Sometimes the Magic Works!

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my house...and then I spent "Black Friday" working at the library.  It's okay, because I would rather be there than fighting crowds at a mall anyway.  However, I woke up Saturday, realizing that I had a storytime in two days which I hadn't prepared for...or pulled books for.  I looked at some of the library books I had at home, and scoured my own book shelves, pulled four books that I wanted to use for storytime and thought the theme would be a few of my favorites, or simple "Random Books." My IT assistant (my son in real life) looked at the books and found a theme - the letter "C" and so the storytime became "Brought to you by the Letter C"  One of the books featured the relationship between a gorilla and a cat, the others featured a chicken, a coyote and Canada.  Yep, just like magic I had a theme.  For the craft I printed out a mini coloring book about the letter C.  Everything fell into place.

Here are the books we read:

Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is such a fun read aloud!  This Caldecott Honor book features little red chicken - who wants a bedtime story but can't help but interrupt - to help.  Several favorite fairy tales are started here...only to have little chicken jump in to save the main characters, for instance, when Hansel and Gretel are about to enter the witch's house Little Chicken jumps in exclaiming "Don't go in she's a witch!" and the story ends with "and they didn't. The end." Finally, Little chicken writes her own bedtime story...and puts her papa to sleep.  Lost of humor, a chance to use different voices, and many opportunities for a storytime audience to guess about what will happen on the next page...will Little Red Chicken keep her promise and just listen or will she interrupt - again?

There Was a Coyote Who Swallowed a Flea by Jennifer Ward
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The illustrations in this book are amazing.  From the big eyed hungry coyote with his ribs showing to all of the items that coyote eats.  This book is filled with desert images. The text is a wonderful south west variation of the rhyme "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly." The text is bouncy and rhyming and makes for a great read-aloud, especially with the repeated chorus of "Yippe-O-Ki-Yee!"  We had read another variation, "I Know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Pie" last week, and so it was fun to compare and contrast the versions...almost as fun as being able to yell out "Yippe-o-ki-yee!" every page or so.

Little Beauty by Anthony Browne My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I stumbled upon this book while I was straightening shelves and putting the books in proper order - and what a find it was!  My storytime audience loved the wonderful illustrations - the large gorilla "who can ask for anything" sitting in an easy chair holding a remote in one hand and a hamburger in the other - and the tiny kitten, Beauty.  They loved the humor, and the happiness that a tiny kitten brings to this gorilla.  The kitten and gorilla do "everything together" and there is a bit of "potty humor" which my audience loved.  This is a sweet tale of a special friendship until the fateful night that Gorilla watches "King Kong" and gets angry and takes it out on the TV.  There is a wonderful twist in this story and a very happy ending.

Canada in Colours by Per-Henrik Gürth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
On a recent trip through a small portion of Canada, we stopped into a small gift store in Kingston, Ontario and was very pleasantly surprised to find the author/illustrator of this wonderful concept book behind the counter!  He has written and illustrated several Canada based concept books for young children, and my only problem was which one to choose.  The bright, illustrations are wonderful and filled with colors.  There are wonderful images from all across Canada.  Happy animals engage in all sorts of activities and it is impossible to look through this book and not smile.  I can't wait to read this for a story time audience.

Next week storytime will be all about Dinosaurs and the holidays. I'm thinking that will be a winning combination.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This week's storytime was all about Thanksgiving...what else? We had a lively crowd of twelve, with a number of older kids, since schools here in San Diego give the students this entire week off. We made a craft afterwards - paper turkeys with traced hand tail feathers and the kids enjoyed a mini-feast of stuffing, cookies and spiced cider. The atmosphere was warm and everyone was talking and laughing as they traced and cut and glued. I do love my job!

 Most of the books that I read today, were books that I read, and posted about here, last year. They remain some of my favorite Thanksgiving books. A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting with its beautiful illustrations and surprise ending, delighted as always. A couple of the older kids remembered it from last year and played along to not reveal the ending. Probably because I was raised in an immigrant household, Duck for Turkey Day by Jacqueline Jules, resonates with me. A young Vietnamese-American girl agonizes over the fact that her family does not eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

We did read two different books:

Thanksgiving Is Here! by Diane Goode
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I had high hopes for this book as a story time read when I pulled it off the shelf.  Colorful pictures and swoopy text looked interesting and everything that is Thanksgiving is here.  There were sound words that usually add fun to a read aloud, but I never did quite find the rhythm of the text and only some of the text seems to rhyme.  The kids liked this, but reacted to the other four books that I read in more enthusiastically.
                                                           and

Gobble-Gobble Crash, A Barnyard Counting Bash: A Barnyard Counting Bash by Julie Stiegemeyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is not exactly a Thanksgiving title, but, since it stars a flock of wild turkeys this is a natural read for this time of year.  The kids loved helping count all the barn yard animals, loved helping me say, "Gobble, Gobble, Crash!" and loved spotting the hidden turkeys later in the story.  The illustrations are filled with fun, documenting the chaos that happens when a flock of wild turkeys invade a sleeping barnyard on a quiet moon-filled night.  When the farmer wakes and threatens to put an end to the fun-and the invaders - the animals work together to protect their new turkey friends.  Fun and engaging with many opportunities to encourage a storytime audience to interact with the book.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I also hope that you all have something to be thankful for this year.  I am very, very Thankful for my wonderful storytime kids and colleagues at the Marine Corps Base.  I am grateful that I can do something for the families of these brave men and women who allow me to sleep in peace every night.

I am also very grateful for my wonderful public library job.  That I am able to share the gift of literacy and a love of reading with so many wonderful patrons is just a gift beyond measure.  That I am able to do this with a great team of coworkers in the library where I took my own kids to story time...well, it is a priceless gift to me.  The fact that I have a full-time job in this shaky economy is something short of a miracle.  I have so much to be thankful for this year!  I hope you all do too.

An Autumn Celebration

Today's storytime was all about the delights of Autumn, changing leaves, cooler temperatures and "the orange smells of Fall." Today, in San Diego, it was sunny dry and over 90 degrees! My storytime audience loved the books and rhymes about Fall anyway. In fact, we did most of the finger plays and songs twice. One boy even wanted to do an action rhyme about pumpkins three times! There were more than 20 children in attendance - so different from my early storytimes on the base where I may only have three or four.

 We sang as we counted flannel leaves, and our fingers became five furry squirrels and five little leaves. We even participated in an informal poll: for Halloween, did you carve a happy pumpkin or a scary one?  One little girl had three carved pumpkins at her house and so skewed the results somewhat!  The books, with their lovely illustrations in the bright, rich colors of Autumn, were lovely:

When Autumn Falls by Kelli Nidey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book, with its rhythmic text and wonderfully bright illustrations, introduces young readers to all that falls in Autumn.  Leaves, football players, the temperature, the sun. The three dimensional paper collage pictures are vibrant and detailed and the kids loved finding the hidden images that can be found throughout this book.  Birds in trees, a dogs eye peeking out from under a pile of leaves, the back of a child running behind a tree.  There were many opportunities for interaction with my storytime audience, as we counted crows, pumpkins, and students off to school.  My audience loved this book.

I Know It's Autumn by Eileen Spinelli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully illustrated book about a family enjoying the delights of Autumn.  In rhyming text the reader learns about getting out jackets, and the joy of pumpkin muffins for breakfast; picking apples and raking leaves.  A wonderful book to introduce all the joys of Autumn.

In November by Cynthia Rylant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Cynthia Rylant does a beautiful job "explaining" November in this book.  The text is gentle and rich with description. (For example, "The trees are standing al sticks and bones.")  The illustrations are perfectly matched with the text and are soft and gentle as well. We counted the cats "piled up in the corners of barns" (6) and the dogs lying before the fire (2) The foods of November with their "orange small" and all the warmth of Thanksgiving are captured between the pages of this book.  A very  special tribute to a very special time of year.

The Little Yellow Leaf by Carin Berger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a charming story about a little yellow leaf who does not react well to change.  When all the other leaves are falling, this one holds on tight and states that he is not ready...even when snow falls and he is lonely and cold.  Finally, he spots another hold out, a scarlet leaf, and together they let go and go soaring off into the sky.  The simple illustrations are beautiful and bright and the text contains rich vocabulary - the afternoon sun "beckoned and teased" and "flocks of geese took wing." My storytime audience could identify with the little leaf's fear and loneliness, and rejoiced when the two leaves went soaring off together.  Lovely story.

I'll be encoring this story time on Thursday at the public library so I'm glad I like the stories and songs, rhymes, etc.  Next week, we are off for Veteran's Day and then in two weeks I will be presenting a Thanksgiving storytime at the base, complete with a multicultural potluck feast.  Stay tuned.