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.

Summer Time

It feels like I posted here just recently, it is difficult to believe that my last post was from May! It has been a summer of great challenges and great fun. It has also been a summer filled with two different summer reading program themes. At the Public Library, the theme was "Dream Big Read" which included "Own The Night" as the teen theme...lots of night time stories, and stories about imagination. At the Military Base we used the iread program theme: "Reading is so Delicious." For the storytimes on base the themes were "Pizza, Pizza!", "Just one Bite...Please?", "Breakfast", "Lunch", "Dinner", and "Party Food" - here are some of the highlights: Pizza is a popular food with kids and they loved this theme. There are lots of great songs and rhymes, and we recycled old CD's to make mini-pizzas as a craft. Our favorite pizza books were:

Hi, Pizza Man! by Virginia Walter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love this simple, funny, and oh so imaginative book based on a game the author would play with her granddaughter while waiting for dinner to arrive. This book starts out innocently asking what the little girl will say to the pizza man when the door bell rings (Hi, Pizza Man!) and then the question changes to, but what if it is a pizza lady? dog? dinosaur? The kids in my audience loved this book, and happily helped make the appropriate animal noises and giggled at the wonderful illustrations.

The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza by Philemon Sturges
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Anyone familiar with the traditional tale of the busy red hen with the lazy friends will recognize elements of that tale in this modernized story, especially the recurring phrase "Not I." However, this tale, with the lovely cut paper illustrations from Amy Walrod, is fresh and funny. The story opens with the LRH, having finished the last of her bread, preparing to make dinner - looking in her pantry she finds, next to the canned worms, a can of pizza sauce and decides to make pizza. She doesn't plan very well and makes multiple trips to the store and asks to borrow items from her - predictably - unhelpful friends. The detailed pictures engaged my story time audience as we talked about items in shopping carts (she always buys "some other stuff") and ingredient preparation. There are lots of opportunities to count and to predict what will happen next...and a happy ending for all the characters.

We read books about wild food and picky eaters for "Try Just One Bite":

To Market, To Market by Anne Miranda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
For any food-based story time this book is a must-read. A wild variation on the nursery rhyme "To Market, To Market" this is one wild, hysterically funny version. All the animals are live and they make mischief once home. My story time audience LOVED this one and laughed out loud at the wonderful illustrations. Fun to read, with rhyming text, this is a real winner

Rah, Rah, Radishes!: A Vegetable Chant by April Pulley Sayre
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
With full page photographs of the most beautiful vegetables this is a wonderful story time book. The rhyming, rhythmic text will make even the most passionate vegetable hater change his/her mind!

Our favorite meal time books were:
If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Joffe Numeroff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Laura Numeroff's books are such classics, and all the kids love them. The gently outrageous consequences that stem from a simple act: giving a mouse a cookie, a muffin to a moose or a pancake to a hungry pig - are sure to make any reader smile. The kids hung on every word and took in every colorful, detailed picture. They even giggled at most of them. They also knew what was coming so when we got to the last page, they all knew that the pig, in the end was going to ask for a pancake. After words I got out a flannel of the story, and the children retold the story with the help of the flannel clues - and they did a very good job of it, too!

A Most Unusual Lunch by Robert Bender
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When a hungry frog innocently eats a beetle it starts a most...unusual chain of events. Each animal is swallowed whole by a larger animal who displays artifacts of the swallowed animal. My story time audience loved the soft, colorful illustrations and giggled at the wild combinations that occur - for instance lion, the top of this food chain, awakes from a nap to find he had "two antennae, six tiny little legs on his underbelly, two big green legs, a fish tail that rattled, a long forked tongue, plus strange scales.." the expression on the face of this unhappy lion is just priceless. He lets out a roar that begins the chain of animals being released and returning to normal. The warning is clear - you are what you eat - and laughter is guaranteed.

Little Whistle's Dinner Party by Cynthia Rylant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My story time audience was familiar with Little Whistle, the adorable guinea pig who lives in a toy store. He is nocturnal and spends many happy nights, once the store shades have been drawn, visiting with his toy-friends in the shop, who come to life at night as well. All of our favorites are here, soldier who reads stories to all the store's babies, lion who loves vanilla cookies, and bear who loves hats. In this book, Little Whistle invites all of his friends to a dinner party, makes elaborate preparations and then arrives in a helicopter to the dinner bringing dessert. Charming and lovable my story time audience hung on every words and smiled at every illustration.

Company's Coming by Arthur Yorinks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It was the quiet, normal suburban neighborhood where Moe and Shirley were preparing to host a quiet family spaghetti dinner when....
Aliens drop in on their way to another galaxy and ask to use the bathroom. Shirley is polite to these new guests inviting them to dinner and then calmly offering drinks and appetizers once they arrive to dine. Moe, on the other hand, calls the FBI and has the house surrounded by all sorts of big military tanks and guns. There is humor in the text as well as the wonderful illustrations - very popular with my story time audience.

Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake by Thomas Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sweet book about how difficult it is to share. When mouse finds an enormous cupcake he is thrilled - until he realizes that he can't carry it home! One by one he enlists all his friends to try and help him. Of course, Mouse allows each to take a bit...but then hungry mouse begins to fear that there may not be any left for him...

We even did a finger play about five little cupcakes, and I used the new glove set that I created:

For the storytime that included our end of SRP party the theme was - what else? - Party Foods and included these two favorites:
The Beastly Feast by Bruce Goldstone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The illustrations in this book are detailed and vibrant, they almost jump off the page. The text is simple and the rhyming is wonderful. The beasts are having a feast and every animal is bringing something. Bears bring pears and parrots bring carrots....mice bring rice and mosquitos bring burritos. This book is a very engaging read aloud...kids loved the pictures and completing the rhymes (not always successfully) For instance when the feast is over everybody claps - the armadillos bring some pillows and then everybody...."Sleeps!" called out my young audience...naps. I'll keep working on rhyming...

Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love Karma Wilson's books. They are great read alouds. With Jane Chapman's charming illustrations this one is an absolute winner. It is spring and one skinny bear wakes up hungry...with the help of his friends he eats his way through the day, devouring everything and wanting more (a great repeated phrase that a story time audience will pick up on. The rhyming text is very readable and the party scene at the end elicited giggles galore from my audience.

My biggest challenge at my public library job was to work with a fleet of volunteers to manage a summer reading program that included 1,045 registrants, 10 weekly programs and a teen lock-in event with a zombie theme (remember "Own the Night") It definitely kept me on my toes. We had a 56% completion rate, and huge attendance at the programs, so I guess I had a very successful summer@my library.