Author/Illustrator: Peggy Rathmann
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2003
Age Level: 2-6
Themes: babies, rescue, picnicking, stories in rhyme
Opening: Remember the day the babies crawled away? We moms and dads were eating pies, the babies saw some butterflies– and what do you know? Surprise! Surprise! The babies crawled away!
Summary: A boy follows five babies who crawl away from a picnic and saves the day by bringing them back.

Why I like this book: I like it despite it’s imperfections. Nay! I love it all the more because it’s not perfect. It’s genuine. I found it incredibly easy and fun to read aloud – even to myself! You can’t help but inflect it with lighthearted pleasure! Might just be the book to help the beginning babysitter, or mind-numbing nanny, learn how to read with kids! The rhyme isn’t tight, but I think that’s what I like – it’s natural! Of course, I am a sucker for silhouettes, and though I am not particularly fond of 80′s neon color-scream, it adds to the unlikely twists. I read somewhere that parents might not like showing a parental inattentiveness, but I have had a baby crawl away, and a toddler ride a bike with training wheels so fast only the ice cream sign at the kiosk stopped her from reaching the main street, and my kids LOVE to hear the tales of their own escape!

Activities: Create pictures with scratch paper, the kind that looks black until you scratch away to reveal bright rainbow colors. You can buy it ready made, but when I was a kid, we made our own, by covering a piece of paper with crayon and painting it over in black. Mom didn’t care for the mess, but didn’t mind it on the patio!

Go to Susanna Hill’s blog for more Perfect Picture Books and activities.

I took a little more time with this, but it’s because I’m not used to drawing with my finger, and I still had a blast piecing it together.

Two scoops with one cone – sounds a lot better than two birds…

My idea was to stress the importance of pictures in picture books – sounds silly, but I decided to read a few picture books that illustrate (ha, ha!) the parts of a story that the artist can tell, apart from what is being told in the text. So I am glad I had the books in my bag to start my talk, and hoped the rest would kick in.

But I got nervous. I don’t think it was the kids giving me secret waves, or the full 3 classes assembled before me, but my inner teacher took over and I started telling – that was my mistake. I don’t think the kids minded, but I should have nixed all the talk (esp. how an anecdote differs from a story plot – yeah, it got that bad!). I showed them some of my work (which I wish I could have done on a big screen so all the kids in the back could see too). And I got a lot of encouragement to create stories for my squirrel character.

But what I SHOULD have done, was to give the whole talk standing up and to draw as much as I talked on the big white board. Because in the end, when the questions started coming in (mind you, raised hands and random comments sprinkled the whole event) I realized they wanted to see how I do what they could relate to best at that age – telling stories in pictures.

apostrophe catastrophe

Reading those books was what gave me something to take away in the end. Although I read between 75 and 100 picture books a week, I don’t get to read aloud them to kids. During my visit I realized, you don’t read TO kids, but WITH them! I somehow never noticed that with my own two. We read one wordless book, Bear Despair by Gaetan Dorémus, then Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins to read what was not in the text. Then, to discuss what the posture and facial expressions tells us, we read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems. That’s when it hit me – their enthusiasm drove how I read, how I turned every page. It was marvelous to experience the book like a chorus does a song!

Behind schedule – but loving it! Seeing all the doodle ideas, some prompted by the day’s word, others by the doodler’s fancy, has been a great joy this month, each day I loosen up a bit more. Thank you so much for pulling us together Alison (alisonhertz.blogspot.com), and freeing our ties. Mwaahh!

Author: Phyllis Root
Illustrator: Randy Cecil
Publisher: Candlewick Press, 2006
Age Level: 3-5
Themes:moose, stories in rhyme
Opening: ”Have you ever seen a moose- a long-leggy moose- a branch-antler, dinner-diving, bulgy-nose moose?”
Summary: (From Amazon) Spurred by Phyllis Root’s sing-songy text and Randy Cecil’s buoyant illustrations, this hunt for an elusive moose through woods, swamps, bushes, and hills is just as fun as the final surprise discovery of moose en masse.

original is in color

Why I like this book: It’s just a fantabulous read-aloud, with energetic rhythm, but also because it reminded me of a naive search for moose in the white mountains of New Hampshire, many noons ago. A ranger happened upon us and let us know the noises we heard were squirrels, and the moose would not be as close to the road at that time of day. Ahem.

Activity: make your own moose antlers – click on the photo for instructions on activitybucket.com; create rhyming adjectives by putting two words together to describe something, or make up some new ones.

Moosey on over to Susanna Hill’s blog for more Perfect Picture Books and activities – any day!

Author: Barbro Lindgren (English Translation: Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard)
Illustrator: Olof Landström
Publisher: R&S Books, 20o2; First Published in Sweden as Jamen Benny, 2001
Age Level: 2-5
Themes: siblings

Opening: Benny has a brother now. He wanted one. And then he got one.
Summary: (From Amazon) One morning Benny awakens to find a bassinet standing next to him. Finally, Benny has a brother! All Benny’s new sibling does is scream and scream – until his mother gives him a binky. Benny wants a binky, too, but his mother says he’s too old for one. And Benny’s brother isn’t willing to share. Benny soon grows tired of his new brother – he’d rather have the binky. So when his mother isn’t looking, Benny runs away with the binky. He feels triumphant, until he meets up with some porcine bullies. Fortunately, he is rescued, and after running all the way home, Benny restores the binky to its rightful owner.

Why I like this book: There are picture books I admire for their stunning illustrations, the orchestration of their design, or their transporting texts that hum in my head for days. A few collaborations have a good marriage of these elements, and finding them is a complete thrill. And then there are  the very few I find difficult to describe: the renderings are cute, simple on first glance. The text doesn’t necessarily sing with rhyme or alliteration. But when I turn the pages slowly, carefully, I realize I’ve been duped. A clever deceptive sort of perfection. The only word that rings, that even comes close is  T R U E . This book is.

Activities/Resources: This is the kind of book I wish we’d had when our second child arrived, it might have led to good discussions on what our oldest was expecting, and how they felt after the arrival. This is the perfect time to reintroduce baby games that an older sibling could teach his or her new sibling: finger plays, nursery songs and rhymes. Here is a board on Pinterest, that might spark…interest (sorry – couldn’t help myself!). And if you are as enamored as I am with this book, read more Benny books along with this Kirkus review:

pencil on scrap paper

Since I missed yesterday’s prompt, tree, I decided to combine with today’s: critter. What’s he reading? Nummy Nuts for Less, by James Bristles, a guide to eating better on last year’s stockpile.

Meet Molly. She’s Irish.