Let's Play!

Playing is one of the literacy skills that Every Child Ready to Read, 2nd edition emphasizes.  Duh!  Kids love playing.  (So do grown-ups, for that matter).  I think, though, that I'll use this blog as an opportunity to recognize innovative books where reading them is a form of playing.

Last night, I read In My World by Lois Ehlert with my daughter.  Cutouts of various parts of nature layer over each other to yield an image that looks like Earth.  I think the moths were D's favorite part.  (Naming all of the different elements ties into the former version of Every Child Ready to Read's "vocabulary" focus).  It puts a message about environmentalism into a preschooler-friendly format.  Moreover, the clever shape overlays are just fun.

Another Lois Ehlert book was a huge hit when I took it with me on fall storytime outreach.  It is called Leaf Man.  The illustrations are all made from collages of different leaves and acorns, and the end-papers identify what types of foilage they are.  I used how many animals the tale mentions for the children to join me in making animal sounds (which ties into "phonological awareness" from ECRR version 1).  Again, the creative way of seeing ordinary objects in a unique was is fun.

Alphabet Antics

Aunt Linda, of blessed memory, loved ABC books.  She had a bookshelf specifically to house her collection.  However, not all alphabet books are created the same.  I want to introduce my daughter to a couple of my favorite ABC books.  In addition to our nightly singing of the alphabet song (with a stuffed animal pointing to the specified letters on a wall-poster), this will help her become more prepared to read and write on her own.

She enjoyed when I read Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten by Joseph Slate/ Illustrated by Ashley Wolff to her.  I want to check out more in that series.  The fact that each kindergarten student is an animal whose name and animal type begin with a different letter of the alphabet is great.  I also like the other early literacy aspects of the kindergarten room set-up (shapes in the blocks, numbers on the wall, etc).  The other book that I have put on request for her is Matthew ABC by Peter Catalanotto.  In this book, every child has the name "Matthew" and a quirk that starts with some letter of the alphabet, with all 26 being represented.  It is cute, and I know she'll meet kids who get differentiated by their last initial.

*If you have ABC books that are particularly awesome for you, please feel free to share in a comment.

Boo!

Halloween is a much-anticipated event in our home.  My daughter loves all-things-spooky.  (If you don't believe me, check my earlier blog on Scooby Doo).  Anyhow, now that she is four, her attention span has increased.  This has allowed me the opportunity to share with her books that were previously not in our range. 

The two big hits I want to point out are Boris and Bella by Carolyn Crimi and Scary Fright, Are You All Right? by Scott Gibala Broxholm.  Both manage to have a monster-perspective twist on real conflicts, be they between neighbors (like the neat-freak Boris and the messy Bella) or between parents and children (like with Scary Fright and her folks).  I have been a huge fan of Boris and Bella since I first read it as a new book that came into my work at a library in Las Vegas.  The illustrations use jagged lines and muted colors to create just the right eerieness.  Just this year, I found Scary Fright.  The book goes through multiple episodes of Scary's young life after her outlook shifts once she befriends a human.  My daughter has requested multiple readings.

In general, both of these books, while being appropriate to the holiday season, are not overly gorey.  They teach an embracing of differences while respecting one's own individual traits.  All the while, neither book falls into preachiness.  Most importantly, they are fun!  So, if you're incorporating literature for your pre-kindergarten or kindergarten kiddo into your Halloween celebrations, give these two a whirl.

Worth a Thousand Words

Wordless picture books are a great way to empower kids to tell stories.  (In the old version of Every Child Ready to Read, this was the building of "Narrative Skills."  For the new version, we can just say that it encourages talking).  The Chicken Thief by Béatrice Rodriguez is an adorable wordless picture book that has bright, specific illustrations.  My daughter enjoyed telling me about what was happening on each page.  I think that next I will have to bring home The Red Book by Barbara Lehman.  It has been a while since I read it, but I remember this being another that impressed me with the clear plot and room for extrapolation that it provided.

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.