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.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
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.
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.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Teaching Resource: The Sounds and Spelling Patterns of English: Phonics for Teachers and Parents, by Phyllis E. Fischer
The Sounds and Spelling Patterns of English: Phonics for Teachers and Parents
Phyllis E. Fischer
ISBN: 1881929019
Read March 30, 2015
An older (1993) but useful compilation of phonics and phoneme-based instruction that drills in the basic English constructions and when and where they appear, and what they "say" when they are in certain situations. Very short, but direct and to-the-point, wasting no time on tangents or side-trips into teaching philosophy or any of that. Just straight instruction, aimed at adults who wish to help other people learn to understand the workings of English better.
Very useful. I'll probably get a copy for my own personal library. I never remember learning to read, and my husband is dyslexic, and wasn't diagnosed until after he had gotten into college. He has great troubles with English structure, and my own background of picking it up so naturally is a handicap now, because I have troubles explaining how it all works - just that I know it does. Dyslexia is heritable, so this is me preparing for the worst if I ever have kids. I want them to enjoy reading and writing, perhaps not as a hobby or job, but at least enough to always be comfortable as a reader.
Phyllis E. Fischer
ISBN: 1881929019
Read March 30, 2015
An older (1993) but useful compilation of phonics and phoneme-based instruction that drills in the basic English constructions and when and where they appear, and what they "say" when they are in certain situations. Very short, but direct and to-the-point, wasting no time on tangents or side-trips into teaching philosophy or any of that. Just straight instruction, aimed at adults who wish to help other people learn to understand the workings of English better.
Very useful. I'll probably get a copy for my own personal library. I never remember learning to read, and my husband is dyslexic, and wasn't diagnosed until after he had gotten into college. He has great troubles with English structure, and my own background of picking it up so naturally is a handicap now, because I have troubles explaining how it all works - just that I know it does. Dyslexia is heritable, so this is me preparing for the worst if I ever have kids. I want them to enjoy reading and writing, perhaps not as a hobby or job, but at least enough to always be comfortable as a reader.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
The Read-Aloud Handbook (7th Edition), Jim Trelease
The Read-Aloud Handbook (7th Edition, publication date 2013)
Jim Trelease
ISBN: 9780143121602
Read February 4, 2014
Nonfiction; education, parenting.
Background info: This nifty volume is in two parts: the first is an educational/parenting treatise giving the then-current state of research into why reading is paramount, and especially why reading TO kids is so important. The second half is a listing of various titles that the author believes are suitable for being read aloud to kids, divided into categories like wordless books (yeah, I know) poetry, nonfiction, and various age-groups.
Each subsequent edition has recognized that there's no reason to purchase or read a new edition if nothing much has changed, so the author and publisher have done a decent job in the first half at updating the research, changing out the vignettes, and including the current state of affairs each time around. For the second half, the titles recommended are cycled through, with special attention paid to titles currently out of print or difficult to find (those being either removed from the listing entirely, or noted as such if they are thought too good to miss).
So, with all that in mind, let me say here that last spring I discovered this resource existed, and I went on a binge-read right before the Summer Reading Program, placing requests on each edition (yes, all 6 of them), and checking out the different recommended reads, and thoroughly enjoying the first half of each book (which were, although slightly different each round, almost literally a repeated paean to librarians and readers). The only one I couldn't get was this last edition, which our system couldn't borrow until it was a bit older. Well, it got a bit older, and it arrived today! Yay!
I haven't gone through the book recs yet, but I did take a while to read through the first half (and it has grown now into almost half) of this very-well-researched presentation of the current research into reading, the sorry state of our educational system (I want to move to Finland) and how parents and educators can individually contradict these bad influences by READING MORE!!!
My kind of book!
On a slightly more serious note, if you're interested in learning about what the deal is with received language, how kids learn vocabulary, and how to put your kid on the top of the scrap heap called life, read this edition of this book. The other editions are of course out of date, so I'd only recommend them if you are interested in seeing how the history and the research developed (which I was, and I thought was fascinating, but then I'm a nerd).
I'm sure that this record will be seeing the evidence of the other half of the book as soon as I get a chance to dig into the lists and learn of interesting titles I've missed.
Jim Trelease
ISBN: 9780143121602
Read February 4, 2014
Nonfiction; education, parenting.
Background info: This nifty volume is in two parts: the first is an educational/parenting treatise giving the then-current state of research into why reading is paramount, and especially why reading TO kids is so important. The second half is a listing of various titles that the author believes are suitable for being read aloud to kids, divided into categories like wordless books (yeah, I know) poetry, nonfiction, and various age-groups.
Each subsequent edition has recognized that there's no reason to purchase or read a new edition if nothing much has changed, so the author and publisher have done a decent job in the first half at updating the research, changing out the vignettes, and including the current state of affairs each time around. For the second half, the titles recommended are cycled through, with special attention paid to titles currently out of print or difficult to find (those being either removed from the listing entirely, or noted as such if they are thought too good to miss).
So, with all that in mind, let me say here that last spring I discovered this resource existed, and I went on a binge-read right before the Summer Reading Program, placing requests on each edition (yes, all 6 of them), and checking out the different recommended reads, and thoroughly enjoying the first half of each book (which were, although slightly different each round, almost literally a repeated paean to librarians and readers). The only one I couldn't get was this last edition, which our system couldn't borrow until it was a bit older. Well, it got a bit older, and it arrived today! Yay!
I haven't gone through the book recs yet, but I did take a while to read through the first half (and it has grown now into almost half) of this very-well-researched presentation of the current research into reading, the sorry state of our educational system (I want to move to Finland) and how parents and educators can individually contradict these bad influences by READING MORE!!!
My kind of book!
On a slightly more serious note, if you're interested in learning about what the deal is with received language, how kids learn vocabulary, and how to put your kid on the top of the scrap heap called life, read this edition of this book. The other editions are of course out of date, so I'd only recommend them if you are interested in seeing how the history and the research developed (which I was, and I thought was fascinating, but then I'm a nerd).
I'm sure that this record will be seeing the evidence of the other half of the book as soon as I get a chance to dig into the lists and learn of interesting titles I've missed.
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