Click Your Mouse Button Now!

As much as pop-up books are at hit at my home, I am delighted to have found a book that proves simplicity can still be engaging.  Press Here by Hervé Tullet tells the listener what to do (press a dot, blow the black background off of the page, etc).  With each page turn, the variation in illustrated dots seems to result from the action that the child did on the previous page.  While I enjoyed the inventiveness of the book and the way that it reinforces concepts of color, size, and pattern, the real sign that this is a winner came when my daughter chose it from the huge pile of library books at home as the one for me to read to her again.  The interactive nature of this book makes reading it feel like playing a game. 

Innovative Illustrator Illuminates

I wanted to write today about an author/ illustrator whose inventive paper-cutting techniques bring vividly to life basic early literacy concepts.  I love reading the work of Laura Vacarro Seeger.  Her books are simple, yet they make clear some important ideas.  Below are some books by her that I recommend along with the topics they cover:

The Hidden Alphabet  (Letters)

First the Egg (Processes)

Black? White! Day? Night!  (Opposites)

Lemons are Not Red  (Colors)

Just the Facts, Mam.

Not everyone will like everything.  Just as preschoolers assert their preferences in terms of what to wear, what to eat, and what to play, they have their opinions about what to read.  Even when kids are in the toddler phase, they tend to have a book that their caregivers could recite by heart due to having repeated in ad nauseum.  (In our case, this was Moo! Baa! La La La! by Sandra Boynton ).

Imagine my surprise to find that my daughter, the child of someone with her graduate academic certificate in storytelling, loves juvenile non-fiction.  For some of the most simple, we read cover to cover.  For others, though, we read some captions while we look at the illustrations, photographs, and diagrams.  (In her Pre-K orientation, the teachers emphasized the importance for parents who are not literate in the language of a book to share stories with their children by discussing the pictures). We talk about the history and biology that have come to life in amazing pop-up volumes.  Books about ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, plants, and animals have been the big winners at our home.  My daughter tends to be very tactile; she wants to feel the world.  For her, books as instructions for basic science experiments and crafts are as useful or more so than those where the entire experience is on the pages.   

Two books at my home that sparked conversation and nursed my daughter's intrigue are new selections from the Insiders Alive series.  They have pop-up and other interactive features, but the writing is also informative and relevant.  The ones we have enjoyed are: Earthquakes and Volcanoes by Anita Ganeri and Ancient Egypt by Robert Coupe.

Smaller and Smaller

 So, I've been thinking about this blog ever since writing the last one.  It is way past time to share information about two of my favorite re-tellings of a Yiddish folktale.  Especially in these times of hardship and economic challenge, the message in the story is pertinent.  The repetition and simplicity of the story makes it a great tale to share with preschoolers, though. 

The story is about a coat that, as it gets worn, a grandfather who is also a tailor remakes into many smaller garment pieces for his grandson.  In the end, once the boy loses the button that the coat eventually became, all that is left is a wonderful story.

Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman-- My favorite part of these illustrations is the mouse family.  As the humans lose fabric scraps in their home, the mice under the house gather them and use them to decorate their tiny abode.

Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Tabak-- This book (which won the Caldecott Award for children's illustration) has very fun, bright pictures.  My favorite part of this one is the collection of Yiddish and Hebrew newspaper clippings worked into the background.  For the kids, though, the way that the garment changes because of cuts in the pages is probably the most endearing way that the pictures convey the story.