Tuesday Storytime: Celebrate Reading

I had a collection of spring books all selected, but apparently this is "last surprise winter" week, so instead I'll save those for next time and use this cute trio of books about reading and libraries.

Bear's House of Books
Poppy Bishop, illustrated by Alison Edgson
ISBN: 9781680100389
This is such a cute book. Four childhood friends share their one picture book every night, even though it's worn out and sticky from use, until they go on a search for a new book, and discover an entire library owned by a slightly grumpy Bear. Bear is upset at first about others using his books (especially with sticky paws and when they use a sandwich as a bookmark) but when he realizes that they only have ONE book, he quickly develops a solution. Really sweet and heartwarming.

Llama Llama Loves to Read
Anna Dewney and Reed Duncan (or should that be the other way around...) illustrated by JT Morrow
ISBN: 9780670013975
The standard llama llama rhyming scheme works its magic with the process of reading - from letters to sounds to words, sentences, songs, books, stories, and reading informational signs. Not much depth, but accurate and uplifting, acknowledging that sometimes words need to be memorized, and sometimes words are difficult to read or learn. Not as inspiring as some of the other more emotional llama llama challenge-facing books, but a solid introduction to the concept of learning to read as a process.

Our Library
Eve Bunting, illustrated by Maggie Smith
ISBN: 9780618494583
(minus the last three or four pages because I had a young and very wiggly crowd - I ended on the "library on the grassy meadow" spread.)
I will say, the grownups in the group really enjoyed the VERY SPECIFIC book titles that were checked out of the library in order to help the children solve their problems and overcome their difficulties. Mrs Goose made everyone sad when she revealed that the library was old and dingy, with a bad roof, and no money, and that the landlord (a weasel of course) wanted the land back, but with some judicious checking out of VERY SPECIFIC BOOKS, and a lot of hard work and effort, and a dramatic confrontation with an elderly and grumpy Beaver, the library was saved - all with the help and instruction provided by the library books.

Tuesday Storytime: Library Books

Done by my counterpart. Always a fun choice to focus on literacy and library skills with a captive audience. :)

We Are In A Book
Mo Willems

It's Library Day
Janet Morgan Stoeke
I love this author and her books.

Otto the Book Bear
Katie Cleminson

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.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Robin Sloan
ISBN: 9780374214913
Finished May 20, 2014

There are people who jump into swimming pools, or into the ocean.  It's perhaps mid-April, she's on spring break, she's got her bathing suit on, and she is GOING.  A shiver of antici...pation (shush, I had to), a quick run, a smallish hop, a splash, and she's IN.

I am not that person.  I am the person who sits on the edge of the dock and pokes her toes in with a worried crease in her forehead, thinking about temperatures and wind-chill and leg cramps.  I am the person who sits on the warm concrete edge of the swimming pool with her legs in - ONLY her legs in - and watches the rest of the group swarm around the water like mayflies.

I don't jump.  I am not an "early adopter."  Hype makes me nervous.  The more people who shove a specific thing in my face with the breathless exhortation "My God this is PERFECT for you!" the more nervous I get, and the longer I hold off.  In this case, about umpty billion people (even patrons whose names I don't actually know) shoved this book at me with frantic intensity.

It was too much.  I couldn't take it.  The book (already purchased, because I did read a review and think "I might like this" before I got shoved at by everyone) ended up in the purgatory that is the back seat of my car.  For MONTHS.  I bought this book NEW.  In October.  Do you want to count how many months that is?  It's a depressing number.

I swung my legs in that pool for more than half a year.

Why?  I was afraid.  I don't like dreary.  I don't like depression (scuse me: "realism") I have enough of that in my own life, thanks.  I don't like to be wrapped up in a lovely story and have it fizzle out, or take a strange turn at Albuquerque.  I don't like to fall in love with characters and have them beheaded or raped (looking at you, GRRM).  I don't like gritty.  I don't like "snappy dialogue" that's actually mean-spirited snark that comes from entitled or arrogant or superior bastards.

I worry a lot.  As fast and as much as I read, you'd think that it wouldn't bother me this much, but I want to read things that are uplifting and heartwarming, and when I get a bait-and-switch, it's like being gut-punched.  It's horrid.

I finally slipped into the water on Monday.  God as my witness, this water is HEAVENLY.

Reviews elsewhere do the review thing.  I just want to gush for a bit.

I'm so glad I bought it.  I want to wander around for a week or so, clutching it to my chest and luxuriating in the happy fugue that comes from scarfing down a story that started great, stayed great, and finished with a beautifully satisfying ending AND AN EPILOGUE!

I'm revealing myself as a giant nerd here, but I spent my college days playing Mage, the World of Darkness game system developed by White Wolf.  This book reads like a beautiful Mage chronicle, in the lightest grey World of Darkness possible.  The synthesis of nostalgia for my college games (and, let's be honest here - my college years) and the breathless frantic intensity of the cutting-edge Google projects and post-recession uncertainty was like manna.  

I swear, people should stop recommending things to me.  I would get in a lot faster if people just stopped hassling me about how nice the water is.