no hard names here, which is part of the appeal) which nicely and smartly contrast each other, and rhyme across pages, so we have "Dinosaur fat and dinosaur tiny" on one page, and then the next shows us "Dinosaur clean (using a nail file) and dinosaur slimy." LOVE LOVE LOVE.
Dinosaur Kisses
David Ezra Stein
ISBN: 9780763661045
Naive art, a blobby excited dinosaur baby romps through her world causing mayhem as she tries to "kiss" things.
I'm not totally thrilled with the artwork here, but I have to admit that it suits the tone of the story. It's a little messy, a little blobby, a little scribbly. Like a cross between Mo Willem's Pigeon books and David Shannon's No David books. A newly hatched dinosaur (again, no names) goes around trying to kiss things, and messing up - instead stomping and chomping and whomping them, which is an issue really, until another baby dino hatches (a sibling?) whereupon the "kisses" of stomping and chomping and whomping work perfectly. Interesting to me because it doesn't end with the baby mastering the art of kisses, but with her finding someone who is suited to her own brand of rough and tumble affection instead.
This afternoon, we've got the older kids, and I think with the heat (no AC in the room), I'm going to wimp out and only do two books with them today.
Our Summer Reading Featured Book is Dinosaurs Love Underpants, which I have to be honest, isn't my cuppa, but it's cute and fun, and the older kids will like that they're listening to an adult read to them about underwear. Since I'm only doing two today, the second really needs to be a firecracker, so I'm pulling out Dinosaurumpus for the job.
Dinosaurs Love Underpants
Claire Freedman and Ben Cort
ISBN: 9781416989387
Scruffy bearded cavemen hide from caricatured brightly-colored dinos, also underwear.
The rhymes flow nicely, and the story is silly and fun, but it's not my favorite. T-Rex chases down a caveman and demands his underpants, which starts a fad, which starts a war, and as the dinos tussle over the underpants, they all get ripped up, and the dinos kill each other off. Ends with a modern-day coda with a moral lesson: take care of your underpants because they saved our ancestors from the dinosaurs.
Dinosaurumpus!
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 9780439395144
This is a delightful book - when I can manage to get through it. The story is zippy and silly, the wordplay is fast and furious, and the rhyming and rhythm are a quick syncopated drumbeat that propels you through the story - great for the listeners, great for energy, not so great when part of the rhymes are the names of the dinosaurs. Stutter just once over "deinonychuses" (dino-night-chooses) and you're sunk! With the proper preparation and a great deal of energy, this one is a fast-paced fun dinosaur read that I'm always happy to show off to a group of kids.
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