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.