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.