Pets are Great

So, for preschool story time this week the theme was Pets are Great.   This theme is serendipitous, chosen because of some random books that happened to come across my desk at the same time. A new Dr. Seuss (published 24 years after his death), a cute new book and one book that I had  requested from another branch - for another reason.  I do happen to think that pets are great and so did my audience.

Here are the books we read:
Who Wants Broccoli? by Val Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Broccoli is a fun loving dog, who has spent most of his life in the Beezley's animal shelter.  Oscar is a young boy who wants a fun loving dog for a pet.  Will the two find each other and prove that "there is a lid for every pot and a pot for every lid?" This is an incredibly heartwarming story filled with humor and love. The illustrations are truly awesome and my story time audiences immediately fell in love with Broccoli, and the other incredibly cute animals in the shelter.  This one is a story time winner - when Broccoli does indeed"find his lid" against all odds my entire story time audience said "Ahhhh."

What Pet Should I Get? by Dr. Seuss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is unmistakably a Dr. Seuss book - bold colors, the wonderfully whimsical illustrations that are such an unforgettable part of each of his stories, and text that just bounces along.  This one is a bit strained, however.  The story of a brother and sister at a pet store having to choose just one to take home is funny, but a little flat.  Maybe it is the two double page reminders to "MAKE UP YOUR MIND" that interrupted the rhythm and the story...or maybe it was the ending that made me feel slightly disappointed.  Don't get me wrong, this is a fun and well illustrated story, and my two story time audiences seemed to love it.   Both groups seemed to enjoy the ending more than I did, and it turned out to be a  point of great engagement with the kids as I encouraged them to use the imagination...which they did with great enthusiasm.

Not Norman: A Goldfish Story by Kelly Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The illustrations are bright and bold and beautiful and the text simple.  This is a wonderful story about a boy and his dog...um fish and the growing affection between boy and pet.  When the boy receives Norman as a birthday gift, he is disappointed -he didn't want a stupid fish, he wanted a pet that could play catch and curl up on his bed at night.  The story contains a number of very funny attempts to trade Norman for a "good" pet which are laugh-out-loud good.  When the boy does get a chance to trade Norman for another pet, he finds that he really does have the perfect pet, after all.  In addition to good messages and plenty of humor, the main character in this book is dark skinned, and he is surrounded by other diverse characters.

This was a well received theme and the books complemented each other nicely.  Two out of the three books elicited a spontaneous "Ahhhh" from my audience - clearly they were touched by the tenderness of the stories.  Another good thing about this theme:  there are lots of great songs and rhymes and lots of great easy crafts as well.

Funny Farm for Babies

This week's Baby Bookworms theme was "Down on The Farm."  It was great fun for all.  The books contained plenty of good rhyming and rhythm so they were fun for me to read aloud.  Bright illustrations held the audience visually and the fun stories had the adult partners in the audience smiling and laughing and participating.  I read four books, two are new and two from previous blog entries.  We sang several songs, including "Five White and Fluffy Sheep" (to the tune of "Five Green and Speckled Frogs") and "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" although we switched Old MacDonald to "Farmer Joe" to match the book.  The favorite was our tickle for today:

Milk the Cow (Baby Tickle)

(Tune: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”)

Milk, Milk, Milk the cow 

(gently stroke baby’s arms, legs or hands)

Milking’s what we do

And when the milking is all done,

The cow says, “Moooooo!” 

(Tickle baby’s tummy)

I'm rather embarrassed to say that I don't have the source for this one.  I checked my usual resources and then even did a google search where I found a number of other variations, but not this version.  Thank you to whoever I borrowed this from, it was a big hit with my babies and their adult partners!

Here are the new books we read:

Baby Animal Farm by Karen Blair
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Babies meet baby animals on a farm, what could possibly be cuter than that?  Simple text ("Follow the ducklings. Quack, quack, quack.")  and soft illustrations of happy babies toddling after animals, petting and feeding them make this a very engaging book.  This is a good book to use to introduce new vocabulary to very young readers who will learn the words for animal babies of all kinds like, piglets, calves, kids and lambs.


Peek-a-Moo! by Marie  Torres Cimarusti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Big bright pull down flaps show a variety of animals playing "Peek-a…" and you finish the phrase with the sound the animal makes: for example, "Peek-a-Oink!" when you see the top of a pig peeking out from behind the flap.  Everyone had fun finishing the phrase with the animal sounds.


Here are the two old favorites:

Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh, My!

So, I admit I have used this theme before…but one of my story time regulars REALLY loves lions and tigers, so it seemed right to bring it back. The books were all new, the craft was new - we made a paper bag puppet lion The rhymes and songs were mixed - and I even rewrote some. Repeating this theme made me realize how much I have grown as a story teller over the past two years!  It was a young audience, so I didn't read all of the books I'd planned and I changed my presentation on the fly (another thing that is much easier to do now!) to better suit a small audience of rambunctious two-year-olds, but here are the books we read:

The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The illustrations are breathtaking in the wordless book.  My original plan for story time was to read a traditional version of this Aesop's fable, and then pull this book out next and have members of my audience help me tell the story…my audience was small and young, so I used this book instead and just ad-libbed the fable.  This version has it all: the fierce, majestic lion and a tiny, beautifully drawn mouse, hunters, a snare, and a promise kept.  In this version the mouse scurries back to a nest full of babies, so I included the fact that she was a mother in the conversation she had with the lion as she pleaded with him to save her life.  Don't let the fact that this is a wordless picture book stop you from sharing it with a story time audience - because my audience loved it.


Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an hysterically funny book!  The author and illustrator (or should I say illustrators?) feature prominently along with Chloe the main character and a lion…no a dragon…NO a lion ("but a dragon is so much cooler")  The story progresses slowly, as the author and illustrator argue about text and pictures and replacement illustrators.  There is the running gag above (a dragon would be so much cooler) and humor filled illustrations and just plain funny text as the author argues with and fires two illustrators and then argues with Chloe about the way she looks.  Everything works out in the end.  This one had my audience rolling in the aisles!


Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter  Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When the book opens, Mr. Tiger lives in a very proper city where everything around him is a very proper brown/gray and everyone wears hats and ties and sips tea from tea cups.  Then Mr. Tiger decides to go wild.  His life becomes much more colorful when he begins walking on all fours and abandons this suit and hat  for a swim in a fountain.  His next step is to go off into the wilderness where he is surrounded by trees and waterfalls and large, open, grassy fields.  One rainy day, he realizes that his misses the comforts of the city and he misses his friends.  Upon returning he sees that even in the city things have changed…The illustrations are lovely and have a very "retro" look and feel to them.  The use of color helps reinforce the changes in the Mr. Tiger and his friends.  The text is elegant in its simplicity and combines well with the illustrations to tell a fun story that even the youngest members of my story time audience could relate to.


Baby Bear by Kadir Nelson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Baby Bear is lost!  We feel his fear through the beautiful illustrations and simple text. The text is mostly dialog as he asks animal after animal for help in finding his way home.  This is an awesome book, that my story time audience loved.  It is a quiet, gentle story that worked well to close my story time and would also work well as a bedtime story.


Here are the two others that I had prepared to read:

The Lion and the Mice by Rebecca Emberley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a retelling of the Aesop's fable, using simple language and the brightly colored illustrations that are the Emberley's trademark.  The bright colors captured and held my story time audience' attention, although I worried that some of the illustrations might be a bit too scary.  The story doesn't flow as well as it could, but since everyone knows the basics it is easy enough to ad lib a bit to smooth the rough edges.


The Rabbit And The Turtle by Eric Carle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a awesome collection of eleven Aesop's fables.  Each fable is told in everyday language that is easy to understand.  Each fable covers two pages in this book - the first is the text of the fable and the facing page is an amazing Eric Carle illustration.


Here is one of my reworked songs (from King County Library's "Tell Me A Story"):

The Lions in the Zoo

(Tune: "The Wheels on The Bus")

The lions at the zoo say, “Roar, roar, roar! 

Roar, roar, roar” “Roar, roar, roar” 

The lions at the zoo say, “Roar, roar, roar” 

All day long. 

The Lions at the zoo… 

             …they groom their mane. 

         …they flex their claws. 

        …they swish their tail.

Aaah! Cute, Baby Animals

"Paws to Read" continued this week with a story time filled with cute baby animals. Some of the books we read were repeats from past story times and several were brand new. I modified some animal songs and rhymes and we did several others straight from the source. For craft I found a coloring sheet where the kids not only colored the animals but then matched the baby animal with it's parent.
Here are the new books:

Kitten for a Day by Ezra Jack Keats
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Cute, cute illustrations! Simple text tells the story of a puppy who spends the day playing with four adorable kittens. There are great engagement opportunities - my story time audience loved counting the kittens, spotting the mouse that appears part way through the story and laughing at poor puppy as he is less than successful at acting like a kitten!

ZooBorns ABC by Andrew Bleiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
From Anteater to a photo spread of all of the zooborns this concept book is filled with amazing photographs of all sorts of adorable baby animals. Some are familiar (giraffe, hippo , and rhino) while others are less so (tapir, nyala, vicuna, and yak). Truly awesome and a real story time audience pleaser.

Charlie and the New Baby by Ree Drummond
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The illustrations are lovely and this story, like all of Charlie's stories, is told simply and are filled with humor. There are a number of laugh out loud moments here. A new calf is brought into the house and tucked into Charlie's bed! He is confused by this turn of events and he is not sure he wants to share with this new comer at first. In the end he realizes that his family has more than enough love to go around. The story is a bit choppy and feels unfinished…at the end there are several wordless pages and then text on the last page that talks about "Abigail" (who I assumed is the calf) and shows everyone happily working and playing. The last few pages left us all feeling slightly confused.

A Bit Lost by Chris Haughton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My story time audience chimed in with Uh-oh and was very engaged in the story of an owlet who goes searching for his mother after falling out of his nest. A helpful squirrel has Little Owl describe his mom and then helps in the search - Owlet's partial descriptions lead to some very funny situations. The simple comforting text combines well with the brightly colored illustrations and was very pleasing to my story time audience.

Hush, Little Ones by John Butler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Awesome bedtime book! Large beautiful pictures show a variety of animals as they are snuggling up at bedtime. The simple rhyming text reads like a lullaby.

Here are the two "repeats":

A fun story time!

Animals are Everywhere

Paws, fins, hooves, claws, and wings is the image that I pulled from our summer reading resources for the title slide of my power point presentation of the words for the songs and rhymes at this week's story time. I chose stories that each contained lots of different animals. The craft was based on the last book I read, Animal Masquerade by Marianne Dubuc - I printed some animal masks that the kids colored, cut and could wear so that they could also wear a disguise.

Here are today's books:

The Zoo I Drew by Todd H. Doodler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a wonderful romp through the alphabet. With big bold pictures of all sorts of animals and goofy, rhyming text the reader is treated to a good laugh while learning the alphabet and all sorts of animal facts. The entries for "U" and "X" are marvelous. Great read-aloud although I found myself changing some of the text on the fly to make the rhythm work...

A House Is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Houses of all kinds are the subject of this book filled with wonderfully detailed illustrations and rhyming text. The text flows beautifully and makes this a great read aloud. All sorts of houses for animals are depicted, "a hill is a home for an ant…a hive is a home for a bee…a web is a home for a spider…."and all sorts of homes for things as well: "a sandwich is home for some ham…a peach is a home for a peach pit…a hangar's a home for a plane…" Even the youngest members of my audience loved this book and afterwards we even came up with a few homes of our own…a book is a home for some words and pictures…a library is the home for books."

Almost An Animal Alphabet by Katie Viggers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a beautiful concept book for the very young that will also please the adult reading/sharing the book. The illustrations are soft and sweet and there are plenty of opportunities to add some counting for additional engagement with the reader. Many of the letters illustrate multiple examples of the animal…for example "B is for Bears" features eight different bears all of them labeled. "E is for Elephant" is a two page spread illustrating the differences between Asian and African Elephants. Such a beautiful book!

Animal Masquerade by Marianne Dubuc
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
All of the animals are having a masquerade party - disguises are a must - and so, one by one, we meet each of the animals and what they are wearing. There are colored pencil drawings - and the ones depicting the animal in costume are hilarious. There is simple text mainly The went disguised as a and one animal leads to another - for example the wiener dogs went as a zebra and then, on the next page, the zebra went as a mouse. There are some puns (the fish went as a cat…which made him a catfish) and the author pokes fun at chickens (the hen didn't dress up because she didn't understand a thing) This was laugh-out-loud funny for kids and adults alike and there were plenty of opportunities to engage by identifying animals and making their sounds.

One little guy left the library wearing his brightly colored lion mask and roaring much to everyone's delight.

Party Animals

Well, the 2014 Summer Reading Program has officially begun.  This year's theme in California is "Paws to Read" all about animals.  So many great books and fun story time extras: flannels, songs, rhymes and crafts!  At my public library job we held a great big kick-off party and we registered almost 200 patrons for summer reading.  The theme was cat vs. dog, and one of the activities was to vote for the animal you like best.  Kids voted as they came into the children's area on our white board.  Dogs won, but it wasn't a terribly accurate vote as I caught a number of kids erasing tally marks several times during the day.

Dogs were the winners…but there was some voter fraud!

There were crafts as well.  The kids could make a cat or dog out of pipe cleaners/chenille stems, a dog or cat paper bag puppet and/or the most popular, an invisible dog leash and collar.  We lined a bent-out coat hanger with colored straws, and then kids decorated a card stock strip for the collar that was then attached to the end of the "leash" then they could take their dogs on a walk.  Watch for pictures on the library's Facebook Page.

It was this kick-off party that inspired the theme for this week's story time at the Base Library.  We did songs and rhymes about farm animals and pets and wild animals.  Even one that I made up directly relating to the theme:

Animals Love a Party

Animals love a party, oh yes, they do

With good things to eat Fun with friends.

A cake with candles, too

Rabbits, cows, lions and bears

They’ll even bring treats to share

Animals love a party, oh yes, they do

 So for your next birthday

Why not invite and animal or two?

Here are the books we read, the first two I previously reviewed:

The Surprise Party by Pat Hutchins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lovely illustrations and simple text tell the story of rabbit, who is planning a surprise party, and all of his friends - who don't quite get the message right. Just like the child's game of "telephone" rabbit tells his friend owl that he is having a party and it is a surprise….as owl passes the message to the next friend, well, the message gets a little garbled…rabbit is hoeing the parsley tomorrow…then the next friend hears that rabbit is reading his poetry tomorrow ("how dull"). It isn't until it is almost party time, that the real message gets through to the friends and they end up having a lovely time. Most of my audience was too young to know how to play "telephone" but they loved the illustrations and still found humor in the story.

Big and Small by Guido Van Genechten
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a large board book, filled with pages of animals. Each two page spread shows a dozen or so animals (from hand/finger print elephants to sponge painted chicks and owls) and asks a series of questions like who is big and who is small? Who is asleep and who is awake? A Great book for getting an audience to engage with a book! It is bright and colorful and funny. Kids love shouting out the answers. The last question on each page is "and who is ready to go to a party?" and there is usually one of the animals is wearing or holding a subtle reference to a party (hat, present, candles) which foreshadows the final two pages where the animals are celebrating at a birthday party.

For today's craft I found a jungle animal coloring sheet and the kids turned them into a set of stick puppets that they could use to create their own animal party or feast. Great fun.

Baby Bookworms and Moms

My Baby Bookworms story time fell on the Monday after Mother's Day, but is it ever wrong to celebrate Mothers?  At the library, we have a "Mommy and Me" yoga class that runs about thirty minutes and then after about a fifteen minute break, I present a Baby Bookworms story time.  We have a great group of regulars and it has been great fun to see the babies and their moms bond and make friends in this group.

Here are the books:

Five Minutes' Peace by Jill Murphy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I discovered this book many years ago when I was home raising three young children and wondering if I would ever enjoy a hot meal or converse with an adult in full sentences ever again.  Mrs. Large yearns for just 5 minutes peace.  So she sneaks off to the bathroom to enjoy a soak in the bath with tea and the paper...and enjoys about  a minute of "heaven" before, one by one, her three youngsters invade the bathroom, and finally end up in the tub with her.  She sneaks back down to the kitchen where she enjoys three minutes and forty-five seconds of peace before her three wet young find her, wrapped in towels.  This is my mother's day gift for the moms in my story time audience, and every single one can identify with Mrs. Large and her desire for just a few minutes of peace.  But they can also identify with the love and humor that fills this book about that very special bond between mothers and their children.


Benjamin's Bugs by Mary Morgan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a sweet little book -  that is not so much about bugs as it is about a boy and his mother...and her love for him.  Chosen for a bug themed storytime, I used it instead for my Mother's Day storytime. This is a small book, with tiny, detailed illustrations so it would not work well for a large group.  Benjamin spends most of the book being a youngster (The characters are porcupines) and being distracted while taking a walk with his mother.  He also tries out some independence - climbing trees and trying to catch fish in a pond....finding out the hard was that it is a good thing that his mom is nearby.


Seven Hungry Babies by Candace Fleming
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While the rhythm isn't perfect, the humor in the illustrations make up for anything lacking.  Seven chicks hatch with a mighty crack and immediately demand to be fed.  Mom does her best buy by the time she feeds all seven she is exhausted.  There is a nice twist at the end, that made all of the moms in my story time audience laugh out loud.  Great read for Mother's day or to add to a bird themed story time.


Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
With wonderful read-aloud rhyming text and adorable illustrations the parents in my story time audience smiled in recognition of a bed time routine.  Mother Llama reads a story, kisses her little llama good night and turns out the light and heads downstairs to finish the dishes and her evening routine.  Llama llama has other ideas, though, and spends much of the rest of the book creating "bedtime drama" that sends mother back to comfort her panic stricken little llama.


The Moms in my audience loved the books…and don't tell anyone, but that is the real target audience for a baby-lapsit story time.