Tuesday Storytime: Seeing Stars

A good set of books today, for a fairly large crowd.

Our Stars

Anne Rockwell

ISBN: 0152018689

Lovely factual and old-fashioned book examines stars, the sun, planetary and lunar orbits, comets, meteors (shooting stars), and constellations in clear illustrations and simple age-appropriate language, using the correct terms and explaining them straightforwardly.

The Sun is my Favorite Star

Frank Asch (Happy Birthday Moon)

ISBN: 0152021272

Skirt-wearing white child waxes lyrical about our own personal star: the sun. Beautiful fuzzy-edged and warm-toned imagery, and very short and sweet (and repetitive) sentences.

Fancy Nancy Sees Stars

Jane O'Connor, illustrated by Ted Enik (in the style of the original artist: Robin Preiss Glasser)

ISBN: 9780062572752

Fancy Nancy loves fancy words, and also loves stars. Her class is headed for a night trip to the planetarium when disaster strikes and the trip is cancelled, but her family makes the best of it (as they always do) and the class trip is saved (perhaps by a wish on a shooting star?)

Tuesday Storytime: SRP Space: Rockets Away!

First set of books bequeathed to my trainee: rocketry is cool and fun. I don't blame her at all for choosing these for her first round.

The Moon (a Bamboo and Friends book)
Felicia Law, illustrated by Nicola Evans
ISBN: 1404812822
Bamboo and friends admire the moon and then take an imaginary rocket journey up to see it.Very cute combo of nonfictional information and cute preschool thinking styles.

On the Launch Pad (a counting book about rockets)
Michael Dahl, illustrated by Derrick Alderman and Denise Shea
ISBN: 1404805818
Counting down the iconic 10, 9, 8 with really good pictures and informational text, and a fun horizontal spread at the end that requires you to turn the whole book sideways.

Roaring Rockets
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Ant Parker
ISBN: 061388857X
Trippy wordplay and anthropormorphic animals traveling up to the moon and back down into a splashdown in the ocean.

Tuesday Storytime: Summer Reading Program theme is SPACE! This week: Going to the Moon

Last week was CRAZY!

Still, storytime was fun and we did our first round of space books. I mixed things up a bit, because with a trainee storyteller on board, I feel obligated to give her the first choice of the summer-reading space-themed book sets so she can continue to feel as comfortable and engaged as possible while she's still on-boarding during this first summer. So that means she grabbed all the "good" sets I picked out and worked into coherent and easy fun themes. Ah well. I didn't have time this spring to plan things as far ahead as I would have liked, so it only seems right that I should suffer instead of my trainee.

What that means in practice is that all the "odd" sets or themes that are slightly too long or too advanced conceptually, those are on me this summer. I really wish there were more nonfiction books designed for very young readers and listeners. There's just so much for older elementary school kids, and just a drought for the little preschoolers, and especially for things like space and dinosaurs and sharks, they WANT good nonfiction: I just don't have access to it to give it to them.

Our first space adventure is going to the moon! I had only two books this time: I read the Kellog tome as both the first and last book, splitting it up right before the kid lands on the moon, and reading Barton's book in the middle as a bit of a break.

If You Decide To Go To The Moon
Faith McNulty, illustrated by Steven Kellog
ISBN: 9780590483599
Beautiful Kellogian spreads of space and lunar landscapes and a stirring and somewhat preachy return to earth.

I Want to be an Astronaut
Byron Barton
ISBN: 9780064432801
Barton's minimalism works really well for this aspirational declaration of all the things the potential (female?) astronaut wants to accomplish. Stark and powerful and colorful.

Tuesday Storytime: Dogs

We decided to give it one last week to let our trainee get one more set of self-selected books done before the summer: our kickoff is later this week, so we had a bit of wiggle room to work with.

Dog's Colorful Day

Emma Dodd

ISBN: 0142500194

Cartoony oversized style, with messy colors all around. Silly fun, especially since all the colorful spots are perfectly round and perfectly colored in, regardless of their sources (grass stains, chocolate smears, pollen). 

Spot's First Walk

Eric Hill

ISBN: 0399208380

Spot takes a walk through the yard and around the garden and pond in this lift-the-flap book. 

I Don't Want a Posh Dog!

Emma Dodd

ISBN: 9780316033909

Slightly more refined art than the first one in this trio, but still messy and colorful. A girl runs through all the types of dogs that she isn't interested in, with lots of funny illustrations of them all.

Tuesday Storytime: Firefighters

Back to me again, and a theme I had prepped waaaaaay back in February. It's been waiting patiently, and I figure it's a great one for a big boisterous crowd like today. It's also our last self-pick theme before our Summer Reading kicks off next week and we move into all sorts of Space books.

Fire! ¡Fuego! Brave Bomberos!
Susan Middleton Elya, illustrated by Dan Santat
ISBN: 9781599904610
Multi-ethnic and male/female fire-fighter crew rescues a cat from a burning building. Santat's illustrations are as always rich and vibrant and lively, with animated faces and postures, and vivid environments.


Fireman Small
Wong Herbert Yee
ISBN: 0395689872
Probably my most-used picture book. I just love how sweet and calming the repetitive portions are, and how simple and easily-understood the fire-fighter's work is, and the pause for gratitude and community at the end. Sweet and unassuming, but classic quality.

Fire Engine No. 9
Mike Austin
ISBN: 9780553510959
"wordless" in the sense that there are a lot of onomatopoeic bits, and lots of sound, but the "story" is carried by the illustrations and the sound effects. There is "soot" on the pages, and the illustrations are gritty and punchy - a few kids were visibly slightly distressed at various pages (the window-breaking was cause for a good bit of verbalized concern) but everything ends well and the endpages have interesting (ie distracting) equipment to distract away from fears or intense feelings.

Tuesday Storytime: Scaly Friends

This is the second set of picks from our trainee, and these are all very cute. They acknowledged that they'd possibly do better to split them up into different themes for each type of scaly friend (we have alligators, dragons, and dinosaurs represented) but that they liked them and liked the thought of doing two of their own sets of picks in a row. These DID end up a little on the long side all matched together, but not insurmountably so, and they noticed that as well, so a good training experience all around.

If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur
Linda Bailey, illustrated by Colin Jack
ISBN: 9781770495685
Very bright dinosaurs in otherwise mundane environments, getting used for all sorts of chores or tasks. The idea is very Flintstones, but the execution is closer to Family Guy. EXCELLENT facial expressions all around, and funny page-spreads of visual jokes.

Gator Dad
Brian Lies
ISBN: 9780544534339
Gator Dad is taking his kids out for a day of adventures. Slightly smaltzy but saved by the protagonists being alligators, and by a series of misadventures along the way. Beautiful artwork, but a little bit on the dark side (visually speaking).

Me and My Dragon
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580892780
I've done this one recently, but it was far enough back that I felt ok with it being used again. Love the ambiguity of the protagonist kid (brownish and with floppy hair) and the mundane chores of pet-ownership filtered through the prism of a baby dragon. Useful lessons in a cute package.

Tuesday Storytime: Monkeys

Storytime duties are getting shared with another trainee, and this is her first set of selections, and I think they're a great first choice. Monkeys are a perennial favorite (also see sharks, fire-trucks, and dinosaurs) and these three are cute and a show off a lovely spectrum of styles.

What Do You Say When a Monkey Acts This Way? 
Jane Belk Moncure, illustrated by Terri Super
ISBN: 0516057448
Moncure's books all have a very classic 1970s-80s Little Golden Book sort of "teaching" vibe to them, whether they are manners books or books about the alphabet or about phonics. Despite that, they're cute and repetitive in a good way, and clear and have attractive simplistic images. Here we have a young monkey acting in normal heedless ways, until other monkeys prompt it to behave more pro-socially: saying thanks and please, sharing and being respectful. The monkey goes to visit the grandparents at the end, and proves all the lessons well-learned.

The Monkey Goes Bananas
C. P. Bloom, illustrated by Peter Raymundo
ISBN: 9781419708855
Graphic-novel style, with very few words (leading to a lot of "filling in" to keep the younger ones clear on what's going on. Monkey lives on a small island, and there is a bunch of bananas on a neighbor island. Unfortunately there is a shark in the water. Monkey tries various plots to get the bananas, with a cute but very obvious twist at the end.

How to Lose a Lemur
Frann Preston-Gannon
ISBN: 9781454911319
Slightly oversized pictures and very cute lemurs (not exactly monkeys, but I'm not going to quibble) follow a boy who is searching over the whole world for friends, only to get lost and realize that perhaps those pesky lemurs might be what he's been looking for. Very cute and very sweet. Love the art-style of textured painting and collage pieces.