Tuesday Storytime: Dogs and Cats

These were chosen by my coworker this week.

Douglas, You Need Glasses!
Ged Adamson
ISBN: 9780553522433
I always enjoy a funny book about kid-centric fears or challenges, and discovering that you need glasses is a pretty big challenge for a lot of kids. I somehow made it til my driving test before discovering that I was pretty nearly legally blind (that was a fun eye-sight test), whereas a less-blissfully-ignorant friend of mine was leaving her glasses behind at sleepovers, and "accidentally" dropping them behind car tires or into gopher holes at age 5. So there's going to be a lot of interest and sympathy here for poor Douglas, who gets into awful scrapes because he can't see, and then realizes that the world is a lot more fun with glasses. The translation of an eye chart into dog-friendly images is an especially fun sequence.

I Don't Want a Cool Cat!
Emma Dodd
ISBN: 9780316036740
A girl goes down the list of types of cats that she definitely does not want, until she reaches the end to state that really all she wants is just a cat - any cat - of her own. Sweet and cute (there's a dog version also).

Wolf's Coming!
Joe Kulka
ISBN: 9781575059303
Forest animals start giving warnings to each other and sneaking through the woods and into corners and hidey-places in houses as the Wolf starts to approach, but it's all in good fun at the end, as the animals are there for an entirely different type of surprise. I still think my favorite part of this book is the Wolf's dapper business suit with the giant '80s-style power shoulders. My second favorite is the scared look on his face as he peers into his strangely-dark house (our first real clue that something's up). Very suspenseful, and the tension might get to some younger kids - the colors are saturated and dark towards the reveal of the surprise.

Tuesday Storytime: Scary Friends

It's OCTOBER!!!!

Yay!  Now I can use all my scary books and my monster books and my black cat books and my pumpkin books and really there are just too many good books to use for as few Tuesdays as there are in October.  If I had a storytime every day in October, I might get through them all.  Anyway - we start off the month gently, with a set of "scary" friends.

Leonardo the Terrible Monster
Mo Willems
ISBN: 0786852941
Willem's signature colored papers and oddly-placed figures in space.

Leonardo is a really terrible monster.  I mean, just horrible.  He can't scare anyone!  So he hatches a plan - to find a super-scaredy-cat kid and at least manage to scare ONE person.  Leonardo is so terrible at being a monster that he can't even manage that, so he makes a scary, big, decision, and finds something he can do wonderfully.



Spike, the Mixed-up Monster
Susan Hood, illustrated by Melissa Sweet
ISBN: 9781442406018
Bright colors and scribbly outlines make this fresh and energetic.  Mexican-Spanish phrases and styling.

Spike is an axolotl (its a real thing, go look it up) and he desperately wants to be a scary monster, but he's really tiny, and kindof cute.  At least, all the other creatures at the pond think so.  When a truly scary gila monster heads over, everyone else flees, and it's up to Spike to scare the other monster away!  He's never scared anyone yet - will he succeed this time?  I love that the "appearances are deceiving" message goes both ways in this story, and that Spike instantly offers help and encouragement.  A good message, with a good set of non gendered anthropomorphic characters.


Wolf's Coming!
Joe Kulka
ISBN: 9781575059303
Kulka's illustrations are dark and forboding and looming, with plenty of expressive faces.

A set of woodland creatures scurry and hide in rhyming sequences as a business-suited, square-shouldered, enormous wolf stalks through the woods, getting closer and closer to home.  A sharp eye (or multiple read-throughs) will reveal tiny little hints at a twist ending, but suffice it to say that all the build-up is for a totally different sort of shock than the kids (or parents) are expecting.