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.