Although we had a performer in place of Family Storytime this week, I did get to share poetry books with two second grade classes, in honor of National Poetry Month. These were the ones we read:
This was one of the most gratifying read-alouds I’ve ever shared with a group. It’s a series of riddles, with clues, rhymes, and silhouettes that all seem to be leading to an obvious answer, only the solution is always something completely unexpected. For example: He steals carrots from the neighbor’s yard./His hair is soft, his teeth are hard./His floppy ears are long and funny./Can you guess who? That’s right! My…Grandpa Ned! This worked incredibly well for second grade because they were so certain they knew the answer, and they exclaimed so loudly each time the real answer was revealed. The first class made me read it twice, so they could all shout out the real solutions.
Jack Prelutsky is a genius at children’s poetry, with a gift for humorous twists along the lines of Shel Silverstein. In this collection, a cat describes his school day to his mother, with different poems describing how his science homework dog, how he accidentally started a food fight at lunch, and even how he farted in class. In the last poem, he has to write a poem for class that has to have meter and rhyme, which gave me an opportunity to talk about meter in poetry.
This is an amazing and beautiful book. Each page features a different fairy tale: Cinderella, Rumplestiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, etc. And each is actually two poems: the first poem reads normally, from top to bottom; the second takes the exact same poem but flips it, as if you were reading it from bottom to top, where it takes on an entirely different meaning. For example, for Red Riding Hood, the first poem is from the girl’s perspective: In my hood, / skipping through the wood, / carrying a basket, / picking berries to eat — / juicy and sweet / what a treat! / But a girl / mustn’t dawdle. / After all, Grandma’s waiting! The second poem uses the same lines in reverse to show the wolf’s point of view: After all, Grandma’s waiting, / mustn’t dawdle… / But a girl! / What a treat — / juicy and sweet, picking berries to eat, / carrying a basket, / skipping through the wood / in my ‘hood. The kids especially loved the illustrations, which mirror the way one thing transforms into another: the wolves legs becoming the trees in the forest, the seven dwarves’ mine becoming the evil queen’s face. A brilliantly executed poetry collection that could make for a fun, and challenging poetry assignment. The second graders were mesmerized.
OTHER POETRY BOOKS:
There were lots of other books I could have shared, including almost any rhyming picture books. Some of my favorites:
I read this to some second grade classes last year, and it was a huge hit! Each poem features the woes of a different monster: the Phantom of the Opera can’t get It’s a Small World out of his head; Count Dracula has spinach in his teeth; Big Foot is tired of being mistaken for the Yeti. Very funny and off-the-wall.
A great book to illustrate how writers can use words to mimic sounds or experiences, in this case Charlie Parker’s jazz rendition of A Night in Tunisia. I’ve read this book so many times to both of my kids that I can almost recite it from memory, and it’s a blast to read aloud: Be bop. Fisk Fisk. Lollipop. Boomba Boomba The language captures the play and joyful unexpectedness of jazz music.
A rhythmic poem describing 17 kings and 42 elephants walking through the jungle. It’s fun to have the kids clap or stomp along with the beat, which is infectious.
In honor of April Fool’s Day, for this week’s Family Storytime, we read books about jokes and tricks. This was a fun theme, and all the books were snatched up and checked out at the end. Here’s what we read:
A great introduction to knock knock jokes for toddlers and preschoolers, with comical animal illustrations. I love to read this book at storytimes because it’s so interactive. Even the parents enjoy saying “Who’s There?”
I first heard this book read by a children’s librarian named Mary Ann Schlitz when I was just starting out doing storytimes, and I was struck by how well she did the voices for each character. It’s been one of my favorite read-alouds ever since. When a little mouse warns a frog that “Big Bro is Coming!” it starts a panic that spreads throughout the jungle. Each animal makes Big Bro out to be rougher and bigger, until they are all cowering in terror. When Big Bro finally appears, he turns out to be…a mouse! The big, colorful illustrations and dramatic story make this book perfect for just about any age. I usually have the kids stretch their arms out every time a character says “THIS BIG!”
Yet another terrific Gerald and Piggie book, and one that worked perfectly for this theme. When Gerald and Piggie see two squirrels playing a game where they try to scare each other, they decide to try it on each other. This book always gets big laughs, especially on the page where Gerald and Piggie jump out at the same time and scream in terror.
Bob Shea is another favorite picture book author of mine. I learned about this new title of his from my friend Kerri’s blog, MLReads.com. Buddy the monster really wants to eat the adorable little white bunnies, but somehow the bunnies always manage to divert him onto something else: making cupcakes, going swimming, or going to the fair. Hilarious read-aloud that always gets groans and laughs at the punchline.
SONGS:
There were a number of wandering toddlers at storytime this week, so I ended up doing songs after each book to keep them engaged:
Shake My Sillies Out: My standard opening song. I always pretend to fall asleep in the “Yawn my sleepies out” verse, and the kids yell, “Wake up!” Here’s a video of the original version by Raffi.
Aiken Drum: I had the kids suggest different foods to make the parts of Aiken Drum’s face. Here are the lyrics with the uke chords in parentheses (If this key is too high, you can also play it in C with C, F, and G7). Click on the triangle below to hear the tune:
(D) There was a man lived (G) in the moon (D) In the moon, (A) in the moon.
There (D) was a man lived (G) in the moon,
And his (D) name was (A) Aiken (D) Drum.
Chorus:
And he played upon a ladle, a ladle, a ladle,
He played upon a ladle, and his name was Aiken Drum.
His eyes were made of meatballs, meatballs, meatballs,
His eyes were made of meatballs, and his name was Aiken Drum
His nose was made of cheese….
His hair was made of spaghetti… etc.
There’s a Spider on the Floor: I have a big spider puppet that I brought out for this one, and I carried it around to put lightly on each kid’s leg, neck, head, etc. I’ve changed the verses a little from the Raffi version. Instead of “There’s a spider on your stomach,” I do “There’s a spider on your tummy, on your tummy…Oh, you look so very funny, with that spider on your tummy.” And instead of “I wish that I were dead, I’ve got a spider on my head,” I sing, “Oh, it fills my heart with dread to see that spider on your head…” But otherwise I keep it the same.
Little Bunny FooFoo: Great song for getting the kids on their feet and jumping around. Here’s an animated video by Hannah Heller with the lyrics.
An incredibly simple craft based on the French tradition of sticking paper fish on people’s backs on April First as a joke (Poisson d’Avril). You can read more about the history on FranceTravelGuide.com. For the fish, I printed out a basic template from AllKidsNetwork.com, and gave the kids markers and crayons to decorate it, and tape to make it sticky. They had the best time trying to stick the fish on each other and on all the grown-ups.
One of the best examples of a trickster tale, featuring Anansi the Spider, the mischievous West African god. When Anansi discovers that a certain rock in the jungle knocks people unconscious when they say, “Isn’t this a strange moss-covered rock?”, he uses it to trick all the other animals and steal their food. But all the time, Little Bush Deer is hiding and watching, and planning a trick of her own. This is a terrific read-aloud. Kids love joining in on the “KPOM!’s” whenever an animal falls for the trick. Plus Janet Stevens has cleverly hidden Little Bush Deer on almost every page for kids to find.
A clever and hilarious parody of traditional riddle books. Each page uses rhymes, clues, and silhouettes to lead readers to an obvious answer, only to surprise them with something completely random. For example: Who’s furry, scurries, and has fleas?/Who climbs our counters and eats our cheese?/We’ve set up traps throughout the house/But still can’t catch that pesky…Viking!”
The classic classroom story about sweet Miss Nelson, who is mysteriously replaced by the evil Miss Viola Swamp. The best thing about this book is the way it leaves it up to the reader to solve the mystery. I also love that James Marshall based his depiction of Miss Viola Swamp on his own horrible second grade teacher who laughed at his drawings (you can read about it in this Horn Book interview). I have also read that Marshall gave up drawing for years afterwards. Thank goodness he regained his confidence as an adult! He certainly had the last laugh.
What are your favorite picture books about jokes and tricks?
March 31 is Opening Day for Major League Baseball, and most of the kids in Pacifica are already deep into softball and Little League practice. So this week, I did a storytime about baseball. Here’s what we read:
This book is nominated for the 2014-2015 California Young Reader Medal, and I had already shared it with some second grade classes last month. It’s a rhyming story about a boy who is terrible at baseball, but a genius at invention. When he looks through his telescope and sees a giant fireball rocketing towards Earth, Randy Riley quickly invents a robot who hits the greatest home run ever, and saves the town. This one was a really big hit with the kids in my storytime group, and quickly got snatched up at the end.
The story about a dog baseball game featuring a big golden retriever named Homer, this is an adorable, funny book told in photographs. The kids got into a mini-scuffle over who would get to check it out.
An illustrated version of the classic Abbott and Costello routine. This would be a fun one to read with a partner, or use for Reader’s Theater. The illustrator makes each player (Who, What, I Don’t Know, etc.) a different animal, making them easy to identify as the joke continues. I’m not sure that all the kids got the joke, but they laughed as the dialogue got more heated and complicated, and several of them asked to check it out at the end.
The Froggy books are always a hit, especially because the kids love joining in on yelling, “FROGGGYYY!” (It’s a great opportunity to point out the word on the page too, which is important for pre-readers). In this book, Froggy makes several mistakes at his T-ball game: throwing himself out, catching actual flies instead of fly balls, and finally running towards his real home, instead of home plate.
SONGS:
B-I-N-G-O! I sang this to go along with Homer, and used a dog puppet, who barked the missing letters, and licked the kids’ faces in between verses.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game We did this as a sing-along, and I played it on the ukelele. (I found the chords on Ultimate-Guitar.com).
INSTRUMENT PLAY-ALONG WITH A CD: I’m Gonna’ Catch You by Laurie Berkner, from Under a Shady Tree: a catchy song with a brief baseball reference.
CRAFT: Model Magic Baseballs
Model Magic Baseballs, Soccer Balls, and a Bat by Olivia
This ended up being a lot of fun. Originally, I had planned to just use white Model Magic for the ball, and have the kids draw in the lines for the seams with a red marker. But I had a tiny bit of red Model Magic left in my bin, along with a package of black, so the kids ended up rolling thin strips of the red for the baseball seams instead. They also used the black to make soccer balls, and some of them even made baseball bats.
If you aren’t familiar with Model Magic, it’s a soft, light, air-dry modeling clay made by Crayola, and available in most craft stores and on Amazon.com. It worked beautifully for the balls, because it actually bounces. It’s also light enough that, even if the kids threw the balls at one another, they wouldn’t hurt. My son has used Model Magic for years to make little models of whatever he was interested in at the time: Pokemon, Mario, etc. It’s far less messy than Play-Doh, and really easy to manipulate.
OTHER BASEBALL BOOKS
I also read baseball books to two classes of second graders this week, which was fun because I could share some of the longer ones. Here’s what I read:
The second graders enjoyed this true story about George Herman Ruth, who was such a troublemaker as a child that his parents sent him away to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. St. Mary’s was strict (the boys could even be whipped if they so much as talked at mealtime), but the one thing that George loved there was baseball. After he became a professional ball player, he heard that St. Mary’s had been destroyed in a fire, so he invited the school’s band to join him for the rest of the baseball season, and raised money to help them rebuild. Very readable, with large, colorful illustrations.
A funny follow-up to the old poem, Casey at the Bat. In this story, Casey hits the ball, which rockets off over the fence, knocks the Tower of Pisa, breaks the nose off the Sphinx, scares the dinosaurs into hiding, and plummets back onto the field, where Casey is flied out. The kids enjoyed the outrageous silliness of it, and it gave me a chance to put in a plug for Gutman’s chapter book series, The Baseball Card Adventures. These are sports adventure stories for slightly older kids (grades 4-8) about a boy who uses baseball cards to travel back in time to meet famous ball players.
One of the second grade teachers had this book in her classroom, and pulled it out so the kids could hear the original poem. Some of the vocabulary is a bit advanced, but the illustrations by C. F. Payne do a great job of conveying the story. The kids all seemed to enjoy it.
This was the favorite of a lot of the boys. Another picture book biography by Matt Tavares (author of Becoming Babe Ruth). This one tells the story of Ted Williams’ rise to fame as the greatest hitter who ever lived. It includes an exciting anecdote about how his plane was damaged by enemy fire in the Korean War, forcing him to choose between ejecting and possibly breaking his legs, or taking his chances with a crash. The kids also were appreciatively grossed out by the description of Williams hitting until blood streamed down his hands. My only complaint about this book is that the kids were curious about when Williams lived and died, which wasn’t included in the text or the notes at the end. But the kids in both classes loved it.
What are your favorite picture books about baseball?
It’s officially Spring, although, unlike the rest of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area hasn’t had much of a Winter. Still, you can see some blossoms appearing on some of the fruit trees, and hear frog songs in the creeks and bushes. I hadn’t ever really thought about frogs as a harbinger, until I noticed that several picture books made that connection. So I made them the focus of my Spring storytime as well. Here’s what we read:
I’m in love with this book. It reminds me a lot of Press Here by Herve Tullet, because each page asks the reader to interact with the book in a different way. The first page asks you to tap a bare tree, making a green leaf appear on the next page. Tap the tree again, and more leaves appear. Then buds appear, and turn to flowers, which transform into apples. The leaves change color and fall off, and the whole thing begins again. I read this book to three different groups this week: one preschool, one toddler, and one mix of ages. They all loved following the directions on each page and seeing what came next. A great book for units on trees or the seasons.
I read this in honor of my coworker, Gwen Miller, who is retiring this month. This is one of her favorite read-alouds. It’s a pop-up version of the old joke about the wide-mouthed frog, who goes around asking other animals what they like to eat, until he meets an alligator who eats wide-mouthed frogs! Sadly, our copy doesn’t circulate, so no one could check it out, but the kids all asked to have a chance to look through it before they went home.
I prefaced this book by asking the kids if they knew what frogs started out as. Surprisingly, only one of them knew about tadpoles, so I think if I do a frog theme in the future, I will be sure to share a book that describes that process in more detail. This book was a hit anyway. When 999 tadpoles become 999 frogs, their parents have to seek out a larger place to live. On the way, their father is taken by a hungry hawk, and they all join together to save him. The illustrations of the 999 frogs dangling in a huge chain from the hawk’s claws made all the kids laugh, and there was a mini-squabble over who would get to check it out at the end.
I had originally planned to read City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems for my last book, but I had this one in my stack and the kids begged to hear it. It’s an I Spy game using very simple clues to help kids to guess different animals: a blue whale, a gray elephant, a green frog. What sets it apart are the large, colorful illustrations, and the hole in each page showing the color of the next animal. The kids easily guessed all the animals, even the orangutan. A great book for color or animal themes.
I sang this with a crazy frog puppet I found in our animal bin, which makes burping noises or buzzing sounds when you put your hand in his mouth. The kids all clambered around me for a turn.
There are lots of different versions of this craft online, mostly involving paper plates (here’s an example from Drexel Paper Cuts). For mine, I cut out circles, and front and back feet from green construction paper. I folded each circle in half, and cut a narrow piece out of the middle. I had some foam craft sticks in different colors for the tongue, and wiggly eyes (if I had had more time, it would have been fun to make eyes that stuck out on the top).
All of the frogs turned out differently. Several kids put the eyes inside the folded piece of paper, so they looked like the one below. They all loved the foam craft sticks, and some kids even made their own crafts (stick people and airplanes) by taping several of them together.
An adorable book about a mole who tries to wake up his friend Bear in time for Spring. Large, colorful illustrations and simple, repetitive text would make it perfect for toddlers. My daughter loved it.
This is a sweet, somewhat sad, story, far different from most of Mo Willems’ other picture books. It even has a different illustrator, and features large, expressive paintings of the animals in the countryside. A city dog visits the country throughout the year, playing games with his friend Frog, until the Winter comes and Frog is nowhere to be found. The following spring, the dog returns and makes a new friend. A lovely, subtle book about the cycle of the seasons and the cycle of life.
A lovely book of large photographs featuring different things you might see in the Spring: baby birds, frogs, fawns, flowers, etc. I didn’t get this one in time to share at storytime, but it would have worked well because of the photographs of tadpoles turning into frogs.
What are your favorite picture books about frogs or Springtime?
St. Patrick’s Day is a terrible holiday for storytime. Sure, there are several picture books about leprechauns and lots of adapted Irish folk tales, but they are almost all far too long to read to a preschool or toddler group. Often I end up making it a “green” theme for that age group. That was what I had originally planned for this week too, but instead of Family Storytime, we had a guest from the Spindrift School of Performing Arts lead a Movement and Music class, so I was off the hook.
This week though, I read to two classes of second graders, so I finally got to share the longer books. It was actually a lot of fun. The kids seemed to enjoy all of them (they’ve gotten in the habit of voting for their favorites at the end, and each of the books got a fair number of votes). Plus I got to try out my Irish accent (admittedly I was a bit nervous to learn that one of the teachers was a first generation Irish-American, whose parents immigrated here before she was born). Luckily she didn’t seem offended. (By the way, if you enjoy playing around with accents, my friend Mai recently sent me this link from the BBC, where a dialect coach named Andrew Jack gives a quick overview of different accents across the UK).
An original story about St. Patrick’s attempts to rid Ireland of its last snake. After trying to trick, and then capture, the snake in a wooden box, St. Patrick saves it from a eagle, and finally drops it into Loch Ness in Scotland, where it grows into the Loch Ness Monster. It’s hard to find a book about St. Patrick that doesn’t delve too much into theology (always a bit risky in a public school or library setting), so this was a fun way to represent him. Many of the kids, especially the boys, said this book was their favorite.
Based on an Irish folk tale that DePaola heard from his grandfather, this is the story of Jamie O’Rourke, a man so lazy he would never lift a finger to help feed himself and his wife. Then one day, he captures a leprechaun, who tricks him into accepting a potato seed instead of his pot of gold. Jamie plants the seed, and grows the biggest potato in the world. The whole town ends up eating it all winter long, until everyone is so sick of potatoes that they offer to keep Jamie and his wife supplied with food all year, as long as Jamie O’Rourke doesn’t plant another potato seed. It would be fun to do a planting activity along with this book, and let the kids plant potato eyes to grow their own potatoes.
Someone is eating bites out of the cupcakes and cookies in Mr. Eliot’s classroom. The kids suspect the new kid, Kevin O’Malley, until they discover there’s a leprechaun hiding in the ceiling. Kevin helps them catch the naughty thief, and makes him promise to grant them one wish: a field trip to the moon. The kids really enjoyed this one, and spent several minutes afterwards talking about what they would wish for: mostly they wanted money or infinite wishes. This one actually is short enough to share with preschoolers, and I have read it at library storytimes in the past. It is also one of a series of books about Lucky O’Leprechaun.
A lonely man lives in the mountains with only his books, the fairies, and his goat Finny for company. Until one day the fairies enchant his goat to make him talk. The two head off to the fair in Killorglin, where Finny is crowned King Puck for a day, and granted one wish: more books to read. This book was a huge hit, mostly because of the illustrations. The kids kept commenting on how they “almost look real” (they are computer-generated), and they loved pointing out the fairies hiding on each page. The note at the back of the book explains about the history of the King Puck contest, which really is held every year in Killorglin. The girls especially liked this one, and I think it would probably work for a preschool storytime.
An original story about a hungry man who finds an even hungrier leprechaun. The man, Patrick O’Callahan, badgers the leprechaun into trying to conjure up some gold, but the leprechaun has forgotten how to do magic. His attempts to make gold out of dandelion soup and the sunbeams on the floor yield them nothing but a puddle full of frogs, but when he tries to enchant the rocks, they turn into something white and tasty that feeds them both and everyone else. The kids liked the part where the leprechaun says something like, “We boiled them in a POT and ATE them. We should call them POT-ATE-o’s.” Several kids commented on how only every other page is in color, and the color is limited, which gave me a chance to discuss how printing in color used to be expensive, and was usually used sparingly (this book was published in 1962, and unfortunately appears to be out of print).
What are your favorite books for Saint Patrick’s Day?
This week for Family Storytime, I read books about emotions. I noticed that most of the books out there with that theme focus on negative emotions like anger and fear, but they are some of my favorites. Here are the ones we read:
This book does a great job of illustrating the frustrations of being a kid: boring grown-up conversations that never end; trips to dull museums; bland grown-up cereals. Tom Lichtenheld takes each one to an hilarious extreme, ending with the worst: somebody making you laugh when you were trying to be grumpy, and making you forget what you were grumpy about. This one always gets laughs, from the parents as well as the kids.
My favorite of the Elephant and Piggie books, and one of the best for very beginning readers. When Piggie sees that Gerald is sad, she tries to cheer him up by dressing as a cowboy, a clown, and a robot, but only makes him feel worse. I had the kids say the repeated “Ohhhhh”s along with Gerald. A good, funny story about friendship as well as emotion. The kids all loved it. By now they are all so familiar with Gerald and Piggie books that they couldn’t wait to get to the end page, which always has Mo Willem’s Pigeon hidden inside of one of the illustrations.
This is one of the best picture books about coping with anger. Mouse is so angry, he jumps up and down, stomps his feet, screams, and rolls on the ground. The problem is that other animals (hare, bear, bobcat, and hedgehog), each do those things much better, and when he tries to emulate them, he always ends up falling into a mucky mud puddle and getting even angrier. Finally, he stands still…and breathes…something he can do better than anyone else. A great way to teach an important skill for regaining calm, but taught in the context of a lively, non-preachy read-aloud. My daughter, who could teach bobcat a thing or two about screaming, loves this book, so I’m hoping its quiet lesson will rub off.
Another funny book about being grumpy. Crankenstein is a monster. When you say, “Good Morning! How are you?” he says, “MEHRRRR!” He also says “MEHRRR” to lots of other things: getting ready for school, standing in long lines, and going to bed. But then he meets another Crankenstein, who makes him laugh. The kids enjoyed joining in on the “MEHRRR’s,” and this one grabbed the attention of some of the boys who love monsters.
SONGS:
If You’re Happy And You Know It: I added new verses with other emotions: If you’re sad and you know it, cry ‘Boohoo!’; If you’re shy and you know it, hide your face…peek-a-boo!; If you’re grumpy and you know it, stomp your feet; etc.
This was an easy craft I found on the Allen County Public Library Youth Services web site, on a page with a list of other good books and songs about emotions. I adapted it a little, and created a Word document with circles for the kids to draw faces in. You can print the template here. I also cut out arrows out of cardstock, and punched holes in them for the metal brads (I attached the arrows to the page ahead of time because that part seemed a little tricky, and the brads are a bit sharp. I just pushed them through the middle of the paper and twisted them a bit until the arrow could spin easily, then separated the metal tabs on the back of the page to hold them in place).
The kids had fun drawing in their faces. I liked that this made for a simple reading activity too, since they had to learn the emotion word (happy, sad, angry, or scared), in order to know what kind of face to draw.
OTHER BOOKS:
The great thing about this theme is that you can really use just about any picture book and talk about the emotions the characters may be feeling.
One of the few celebrity authors I actually like. In this book Jamie Lee Curtis explores a wide range of emotions based on situations that kids can easily relate to: feeling angry at not being included in a friend’s playdate; being sad after a fight with a friend; feeling happy at learning how to do something new. The text is simple, well-written rhymed verse, and the illustrations are whimsical and full of feeling. The book comes with an emotion wheel at the back, although I noticed the one from the library copy we have was missing.
The emotional vegetables and fruits in this book, all made from actual food, are hilarious: angry peppers, kissing strawberries, joyful peas. This is a great book for a food-themed storytime as well.
Perfect for babies, toddlers, and beginning readers, this board book goes through all the things that make baby happy (getting an ice cream!) and sad (dropping the ice cream).
I’m including this one because it does a great job of conveying a common experience that everyone, especially young kids, can relate to: being SO excited that you rush in and do something you regret later. This story is about an adorable dog named Katie, and three little kittens. When her owner brings home three new kittens, Katie can’t contain herself: she rushes in howling and scares the kittens. Then she feels ashamed and sad. The cycle repeats several times, until she finally learns to control her excitement. The illustrations are darling (no one conveys shame better than a dog), and it’s a terrific read-aloud, with lots of opportunities for kids to howl.
Another story all parents and kids can relate to: Llama Llama feels alone and scared in bed, while Mama Llama is on the phone downstairs. Adorable rhyming book with wonderful illustrations. Many of the other Llama Llama books (Llama Llama Mad at Mama; Llama Llama Misses Mama) would work for this theme as well.
Vivid colors and bold descriptions capture just how it feels to be really, really angry, and how Sophie calms down. This is a simple story about a little girl’s frustration and anger that kids can easily relate to, and one that conveys both the overwhelming feeling of rage and the fact that it eventually passes.
Grumpy Gertie by Sam Lloyd (Amazon.com link) Recommended by Shelley Jacobsen
I haven’t read this one yet, but it looks like a fun, simple way to teach kids that the face they project to the world can affect others. Gertie is determined to tell the world just how grumpy she is, until a monkey teaches her how to turn her frown upside down.
Twice a month, I get to read to two groups of second graders at a local school. It’s so much fun to share books with them, especially since I get to explore longer stories, and talk about connections between books and authors that I don’t usually get to cover in my library storytimes. They love to jump in with things they notice about the story: “This one rhymes!” or “This is a circle story!” And they often catch things in the illustrations that I never noticed.
One of my favorite things to do with them is to read the Primary level picture books that are nominated for the California Young Reader Medal, and have them vote for the one they want to win (unfortunately, I just realized that I will have to wait until April to submit their votes to the CYRM committee). The nominees are announced every February, and the winning books are announced on May 1. I had already shared the 2013-2014 nominees with them earlier in the year (here’s my post from the storytime I did based on those). This week I shared the nominees for next year.
The rules specify that in order to be eligible to vote, students have to first read or listen to all of the books nominated in a particular category. Here are the Primary Level books for this year:
Last year’s nominees included Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies, so it was funny to find yet another rhyming baseball book in this year’s batch. I hadn’t run across this one before the nominees were announced, but I can see why it was chosen. The kids loved it. It’s the story of Randy Riley, a kid genius who is terrible at baseball, but great at astronomy. One night he sees a massive fireball barreling towards his hometown. No one believes him. It is up to Randy to save the day by building a giant robot, who hits the biggest home run ever. This is a fun read-aloud in solid rhymed verse with a lot of dramatic build-up. A number of the kids recognized Van Dusen’s distinctive illustration style from the Mercy Watson series (several of them also said his drawings reminded them of the movie Meet the Robinsons, which is actually based on a picture book by William Joyce.) This book got 7 votes from the first class, and 5 from the second.
This was one of my favorite books published in 2013. I loved it so much that I gave it as a end-of-year-gift to my son’s third grade teacher. I was happy to see it in the list of nominees, and many of the kids, having heard it read by their own teacher, were excited to see it as well. It’s the story of an exclamation mark in a world full of periods. No matter how much he tries to blend in, he always stands out. One day he meets a question mark, who asks him so many questions that he shocks them both by shouting, “STOP!” And he realizes he has a gift. This is such a clever and perfectly executed metaphor about celebrating our differences, and a great punctuation lesson as well. The illustrations are whimsical and simple, and drawn on the kind of lined paper that kids use for learning how to write. Although the second class didn’t vote for it, this book got 6 votes from the first class.
A librarian book! A little girl is bothered by her school librarian’s boundless (and often goofy) enthusiasm for books, especially when she is asked to share a favorite book of her own. The girl is convinced that she will never love a book as much as Miss Brooks does, until she reads Shrek. I had fun sharing this one (especially reading all the girl’s complaints about the librarian), and the kids enjoyed pointing out characters from books they recognized, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This book got 3 votes from the first class, and 4 from the second.
I hadn’t seen this book before the nominee announcement either, but the kids loved it! Before I read it, I asked them what the word “Too” in the title meant, and we talked briefly about the meanings of too, to, and two. The title is actually a pun, because there are two too tall houses in the story. The book is about a rabbit and an owl who live side-by-side until one day they get in a private war to build the tallest house. Soon their two houses are towering high above the earth, making them both unhappy until the wind blows them down. The illustrations are gorgeous and funny, and got a number of laughs from the kids. This book got 8 votes in both classes, which made it the favorite in the first, tied for first in the second, and was the clear favorite overall. It was my daughter’s favorite as well.
Before I read this one, I asked the kids what other books they knew by Mo Willems. Many of them recognized his name from the Gerald and Piggie series, Knuffle Bunny, and the Pigeon books. I pointed out that this book, although written by Mo Willems, was illustrated by someone with a completely different art style. The text is a departure from Willems’ other books too. It’s a bittersweet story about a dog and a frog who play together during different seasons. In Spring they play Country Frog games like splashing and croaking. In Summer they play City Dog games like sniffing and barking. In Fall Frog is tired, so they remember the fun times of the past. In Winter, when City Dog rushes to the frog’s rock, he finds himself all alone. Then in Spring, while he waits sadly for his friend, he meets a chipmunk, and makes a new friend. This was a somber book compared to the others, but it’s subtle and sweet nonetheless. When I asked the kids what they thought happened to the frog, most of them said that he probably died, but some thought he might be hibernating. I appreciate that Willems leaves that ambiguous. I wasn’t sure how this book would go over, given the more serious tone, but it got 6 votes from the first class, and 8 from the second (tying with Too Tall Houses for that class).
Which book would you vote for? And what would you nominate for next year? The guidelines specify that the books have to be written by a living author and published within the past four years, which is pretty broad. At the end of this school year, I think I’ll ask the second graders which books they would like to see in next year’s nominee list.
Here’s a (very) little known fact: I once ran for President! Although my entire campaign consisted of this one post from an old blog I shared with two of my friendsHere’s a (very) little known fact: I once ran for President! Although my entire campaign consisted of this one post from an old blog I shared with two of my friends.
Anyway, last Monday was President’s Day, so I thought I’d give a president-themed storytime a try. I was pleased to find that there are some pretty good picture books out there, some of which I really enjoyed. The only problem was that my Family Storytime audience was almost all toddlers. Don’t get me wrong: I was thrilled to see them, especially because a few of them were new families. But I quickly realized that, even though I had picked relatively short books, they were still too long and complex for the under-two set. I adapted by throwing in a lot of songs in between books, excerpting some pages here and there, and then completely abandoning the theme at the end. In spite of it all, I actually had a great time. I would rather be a librarian than President any day!
Here’s what I ended up doing. I’ve included the books that I had planned to read in the list at the end:
If your kids don’t like to brush, read them this book. Poor George Washington. Not only did he have that whole Revolutionary War thing to deal with, he also suffered from horrible teeth that rotten and hurt and fell out all the time! This book tells you exactly how, and when, he lost each one, all in solid, entertaining rhymed verse, which is quite an art. A lot of the story was lost on the toddlers, but they hung in there, especially whenever I held up my fingers each time George lost a tooth, to show just how few he had left. The older kids were mesmerized, and one of the moms said at the end, “I never knew that! It’s kind of disgusting.” And it is. But it’s a great picture book all the same.
I was relieved to have this book in my stack because it was short and simple, with large illustrations. A kid explains all the reasons why his teacher would make a great president: she is a great listener; she goes to lots of meetings; she is good at finding people jobs. Each two page spread shows the teacher demonstrating the skill (like catching a loose snake on the page about being good in an emergency), as well as showing how she might put it to use if she were President. This would be a nice lead-in to a discussion about what kinds of challenges Presidents face, and what kind of person would make a good leader.
This one was far too long to read in its’ entirety, so I ended up just sharing parts of it. It’s actually an easy reader about Abe Lincoln, featuring some fun anecdotes about his career as a lawyer. The part I mostly wanted to share (because of the craft I had planned) was that Lincoln carried letters and important papers inside his hat. This would make an excellent book to share with an elementary school class for Lincoln’s birthday, since it does a good job of conveying his cleverness, integrity and good humor.
Okay, this was the point where I completely abandoned the theme. All the other books in my stack were far too long for the toddlers. So I grabbed this book from the shelf behind me, and it was great. I even had the kids try to do the dance steps along with Piggie. In this story, Piggie tries to teach Gerald to dance, even though Gerald tells her emphatically that “Elephants Cannot Dance.” In the end, Piggie is forced to agree, but meanwhile Gerald has found a following for his “Elephant Dance.” Totally unrelated to presidents, but the toddlers loved it (thank you, Mo Willems!), and hey, at least elephants represent a political party.
SONGS
Brush Your Teeth: This Raffi song is always a hit, and it paired perfectly with George Washington’s Teeth.
Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes: This didn’t connect with any of the books, but was great for bringing the wandering toddlers back in. I do the song several times, doing it faster and faster every time. Sometimes, if I want to especially tricky, I’ll have the kids try to sing it backwards: Nose, and Mouth, Ears and Eyes, Ears and Eyes…etc. I also ham it up a bit by flapping my lips with my fingers when we sing the word “Mouth” and pinching my nose when we sing “Nose.” Yes, I am a huge goof-ball, which is yet another reason why I will never be President.
Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee: Another song for the toddlers. I have a big bee puppet that I brought out for the first verse. After that I asked for animal suggestions, and we had to invent new rhymes for each one: “I’m bringing home a baby lion. Won’t my Mommy really start a-crying?” “I’m bringing home a baby grizzly bear. Won’t my Mommy pull out all her hair?” etc.
I thought this craft from Spoonful.com was adorable. I gave each child a rectangle of black paper, which they rolled around a finger and taped or glued together, a tiny black strip for the hat, a white paper triangle for the shirt-front, a penny for the face, and a red paper bowtie. They were all very cute. I thought it was funny that even though I told them at the beginning that Lincoln’s face is on the penny, most of them glued the penny on upside down.
You can do the same craft for Washington, Roosevelt, or Jefferson, but it would be more expensive!
This one was too long for my family storytime, but I read it to a second grade class a while back when we were showcasing Caldecott Award winners. It’s a nice overview of the presidents, and the ways they were alike and different. There are a number of funny anecdotes and quotes, and the caricature-style illustrations are fun.
Another books with simple stories and facts about different presidents. This one is short enough to use with Kindergartners, or even older preschoolers, especially if you just share certain stories. Hanoch Piven has a unique collage style, where he uses objects that represent different people to create mixed-media caricatures (for example, his illustration of Ronald Reagan uses jelly beans, and George W. Bush has a hot dog nose). The stories are simple and fun, and give a more human portrayal of each president.
I was really hoping to share this one, but in the end, it was too long. When Grace learns that there has never been a female president, she is determined to start by winning the class election. What I find interesting about this book is that the school election mirrors the electoral college process, with different students representing different states, and some having more votes than others. In the end, the decision comes down to one vote, and Grace’s hard campaign work pays off. This would be a great book to share around election time.
Yet another holiday-themed storytime. Fortunately, Valentine’s Day comes with much better picture book options. (Thanksgiving is terrible, and don’t even get me started on St. Patrick’s Day). I actually had a great day reading to different age groups: two classes of second graders, and then my family storytime, which included several of my regular Kindergartners, as well as some new toddlers.
I love the Froggy books. Yes, they tend to follow the same pattern: Froggy makes lots of mistakes, adults are always yelling at him, and towards the end, he always gets embarrassed and turns “more red in the face than green.” But they are fun to read aloud, have funny illustrations, and the kids love them. Plus, they are a wonderful opportunity for teaching print awareness, which helps young children understand the connection between the words they hear and the writing on the page (a recent study found that students whose teachers called attention to printed words while reading aloud performed much better on reading tests up to two years later). With the Froggy books, I like to show the kids the places where someone yells out “F-R-O-G-G-Y!” (a words that’s usually written in bright bold letters across the page). I tell them to watch for that word, and then join in. In this story, Froggy is smitten by the new girl at school, Frogilina, who always gives him a surprise at lunch. One day, she gives him a kiss! Blaahhh! I love that Froggy is not interested in romance, and that he gives his special Valentine to his mom (plus he serves her breakfast in bed!). There were several eager kids asking to check this one out.
Splat is another popular picture book series. In this one Splat, a fluffy black cat, wants to give a Valentine to Kitten, even though every time he sees her, she “pulls his ears, and pokes his belly, ties his tail and calls him smelly.” To make matters worse, Spike, the big bully cat at his school, likes Kitten too. The illustrations are adorable, and the kids always giggle at the parts where Kitten calls Splat smelly. This one got snatched up too.
I love this wild West parody of “My Darling, Clementine,” about a man who tries to send his true love a message, but things never go his way. The mailman can’t find her address, the homing pigeon flies to Madagascar, the Pony Express messenger gets bucked clear to Arizona. The parents seemed to get the humor more than the kids, but I was grateful to have this book because some of the toddlers were getting restless after the two longer books, and the singing in this one seemed to draw them back in. Alison Jackson also wrote the wonderful I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, which is one of my Thanksgiving mainstays.
One day just before Valentine’s Day, it starts raining hearts. Cornelia Augusta catches several and uses them to make special Valentine’s for each of her animal friends: a ring of hearts for the dog; a heart with a cotton ball in the middle for the rabbit; a big heart with holes cut in it for the mouse. This one was a great lead-in for the heart craft we did at the end. I was planning to throw some small paper hearts like confetti, but I forgot.
SONGS:
Skidamarink-a-Dink-a-Dink:I like to teach the kids how to say “I Love You” in sign language, and we do that each time it comes up in the song. Here’s a very trippy animated video of the song, with the lyrics in the subtitles.
Five Green and Speckled Frogs:We did this one after the Froggy book. I have the kids stand up and jump up and down on the line, “One jumped into the pool.” I often do this with a frog puppet, and pretend it is catching flies on the kids’ heads. Here’s an animated video for this song.
If All the Raindrops: We sang this song before The Day It Rained Hearts. As I did last week, I asked the kids for suggestions of what they’d like the rain to be and we made up our own verses. Our rain was made up of milkshakes, pie, cookies, and lots of other goodies.
I cut out paper hearts in all different sizes and colors, and gave the kids glue sticks, white cardstock, and markers. I had made an example page featuring several types of heart animals, but in the end all the kids did different things, and it was great fun to see what they came up with. One little girl even taped several pink hearts together and made me a bracelet, which I thought was a neat idea.
I read this one to the second graders, and it worked really well. When Nate’s dog Sludge receives a mysterious Valentine, Nate is on the job to find out who sent it. But then his friend Annie begs him to help her find the missing Valentine she made for her brother, giving him two cases at once. In the end, Nate is horrified to discover that someone has given him a Valentine. The book includes a section of craft ideas, jokes, and facts about Valentine’s Day, which were fun to share with the class.
This was a nice counterpoint to the Nate the Great, although I have to tell myself several pages before the end not to get choked up. It’s a lengthy picture book about a lonely man named Mr. Hatch, who has no friends or family, and keeps to himself. Then one day the mailman delivers a big box of chocolates with a card that says, “Somebody Loves You!” and Mr. Hatch’s whole life changes. Wondering who could have sent the chocolates, he reaches out to help people in his community, and bakes brownies for his neighbors. When the mailman discovers that he accidentally delivered the package to the wrong address, Mr. Hatch goes back to his lonely ways, thinking nobody loved him after all. But by then, of course, everybody does.
Great board book for toddlers and preschoolers. When Lilly gets a chocolate heart for Valentine’s Day, she wants to save it. But there seem to be no good hiding places. In the end, she finds the perfect place: in her mouth!
Cute, rhyming lift the flap book featuring different animals giving each other the things they like best. Preschoolers enjoy guessing what’s under the flap based on the animal and the rhyme: a bone for the dog, cream for the cat, etc.
What are your favorite picture books about Valentine’s Day?
I’ve lived in the Bay Area now for almost 15 years, and I still don’t understand the weather. The only things I know for certain are that it’s good to bring a jacket, even when it’s seventy degrees outside, because ten minutes from now it might be twenty degrees colder. September is often hot. June is often cold. And winter is always rainy. Until now. Now the reservoirs are so low that we’ve all been urged to cut our water usage by twenty percent, and many towns across the state are in danger of running out of water entirely.
So, in lieu of a rain dance, I did a rain storytime. The weather report now says it’s going to rain all this weekend, so maybe it worked! Here’s what we read:
There’s a new goal in our library system to incorporate more nonfiction into storytimes, so I gave it a try tonight. This book is actually a cumulative poem about the water cycle. It starts with “This is the ocean, big and vast/that holds the rainwater from the past.” Each page adds a new part of the cycle: water vapor, clouds, and then a depiction of water running down streams back into the ocean. I had to explain some of the terminology, like “vapor,” and talk a bit about what was happening. I don’t think it was the best book I could have chosen in terms of giving a clear explanation of what makes the rain, but the kids loved the illustrations! Jane Wattenberg has filled the book with funny visual jokes: dinosaurs in the ocean (to represent the past); starfish in place of stars; birds holding umbrellas. The kids were all clambering around me, pointing and explaining over every page, and the book was quickly snatched up at the end.
Mo Willems makes my job so easy. All of his books are so much fun to read aloud, but especially the Gerald and Piggie books. They are written ostensibly as beginning readers, with very simple text, usually with a fair amount of repetition. But they are also hilarious. They are especially fun to read with a partner, and they would be perfect for small groups of kids to act out. In this one, Piggie is upset when it starts raining, ruining her plans to play outside. Then she and Gerald discover how much fun it can be to play in the rain… just as the rain stops. Luckily, Gerald saves the day by creating a rain shower of his own. I got lots of laughs over this one, and a small tugging match ensued at the end over who was going to get to check it out.
This book also reads like a beginning reader, with simple, rhyming text. Four crocodiles named Sam, Pam, Will and Jill are all bored on a rainy day. They decide to go outside anyway, and wind up playing mini-golf and baseball (with hailstones!), finding a dog, and going to the library. The kids liked the rabbit librarian, cowering in terror from the crocodiles.
I brought this one out in my stack, but I hadn’t planned to read it because it was so similar to Rainy Day, but several of the kids spotted the cover and begged to hear it. I was glad because it was a hit! This book is about four puppies who are bored on a rainy day, who decide to pretend they are at the beach. In the end, they pour water all over the living room floor, and have a wonderful time playing in the “ocean,” until their parents walk in the room…
SONGS AND ACTIVITIES:
If All the Raindrops
I used this song a lot when my daughter was a toddler, to get her to open her mouth for the toothbrush. For storytime, I sang the first verse through normally, then asked the kids what they would like the snow and sunbeams to be. We added their suggestions into the second and third verses, so we had sunbeams made of lemonade and butter (and hair!). These are the original lyrics (click on the arrow above to hear the tune):
If all the raindrops
Were lemondrops and gumdrops
Oh, what a rain that would be!
Standing outside, with my mouth open wide
Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah!
If all the raindrops were lemondrops and gumdrops,
Oh, what a rain it would be!
If all the snowflakes
Were candy bars and milkshakes…
If all the sunbeams
Were bubblegum and ice cream…
Making a Rain Storm
This is such a simple activity, but always fun. I ask the kids to do what I’m doing in order to make a rainstorm. First we rub our hands together, then click our tongues (to sound like drops of rain), then clap our hands, then slap our knees, then stomp our feet. Finally I have them all stand up, and we all jump at the same time to make a thunderclap, and then we do all of the actions in reverse to make the rain “stop.”
CRAFT: Rain on the Green Grass Book
Rain book by Olivia
I got the idea of making a book from my coworker, Reeba Lynn. I was almost kicking myself for not doing one earlier. In Kindergarten, my son was so proud of his “keep box,” a little collection of simple paper books he made throughout the year. And my daughter has made several similar books in her preschool class that she loves to read to me.
The book Reeba showed me had a more complicated rain poem, but I decided to do the nursery rhyme Rain on the Green Grass (Rain on the green grass/Rain on the tree/Rain on the rooftops/But not on ME!). I cut out Reeba’s umbrella picture (there are lots of other ones online), and printed out the words to go on each page (here’s a Word document for the text: Rain on the green grass). For the rest of the illustrations I cut out basic shapes from colored construction paper: jagged green strips for the grass; lumpy round green shapes for the treetops; brown strips for the tree trunk; red squares for the house; and blue triangles for the roof. It did take a fair amount of prep, but I was able to do a lot of the cutting with the paper cutter.
I folded two sheets of white paper to make each book, and stapled them along the side. I had an example for the kids to follow, and for the most part, they did a good job (there were a couple of kids who accidentally made their books read from left to right, but I explained that’s how books are made in Japan, so they could either read it that way, or consider it a whole new rhyme). If I had more time, I would have glued the text on ahead of time, so they could just add the pictures. I had them glue the umbrella on the cover, along with the title, “RAIN! by ________.” Then they glued the text and pictures on each page, and added rain with markers. For the last page (“But not on ME!”), I asked them to draw a picture of themselves. Each book turned out a little bit differently, and they all seemed engaged by the process of making them.
OTHER BOOKS ABOUT RAIN:
There were lots of other books I could have read (I had originally planned to read the new California Young Reader Medal nominees, but some of the books didn’t come in time, so I had to change topics, and work with the rain books that were available in our small local branches). Anyway, here are a few others:
Franklin Branley writes wonderfully clear science books for early elementary school children. This one explains every step of the water cycle with a few simple science experiments to illustrate some of the concepts.
When the animals on a small farm hear there’s a storm coming, they all think Storm must be a scary monster. They hide in the barn in terror, and then are happy when wind, rain, lightning and thunder apparently scare Storm away. Cute story with colorful illustrations.
Such a sweet story, I wish I had been able to get it in time to share. A little girl can’t wait to wear her new red rain boots and carry the umbrella she receives for her birthday, but her parents insist she has to wait for a rainy day. It’s not only a lovely story about rain, but about the small steps kids take towards growing up.
Perfect for toddlers, this is about a red tow truck who pulls a school bus from a deep puddle. There are lots of fun truck noises for the kisd to join in on.
A little cloud worries that she is not big enough to make a difference, until she finds her own way to save the day. I’ve read this one several times, and the kids always love it. The illustrations are adorable.
This one was a little too long for my group, but it sums up how I’ve been feeling through this dry winter. A little girl in a hot city neighborhood can’t wait for the rain. When it finally comes, she and her friends go out dancing in their bathing suits, and so do their mothers!
This one was also a little too long, but it’s one of my favorite picture books. A little girl is afraid of the thunder, until her grandmother teaches her how to make thunder cake. I’ve never tried the recipe on the last page, but it looks delicious. The story also teaches kids how to count the seconds between the lightning and thunder to see how close the storm is. We very rarely get thunder here (I actually miss it!), but this is a lovely story about overcoming your fears.
An extended version of the nursery rhyme, featuring an old man in a wide variety of weather and precarious situations. The illustrations are colorful and funny. I’ve used this many times for baby and toddler storytimes.
A clever parody of the Ants Go Marching song (which would also have been a good one to include for storytime). This is a counting book about a little girl and her aunts who go marching through town in the rain. Lots of great drum noises, and fun to sing.
What are your favorite books about rain? Please share them in the comments.
The Loudest Librarian! 
