Tuesday Storytime: Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are always a hit.

How Do Dinosaurs Play with their Friends? (board book edition)

Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mark Teague

ISBN: 043985654X

One of the more obviously moralistic of the "How Do Dinosaurs..." series offers conflict resolution in a dino-sized package.

This board book version MIGHT be shorter than the regular one - it's been a long time since I looked through it and I can't remember.  Regardless, there is no story to speak of, just narration of what a dino does with his friends: does he hog the swings? or pout and grump? or refuse to share? Of Course Not! Dinosaurs are GOOD friends, and so they share, and take turns, and respect other people's feelings. About half the book is spent on the bad examples, and about half on the good examples, which is a good flow for storytime, but I'm not so sure it's better for moral impressions. (Psychologically speaking things go better when ONLY the good examples are presented, oddly enough.)

Dinosaur Roar!

Paul & Henrietta Stickland

ISBN: 061335933X

One of my all time favorite dino books.  Lots of dinos, lots of compare and contrast words, so short.

I love this book so much. It's short and simple and rhythmic and the contrast words are delightful vocabulary: "dinosaur fierce, dinosaur meek... dinosaur clean, and dinosaur slimy... dinosaur spiky and dinosaur lumpy..." with just absolutely perfect bright clear colorful images and expressive faces and bodies. Really delightful, I don't even care that there's not a story there.

Dinotrux

Chris Gall

ISBN: 9780316027779

What's better than dinosaurs? Dinosaurs that are ALSO heavy construction equipment, obviously!

These steamy meany stompy powerful things are Dinotrux, and they're not playing around - life is hard work, and they're gonna get things done! Each dino-machine combo has an appropriately-dinosaurific name: "dumplododucus" "garbageadon" "semisaurs" and gets a spread to themselves or shared with another complementary mecha (they seem like mecha to me) talking about their prehistoric lives and work.  The (cute but unnecessary) catch at the end is that over the eons, they've evolved into the current batch of "tame" construction vehicles that people work with every day.  

Tuesday Storytime: Road Work

Ok, the dinosaurs aren't building a road, exactly, but all the same equipment is in play, and I can't help it: DINOSAURS using giant earthmovers! It's close enough.

Dinosaur Dig!
Penny Dale
ISBN: 9780763658717
A varied crew of dinosaurs (pre-feathered, sadly) work with a varied set of earthmoving equipment on a mystery structure.

Our endpapers give us a nice listing and illustrative catalog of our dinos and our machines, and the story inside is quick and rhythmic, with lots of onomatopoiea and big construction noises as the dinos work tirelessly on their strange wavy, undulating concrete pit in the ground.

Easy Street
Rita Gray, illustrated by (model-maker and diorama-creator) Mary Bono
ISBN: 9780525476573
Adorable chubby diverse road-worker dolls inhabit a layered diorama "slice of street."

I think this book would never have impressed me as much as it does if it weren't for the illustrations.  Those dioramas are simply amazing, and the textures involved in the creation of the in-progress street and background layers are simply unbelievable.  I love looking at it.  I really wish I could have access to the original: lots of those layers look like they're made from sandpaper and I would LOVE to have that textural grounding available to the kids as well.  Anyway, the rhyming is short and direct, very repetitive, and covers the basics in workmanlike language.

Work, Dogs, Work: A Highway Tail
James Horvath
ISBN: 9780062189707
Horvath's crew of worker dogs tackles a highway construction job in this cute rhyming tail-er, tale.

This book is probably way too close in content to Easy Street to really do together, but I'm calling it purposeful repetition to build conceptual awareness, and running with it.  These lanky energetic dogs are building the world's most complicated highway, with bridges, overpasses, tunnels, and quagmires to overcome before they connect the city to the ultimate destination: the beach.

Tuesday Storytime: Builders and Construction

Back to non-thematic storytimes this week.  No holidays, no National Month of whatever, just me and whatever quirky theme my strange mind has dredged up in the last few weeks.  I do love picking out picture books to present to kids.  It's a fun mix of curating content and balancing ages and lengths and art styles and how complex or difficult the wording is... so much to think about.  When I choose badly, and the storytime goes poorly, it's quite frustrating, but when they flow nicely, that half hour is just a delightful flow of narrative and story from me to the families.

Fix-It Duck
Jez Alborough
ISBN: 0060006994
Spunky but accident-prone Duck tries to "fix-it" with problems that are usually his own fault.

It's raining outside, so when a DRIP falls PLOP into Duck's tea, he immediately thinks the roof is leaking.  This is a job for Fix-It Duck!  But he can't reach the roof.  So he goes to borrow Sheep's ladder, and in the process, notices the camper's skylight is broken.  Fix-It Duck is on the case - but he breaks the window.  Now Sheep's house is leaking too!  Fix-It Duck can fix it, by towing Sheep's camper under Goat's shed.  But Fix-It Duck has left tools and nails and broken glass lying around, and Sheep's Jeep gets a flat!  No worries for Fix-It Duck, who offers his own truck - which can't hitch to Sheep's camper.  A creative re-use of the ladder fixes that, until a wild swerve around a curve (because Duck is a bad driver, obvs) spirals the situation beyond even what the optimistic and ever-hopeful Duck can manage to fix.  Poor Sheep.


My Apron
Eric Carle
ISBN: 0399226850
True story from Carle's childhood, where he helped his uncle plaster a building for a day.

Uncle Adam is a plasterer, and he has a snazzy white apron with a pocket, and works on buildings all day, coating them with protective and beautiful white plaster.  The boy Carle gets an apron made by his aunt, and spends the day as a proud and effective helper in this very short and sweet story.


Building a House
Byron Barton
ISBN: 0688842917
Barton's trademark blocky colors and thick outlines are joined by rare humanistic people.

We start with a green hill (that color blocking!) and follow in quick succession the steps of house-building, from digging out the ground, foundation and flooring, walls, rafters, roof, plumbing and wiring, finishing, and painting.  The house is built (and garishly colored) in the end, ready for the final step of building a house: standing ready as a family moves in.  Simple words and clear illustrations, but everything is accurate and straightforward and realistic.

New Arrivals: Picture Book: Work, Dogs, Work! by James Horvath

Work, Dogs, Work: A Highway Tail
James Horvath
ISBN: 9780062189707
"sequel" to Dig, Dogs, Dig and Build, Dogs, Build

Another Horvath added to the collection - this one is a road-work book, and I have to say I'm not as happy with it as I am the other two.  This one doesn't spend as much time emphasizing the importance of planning and engineering, and even implies that the crew doesn't realize they need to build a tunnel and suspension bridge until after they start working.

Sad that I didn't like it as much, but that doesn't mean it's bad.  It should work well as a "roadwork" or "machines at work" storytime book, just isn't going to become one of my favorites.

Tuesday Storytime: Construction Crews

A fun, shortish trio of books today.

Build, Dogs, Build
James Horvath (Dig, Dogs, Dig)
ISBN: 9780062189677
Hanna-Barbara-ish dogs demolish an old building and build a new apartment complex, in rhyme.

Very much like Dig, Dogs, Dig, but with more of a focus on the materials and visuals of the emerging building, rather than on the actions of the dogs doing the work.  A few moments where I wondered if pages were missing; we move from worrying about a moving van hitting a plate glass window to a scene of dogs chasing bouncy-balls all over the construction site.  A sharper look reveals that the van is CARRYING said bouncy-balls, and they all fell out when the van swerved to miss the glass, but none of that is in the text, and it seems to jump wildly from work to breaktime with no warning.  Even the ending is a bit abrupt.  I was expecting a final repeat of the "x, dogs, x" motif that was scattered randomly through the book.  Despite this, very clever, very readable, and highly recommended for the focus on plans and engineering and actual construction details like water and sewer pipes, the thickness of the concrete flooring, and the correct order of building, cladding, and finishing the interiors of the high-rise.


Demolition
Sally Sutton, illustrated by Brian Lovelock
ISBN: 9780763658304
(originally reviewed here)

Same thoughts as the review from before: Kids absolutely love it, and I enjoy the word-play and the super-fast flow.  I do prefer Roadwork, and I would like to get my hands on Construction and see how it flows in comparison.


Construction Kitties
Judy Sue Goodwin Sturges, illustrated by Shari Halpern (I Love Trucks!)
ISBN: 9780805091052
Naif round-faced kitties run progressive pairs of heavy machinery; turning a field into a playground.

This book is too cute.  Short enough to be a middle book, with a very clear and steady progression through the day, from mornings at home, the drive to work (often skipped over by picture books) the work day, lunch (sardines and milk, yum!) and a break for relaxation (also often skipped over) work again, and a drive home.  All this powered by a steady flow of various equipment that digs, moves, pushes, and smooths dirt into a playground, and a rhythmic drumbeat of language that reads like poetry, even though it is non-rhyming.  A good one to end on, and the one the kids paid most attention to and responded directly to, despite being last (and therefore more susceptible to wiggles).

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 5: Engineering (Summer Reading Program)

And finally for the older kids:

I recycled Block City because it's important for kids to have exposure to classics and to poetry, so even though it's a bit juvenile for this group, I'm doing it anyway.  Everybody should have the cultural notion of playing with blocks and creating something wonderful in your mind.


Finishing us out for the day (I'm doing three today, despite the heat, because they were sad that I only did two last week) are:


Building Our House
Jonathan Bean
ISBN: 9780374380236
Dense, but really interesting.  Gail Gibbon's How a House is Built for the older set, with the bonus that it's actually a true story!  The photographs at the end of the story (of the real house during construction) were confusing to the kids - they thought they were looking at the ruins of the old house!  Otherwise, they enjoyed the idea of building their own home, and the idea of having "parties" to work just blew their minds.


Dinosaur Dig!
Penny Dale
ISBN: 9780763658717
Brightly colored dinosaurs work with realistic earthmovers in a vibrant, gritty environment to create something cool for themselves.  The kids liked the idea of a pool, but they thought that the author should have called it a water park because it had slides and fountains in it.

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 5: Engineering (My Original Plan)

Still no AC this week.  Very warm, despite fans.  Families still great, kids still lovely.

Because of the heat, I switched things up a bit.  My original plan was to read Willy and the Cardboard Boxes by Lizi Boyd, How a House is Built by Gail Gibbons, and Demolition by Sally Sutton (all of which I'll review below, because they are awesome books, and I'm sad I didn't get to do them this time.)  Instead, I had a whole different line-up of shorter, easier books, which I'll also review in the next post, because they are also quite nice, and the kids enjoyed them.  

My Original Plan:

Willy and the Cardboard Boxes
Lizi Boyd
ISBN: 9780670836369
A boy goes to work with his dad and spends the day with a set of empty cardboard boxes, which turn into many imaginary things.

I like this story for a lot of reasons.  First, we have a dad taking his son to work, which is nice.  Next, we have the dad being supportive and helpful towards his son's self-play activities (offering advice, giving scissors and tape, checking in on him but not interrupting).  After that we have Willy himself, creating an awesome stream-of-consciousness adventure fueled pretty much entirely by some boxes and markers.  The story is longer, but it flows well, and the ending where Willy and his dad head back home is surprisingly touching.

Demolition
Sally Sutton, illustrated by Brian Lovelock
ISBN: 9780763664930
Pencil and watercolor? illustrations of oversized but realistic construction equipment, lots of sound effects.

A really good pick for the middle, because it's so short and lively, unfortunately it was out of place in my replacement (oh my lord it's so hot) line-up of reads today.  Despite the fun of the book, and the great rhymes and word-play, I would have preferred that it either stick with the theme of demolition, leaving an empty bare place for the next construction, or that the creation of the park at the end was more integrated into the story.  Have to say that I like Roadwork (same author/illustrator) a little better for that exact reason, even though my go-to book for road-building is Easy Street by Rita Gray, illustrated by Mary Bono (which I also need to use again and review).  Niggles aside, I doubt that toddlers obsessed with construction equipment are even going to notice, and it's great fun to read.

How a House is Built
Gail Gibbons
ISBN: 9780823412327
Simple primary-colors and clean lines show off the process of constructing and moving into a house.

Extremely similar to Byron Barton's Building a House, but with more text and the illustrations are slightly more sophisticated, and often show chronology through inset panels (like a comic strip or "classic" graphic novel).  The small pictures can present difficulties for larger groups, but despite that, I prefer this one unless I specifically need a short read because it has much more information and more specific construction details.  I find that kids are really interested in the details, so they're willing to sit longer when they're hearing bits they haven't learned about before (plumbing and wiring especially seem fascinating).

So, I'm a bit sad that I didn't get to use these good books today, but they're a great program all together, and I'm going to hit them up again probably in the fall when school starts back up.