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!