E and N here! Our ima (Hebrew for mom) said we could tell you what books we love on her blog, so that other people know what books to get babies (0-3yo). We give smiles to books we like.
😊😊😊
We give 3 smiles (out of 2 smiles) to the board book, Global Babies by Maya Ajmera. We love books with photos of baby faces and this one even makes us gurgle with delight. The book tells us that no matter what, every baby is special and loved. The pictures show babies from all over the world! We love seeing babies of many beautiful colors.
Our ima even bought another book from the collection (Global Fund for Children Books), Global Baby Bedtime by Maya Ajmera. She is going to get us more from this collection as we grow.
I enjoy Todd Parr books. Sometimes I forget just how much in the big world of children's literature. I believe Todd Parr conveys an important message in all his books through text and pictures. His text is simple and yet he conveys important messages for children to hear. To me, his illustrations convey all the brightness of the world. I have read many of his books, but recently I've checked out two for E and N -- The Brother Book and I Love the Earth (new title and cover for The Earth Book). I am providing the review for I Love the Earth instead of E and N because even though they might not understand the concept yet, I want to instill within my children the meaning of "tikkun olam" (repair of the world). Parr sets up examples of what he loves about the Earth and reasons why so that young children can understand. He makes connections with stars and keeping the sky clear and animals and wanting them to be safe all over the world. The book could end up leading to an important discussion on one of many aspects of ways we could help make a difference--oceans, food for everyone, even shopping at the local farmer's market.
My hope is that you take some time to check out more of Todd Parr's books. His newest,Love the World, just came out a couple of weeks ago.
The First Ever MyWee Ones Review! E and N here! Our ima (Hebrew for mom) said we could tell you what books we love on her blog, so that other people know what books to get babies. We give smiles to books we like.
😊😊😊
We give 3 SMILES (out of 2 smiles) to the book, Look Look! by Peter Linenthal. This book has been read to us since we were newborn (10 months old now).
Our ima is a big believer in early literacy. She made sure to get this black and white board book for us even before we were born! She reads it to us practically every day and it always makes us smile (which is a big deal because it's read to us right before nap time).
We love the big black and white images and the red words on every page. Our favorite part of the book is the beginning with the flowers and children.
We love this book so much that our ima got the rest of the series. The other books are Look at the Animals!, Look Look Outside! and Look at Baby's House! All have black and white images with bright colored words.
Access to books...we all want it, I believe we all need it.
Let me start with the easiest way I know to get books...the LIBRARY! I'm very fortunate where I live because I have access to 3 different library systems. Technically, 5, if you count the Zoo Library (I volunteer there) and my mom's school library. Anyway, the 3 main library systems offer the program 1000 Books Before Kindergarten-- depending on the library system, you could get a free book based on how many you've read.
AMAZING ways to get books:
Epic! It's an unlimited digital library of high quality books for kids 12 and under. It is free for educators and $7.99 per month for everyone else (first month free). I can't believe I have never written a post about Epic! I am here to correct that mistake. The app/site has fiction and nonfiction books (sorted and categorized), some books are offered as read aloud or audio. The site continues to grow and add features such as tracking reading, Spanish titles, and educational videos. Here is a link to my bookmarking page w/ other online books.
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library Once a month, a free high quality book is sent to families with children ages 0-preschool. It's as simple as that. The program now reaches over 1 million kids! The program is currently in the United States, Canada, and the U.K.. If it is not offered in your area, you are encouraged to start an affiliate program.
PJ Library Geared towards Jewish families with kids 6 months-11 years. Families sign up for the free program and receive Jewish themed books in the mail every month. PJ Library has branched out to schools and camps, too. Feel free to comment about free book programs in your area.
What would you do if you started to receive strange clues from Zoo animals about your sister's disappearance? Think you were seeing things? Investigate the Zoo? Call on the other Action Scouts (friends) to help you figure it out? That's what Noah does when his sister, Megan, disappears. Noah, Ellie and Richie find themselves being noticed by the Zoo animals, as if the animals know who they are. The animals seem to be helping the Action Scouts try to find Megan. A secret world is opened up to the Scouts--where they befriend a polar bear named Blizzard, a penguin named Podgy, and a kingfisher named Marlo. The Secret Zoo by Bryan Chick is both wondrous and dangerous with adventure and wild animals lurking at every turn. It won't be an easy task for the Action Scouts to find Megan. I enjoyed this story because I loved reading about the animals befriending and helping the children. Who wouldn't want to go the Zoo and have one of the animals recognize you and come up to you?! The author says when he was 9, he "wondered what it would be like if zoo exhibits had secret passages that allowed kids to get in and animals to get out." There are also themes of conservation and stewardship of the animals in our world. Read a preview of the book here.
It's Children's Book Week! Hip, hip hooray! It's also the beginning of St. Louis County Library's Summer Reading Club. What a terrific match-up! I've already got the reading logs to pass out to my students this week. One of their library centers will include watching the promotional video. This is their last checkout week of the school year and I'm hoping they will earn some minutes reading for the summer club before summer break begins. I'm excited for them! I hope this post will remind others to celebrate the joy that comes with reading during Children's Book Week. Visit the site to find toolkits, kids activities, and ideas to celebrate.
Determined to teach my students skills they would need to succeed in the world, I don't feel as if I pushed books and reading as much as I could have this past school year (even my blog reflected this). Don't get me wrong, my students still had these values promoted to them with checking out books, learning to use a Nook, book fairs, and our annual Read Across America day. I just want this coming school year to be different. I realized that at the end of this school year when I gave students two chances at independent reading during their centers time for the last month of school and they really enjoyed themselves. My 2nd graders even got two book parties, one celebrating Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie the other Eric Litwin's Pete the Cat. This coming school year, I'm embracing my inner book geek (or bookseller) again. I've decided to keep up with promoting books and reading with a few book parties for every grade level during their library time. I also want to focus on author studies/spotlights...hoping most of them can be in correlation with the books being celebrated. I've decided to try out two capstone projects for each grade level, one of which will be a reading/book-based project and the other being a library/technology skill.
The classroom management system I plan on implementing will encourage reading and not just positive behavior. Extra books to checkout, read the whole time during library, get the cool reading spot in the library, or reading online via one of the many virtual book websites I have bookmarked for students. Even returning library books on time will let students reap benefits. If you're interested in finding out more about my plans, just holler (comment).
Ce-le-brate good posts--come on! One year ago yesterday (Blogger had tech difficulties yesterday), I started my blog. Taking a look back to my first post…
“Even if I only reach a few teachers or parents and my blog helps them put books in the hands of their kids, it’ll be worth it. I know there are hundreds of children’s literature blogs out there, but I hope you keep coming back to mine, if only for the simple reason that your child (or even YOU!) loves the books I’m writing about. But I plan on including more in this blog than just books. If events or news related to education and the publishing world spark a passion within me, I’ll be expressing my opinion about that too.”
I still feel the same way and have these same intentions—I just have so much to say about books and this is my creative outlet in which to share. It dawned on me that there was one entry that I never posted. I was waiting for who knows what, but I think this is the right time to share it.
I live in St. Louis and the question that everyone asks you if you appear to be in college or older is, "So, where'd you go to high school?" I personally think this gets you nowhere in terms of sizing a person up. I wouldn't be able to tell you the first thing about who YOU are as a person if you told me you went to Lindbergh or McCluer. But it's almost a guarantee that if I told a fellow St. Louisan I went to Clayton, an eyebrow would raise and something along the lines of "Oh, so you're a spoiled rich girl" would cross through ones head and maybe even issue from one's lips (no joke, this has been said to me). I didn't start Clayton till I was a sophomore...my mom (a first grade teacher) moved my siblings and I into the district because of the well-rounded education she knew we would receive.
On to the point of my post...what if the universal question we asked others was "What was your favorite childhood book?" So many people would be willing and delighted to answer this question. As evidenced from the following quote,
“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.” -Kathleen Kelly, You've Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998)
The reading you accomplish when you are younger forms who you are and lets you imagine who you could be. The magic is still there when you are younger and for some it never leaves. Asking that simple question let's others open up and not close down because no one has the right to judge you based on your favorite childhood book.
Hiphip Hooray! Here’s to my blog and may there be many more posts!!
I’m finally getting around to writing about the last part for the Presentation blog series.These last few titles I would like to introduce range from grade levels K-6 and cover expository and narrative nonfiction.
Arggh!Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.This new book, Pirates by Joanne Mattern (grades 4-6), is a great blended text that is in a graphic novel format.I love that the cover bears a female pirate—what a great discussion starter.The book is formatted so the speech bubbles have different shapes and shading to help children tell the difference between the history and the fictional story presented.I’ve included this book in several of my presentations because I think it represents a growing trend in nonfiction graphic literature.
When I think mummies, right away, I think Ancient Egypt (ok, I confess, I think The Mummy movies too).If you think your child will probably make the same connections, than introduce him/her to this book.It talks about mummies found throughout the world—even a Buddhist priest who was a self-made mummy!Unraveling The History Of Mummies Around The World by Sylvia Branzei is a good early chapter book for grades 1-3, especially to get children into reading nonfiction.This book may not have photographs, but the illustrations are just cool enough for a younger audience to make up for that.
If Nic Bishop can photograph an animal, you can be sure it’s an incredible shot.He’s already brought us frogs, spiders, butterflies and moths—now he brings us into the world of a type of animal where the ones I (I was going to use the pronoun “we,” but I didn’t want to make assumptions) really only know are the kangaroo and koala—the marsupial.I like how Nic Bishop Marsupials (grades 1-4) not only covers the basics—from an animal’s habitat, eating habits, and family—but he includes unique facts.For example, a koalas pouch is reversed, so when the baby peeks out they are upside down—you want to know why?Read the book to find out!
And to round this week off, I want to include a book from a series called Raptors.The one I talked about was entitled Owls by Julie Lundgren (grades 1-3).The books are very nice—photographs, text features that include caption boxes, bolded vocabulary, glossary, and simple paragraphs that won’t overwhelm younger readers.My mom plans on using the one about eagles with her first graders--she finds the idea of the eagle’s nest very helpful for circle time (that is her school’s mascot).
Bishop, N. (2009). Nic bishop marsupials. New York, NY: Scholastic.
Branzei, S. (2009). Unraveling the history of mummies around the world. New York, NY: Grosset & Dunlap.
Lundgren, J. (2010). Owls. Vero Beach, FL.: Rourke Publishing.
Mattern, J. (2010). Pirates. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publishing.
Our ima even bought another book from the collection (Global Fund for Children Books), Global Baby Bedtime by Maya Ajmera. She is going to get us more from this collection as we grow.
