Tuesday Storytime: Spring Flowers

This week's program was selected by my coworker.

Flower Garden
Eve Bunting, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt
ISBN: 0152287760
An adorable black girl works with her father to create a miniature garden in a flowerbox in their city brownstone apartment, as a birthday present for her mother.

Planting a Rainbow
Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 0152626093
A long-time classic. Ehlert's cut-out collages are bright and vibrant, and generally short and sweet. About halfway through the book, there is a section of gradated-width pages that feature different colored bands to show progressively more flowers of that color. Really well designed.

The Flower's Busy Day (Bamboo and Friends)
Felicia Law, illustrated by Nicola Evans
ISBN: 1404812814
Bamboo the panda and his diverse animal friends investigate the day cycle of a flower in this nonfiction-adjacent conceptual picture book. Lots of information packed into a pretty tight narrative. They are cleverly done, but the illustrations aren't quite my style: a little too loose and bright and overproduced. Vibrant and fun and true.

Tuesday Storytime: Helpful Friends

Another set of books pulled very long ago, and finally getting used. These all feature friends trying to do the right thing and help out in tough situations. Sometimes it works - sometimes it doesn't, but it's the thought that counts.

Peace, Baby!

Linda Ashman, illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff

ISBN: 9781452106137

Pastels and scribbly open-edges make for a welcoming and lively set of vignettes and single-page spreads of before/after scenarios. In loose verse, diverse kids are shown encountering "difficult" situations; a sibling or friend accidentally hits them while roughhousing, a child cheats or grabs at shared toys, difficulties sharing, messes, bumps, and general life. Each time the scenario is presented, the option is shown to have "peace, baby" and this child is shown choosing a pro-social coping method. "Dress up time: You grab the gown, but Phoebe snags the sparkly crown. Would a princess push her down?" with this text we have a set of girls with angry faces arguing over a trunk of dress up clothing. Facing page shows the same girls happily bowing to each other as before a courtly dance, with smiling faces, and each with one item from the trunk. "No! Peace, baby!" Admittedly preachy, but sweet and basic.

Boo Hoo Bird

Jeremy Tankard

ISBN: 9780545065702

Tankard's "Bird" features in a lot of stories, but this one is especially cute. When a game of catch results in Bird getting bonked on the head, he cries and cries and cries as his friends try to console or help him. At the end, they're all discouraged and crying when Bird realizes that perhaps the bonk wasn't so bad after all, and everything is back to fun and games again (until the endpapers, where we see that they're playing catch again, with unfortunate results).

ouch!

Ragnhild Scamell, illustrated by Michael Terry

ISBN: 9781561485116

Hedgehog has just finished her cozy winter nest, but then an apple plops down and sticks in her spines, and she can't fit into her house any more. Her friends try to help, but they only make things successively worse, getting more and more descriptive items stuck in her spines as the book goes along, until she desperately pushes through a hedge and meets a final friend; Goat. He's got the right idea, and Hedgehog can finally fit into her snug home.

 

Tuesday Storytime: Teddy Bears

These were chosen by my coworker, and they're too cute.

Waiting for Goliath
Antje Damm
ISBN: 978776571413
A cute little bear waits patiently on a park bench for days and nights and seasons for his friend Goliath to arrive. Despite a very clear Waiting for Godot vibe, the friend DOES show at the end, and there's a very good reason for things taking so long. Cute, but slow (pun intended).

Teddy Bear Teddy Bear (classic nursery rhyme) (board book)
illustrated by Michael Hague
ISBN:0060733047
Bright colors and cheery spreads keep the rhyme moving along smoothly, although the "go upstairs/say your prayers" verse is included, which may make some families uncomfortable.

Room for Bear
Ciara Gavin
ISBN: 9780385754736
A sweet story of adoption and focusing on similarities instead of differences, and in working together to make things work for everyone. Very cute, and very sweet natured. There is a sequel.

Tuesday Storytime: Dance

I pulled these ages ago and I'm glad to finally be able to use them (and get them back into circulation, whoops!).

Miss Lina's Ballerinas
Grace Maccarone, illustrated by Christine Davenier
ISBN: 9780312382438
Eight dancers with names-that-rhyme-with-Lina live and go to school in-house, and they are very organized in their routine in their two rows of four dancers (shades here of Madeline) until a new dancer joins them and they must regroup into three rows of three. A later book has a boy joining the fun - these are silly and lighthearted and very fluffy.


Baby Dance (board book format)
Ann Taylor (original poet), illustrated by Marjorie van Heerden
ISBN: 0694012068
Colorful and fun - A Black father dances with his young daughter while the mother (referenced in the poem) rests on a couch behind them. Very Very short, but really cute and fun.


Color Dance
Ann Jonas
ISBN: 9780688059903
A representative variety of leotard-clad young dancers represent primary colors, as well as greyscale in this short and simple book that introduces the concept of color mixing through the visuals of fluttery translucent scarves which are danced about by the dancer representing that color. Lots of good interesting color names, and very direct concepts and clear artwork.

Tuesday Storytime: To The Birds

Birds of a feather flock together - or sometimes not. This storytime was selected by my coworker, and the books are super cute.

Wow! Said the Owl
Tim Hopgood
ISBN: 9780230701045


Flight School
Lita Judge
ISBN: 9781442481770


Goose Goes to School
Laura Wall
ISBN: 9780062324375

Tuesday Storytime: Getting Along With Others

Ok fine, I'm a giant drag, I know. I use storytime to force my agenda of purposefully acquiring manners and learning cooperation and developing emotional regulation on 4 year olds. Sorry not sorry.

Do Unto Otters: A Book About Manners
Laurie Keller
ISBN: 9780805079968
What it says on the tin, basically. Rabbit discovers his new neighbors the Otters, and is concerned about them being good neighbors and good friends. He learns the maxim "Do Unto Otters" (you get the idea) and spends the book laying out what exactly, behavior-wise, that sort of thing entails. Really really good for being clear and obvious about social expectations while also being cute and tongue-in-cheek.

When Sophie Gets Angry
Molly Bang
ISBN: 9780590189798
Love how this book just straightforwardly deals with emotions, and shows a valid way of processing them out in nature, and shows the progression of a general upset from rage to anger to frustration to sadness to acceptance and re-integration into the original scene. It's a lot of really big concepts that are conveyed perfectly clearly through illustrations and colors and perspective, and carefully chosen child-level vocabulary. Classic and nonjudgmental.

llama llama and the bully goat
Anna Dewdney
ISBN: 9780670013951
Llama llama and his preschool class (and Zebra! preschool teacher) deal with a kid who is leaning into acting in bullying ways. The resolution is a leeeeetle bit too pat, but with kids this young, there's a fine line between being a bully and just being un-social and needing a bit of help. I'm choosing to view it as the second, and they're just using the bully terminology because the beginning of "here's how to handle this" is the same in both cases: advocate for yourself, use your words to clearly set boundaries, then involve a trusted adult or authority figure. After that if it really is a settled bully and not just a fellow kid having a singular bad day, things get a bit too complex for a book I'm willing to read in storytime.

Tuesday Storytime: Pets

A really stellar lineup from my coworker today: a trio of adorable animal books.

Zorro Gets an Outfit

Carter Goodrich

ISBN: 9781442435353

Zorro is an adorable pug dog, and he has been put into a superhero outfit, and the other dogs all laugh at him. He's inconsolable until another dog at the dog park shows up in a pirate outfit and just so happens to be a really cool dog - who likes Zorro's outfit! A good story about friendship and identity and feeling shame and pride.

Have You Seen My New Blue Socks

Eve Bunting, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier

ISBN: 9780547752679

Eve Bunting is channeling her Dr Seuss here, with a cute rhyming (perhaps just a slight bit tooo cutely rhyming) quick story about a forgetful and perhaps somewhat disorganized duck who has lost their new blue socks somewhere. A progressively-further-unlaced shoe provides a tiny visual clue about the location of the socks as the story goes on.

Papillon Goes to the Vet (The Very Fluffy Kitty)

A. N. Kang

ISBN: 9781484728819

This is the cutest book about a very fluffy kitty with a very unrealistic story of what happens at a vet's office, but it's ok, because it's adorable. Papillon is soooo fluffy that he floats! Which is quite fun, until he accidentally ingests a cat toy and has to spend the night at the vet. Very low-key explanations of how Papillon feels less than well, which keeps the very lighthearted feeling flowing through even at the vet.