Halloween Dogs – Saturday Story Spotlight

Oct 222011
 

halloweendogs pictureWelcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Halloween Dogs by Roger Priddy
Published by Priddy Books

It will come as a surprise to nobody who knows him, but Halloween Dogs was one of Daniel’s favorite books for quite some time last year. Not only is it illustrated with actual photos of dogs, but it is sparkly and many of the areas are textured. Although, really, I think it was mostly about the dogs.

Halloween Dogs is more poem than something with a plot, talking about the way these anthropomorphic dogs relate to Halloween. The book is cute and the pages are brightly colored to keep a young child’s attention. That being said, I think Daniel liked it more when he was just a little over a year old. Now that he is over two, it isn’t quite sophisticated enough for him.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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Whooo’s That? – Saturday Story Spotlight

Oct 152011
 

whooosthat pictureWelcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Whooo’s That by Kay Winters, illustrated by Jeannie Winston
Published by Harcourt Children’s Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Whooo’s That? is a very cute Halloween lift-the-flaps book. Every page other than the last one has one or more jack o’ lanterns that can be flipped down to complete the sentence “Whooo’s that….” Beneath each of the flaps is some sort of Halloween creature, most of which are shown on the last page to be kids out trick or treating.

This is a very cute book with big, easy to manipulate flaps, and even the biggest Halloween beasties are basically adorable. Facing pages rhyme, and everything scans well. It isn’t Daniel’s very favorite Halloween book, but it is a good addition to the rotation.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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Five Little Pumpkins – Saturday Story Spotlight

Oct 082011
 

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

fivelittlepumpkins pictureFive Little Pumpkins, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino
Published by Harper Festival, an imprint of HarperCollins

Five Little Pumpkins, a Halloween classic!

You all probably know the Five Little Pumpkins poem: “Five little pumpkins, sitting on a gate; the first one says “Oh my! It’s getting late!” And so on, and so forth.

This might be one of Daniel’s very favorite books. I think we kept reading it for about six months after Halloween last year. There is a great rhythm and rhyme, and this edition has only a short bit of text on each page, which really keeps the poem moving -and which makes it easy to repeat and memorize, I’m pretty sure Daniel is going to know the whole thing before Halloween. The illustrations are simple with lots of contrast, which makes them great for young children. Oh, and if you weren’t aware, that pumpkin in the back with the down-turned oval eyes is crying. At least according to Daniel.

Five Little Pumpkins is a great Halloween staple for any young child’s library.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums – Saturday Story Spotlight

Sep 242011
 

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

buffalodrums pictureTeach Your Buffalo to Play Drums by Audrey Vernick, illustrated by Daniel Jennewein
Published by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins

In 2010, the world’s cutest buffalo ever made his debut in Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?. The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the fact that Daniel was only one, and we wouldn’t have any need for it for a long time. Enter the second buffalo book, Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums.

In Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums, the buffalo is still the most adorable thing ever, but now he’s trying to free his inner-musician and play drums. It isn’t easy to get a buffalo to hold drum sticks, but if you help him out, he can find a way to do it.

Okay, admittedly I bought Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums more for me than for Daniel. It is a really cute book, one that a parent could read multiple times without getting sick of it. It is, however, a bit more than Daniel’s two year old attention span can handle; we have yet to actually get through the whole thing. He loves the part we have read, though, and it is a book that can continue to grow with him.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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The Danny Books – Saturday Story Spotlight

Sep 172011
 

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

5dannydogs pictureThe Danny Books by Mia Coulton

When one of my husband’s colleagues heard that our son’s name is Daniel, she told us that we just had to read the Danny books, written by a friend of hers who is a former reading recovery teacher. We filed the information away to look into, but before long, a package we weren’t expecting appeared for us, filled with Danny books.

The Danny books are comprised of engaging photographs of the dog, Danny, along with simple text with lots of space between words and sentences, to make it easy to read for younger children. Although for early readers, these are not phonics-based books. Instead they use high frequency words and, in some of the books, repetitive language to tell Danny’s story.

Unlike many of the early reader books, though, from what I have read the Danny books actually have value for reading to your child beyond just recognition of sight words or phonics-building patterns. The stories, when set besides the photographs of Danny, are engaging and entertaining. Daniel can easily sit for three or more in a row and they have a tendency to make him laugh. Even though he’s too young to be trying to actually figure out the words himself, he also likes to just sit and look at the books for their photographs of dogs and make up his own stories. So far his favorite two stories are Five Danny Dogs and Danny’s Hair is Everywhere.

The Danny books can be bought either in sets with varying degrees of difficulty within the set, or by reading level.
5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy these books from:
www.maryruthbooks.com

Source: Gift
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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Dot – Saturday Story Spotlight

Sep 032011
 

dots pictureWelcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Dot by Patricia Intriago
Published by Margaret Ferguson Books, an imprint of Macmillan

Patricia Intriago’s Dot is a stark, sparse study in opposites. There are dots that are up and down, happy and sad, yummy and taste bad. Having the illustrations consist of little more than dots set against a solid background – most often black dots on white – means that there is little to distract from the attributes that define each set of dots. Daniel is particularly taken with the dots that are yummy and taste bad. Each of the two appears to have a bite taken out of it, but the bad-tasting dot has its missing piece next to it on the page, as if someone tasted it and then spit it out. Every time Daniel sees Dot, he grabs the book from my hand and starts flipping through the pages asking, “where yummy one?”

Although it isn’t as ornately illustrated as most of the picture books we read, Dot is attention-grabbing in its simplicity, as evidenced by the fact that Daniel latched onto one of the sets of dots almost immediately, after only one or two reads. We are enjoying Dot very much.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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Who Has These Feet? – Saturday Story Spotlight

Aug 272011
 

whohasthesefeet pictureWelcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Who Has These Feet? by Laura Hulbert, illustrated by Erik Brooks
Published by Henry Holt & Co, an imprint of Macmillan

Who Has These Feet? That is the question of the hour in the book by the same name. Hulbert doesn’t beat around any bushes, asking readers “Who has these feet?” on the very first page, as we are confronted with Brooks’s illustration of great, hairy, white feet. Turns out, it is a polar bear who has these feet, and it needs all that fur on the bottom so it won’t slip on the ice.

It is entirely possible that Who Has These Feet is the new favorite in our household. “Feet book!” is a constant request, and every time I read the eponymous question, Daniel responds with a little questioning shrug, “Which animal?” Daniel likes the predictive text and the interaction he has inserted into it, and I like the ability of Who Has These Feet to grow with the child reading it. Daniel is not yet ready for the explanations of why the different animals have different kinds of feet, for now it is enough to recognize and match them. However, an older child could easily be fascinated by the requirements that environment and behavior put on an animal’s feet. For these children, there is enough detail first to satisfy and later to spark an interest and further exploration. For those too young to be interested in this, though, the ‘why’ sections are brief enough to maintain the quick flow of the book.

Not only is Hulbert’s text very well balanced, but Brooks’s illustrations are absolutely charming, with great details on the cloe-ups of the animal feet.

A fun and informative book to read for toddlers on up. Highly recommended.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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Let’s Read Together with Elmo and Friends – Saturday Story Spotlight

Aug 132011
 

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

elmoanthology pictureLet’s Read Together with Elmo and Friends (various authors)
Published by Piggy Toes Press (website | facebook)

Let’s Read Together with Elmo and Friends is an anthology of four Elmo stories which were each originally standalones. The stories included are: Hello Elmo; Count to 10; Elmo ABCs; Sleep TIght.

This is definitely a favorite of Daniel’s. He was playing while I was getting ready to write this post, but at soon as he saw me pull out the book, he stopped when he was doing and started to hang off of me, asking me to please read him one of the stories. We read Hello Elmo, which has some really fun interactive elements, including Elmo making funny faces and asking you to make funny faces back at him. Daniel likes that particular part so much that he flipped straight back to it, as soon as we had finished that story so he could practice all of Elmo’s funny faces.

The stories included in Let’s Read Together with Elmo and Friends are all great. In fact, Elmo’s ABCs is the same story we featured here previously after borrowing the individual story from the library.The only slightly odd thing is the anthology nature of the piece, since each of the stories was originally written and illustrated by someone different. The different authors are not so obvious as the different illustrators, it is a little strange that Elmo and the rest of the characters look different in each story. Such is the nature of anthology, I suppose.

Piggy Toes Press is currently offering free shipping on orders placed through its website.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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Curious George and the Pizza – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jul 302011
 

Welcomecuriousgeorgeandthepizza picture to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Curious George and the Pizza by Margret Ray and H.A. Ray
Published by HMH Books

When George and his friend go to a pizza parlor, George is absolutely fascinated by the tossing of the pizza dough and the making of the pizzas. When he tries to make some pizzas on his own, though, a huge mess ensues. The owner of the pizza parlor is pretty angry, until he has to deliver a pizza to a factory which is already closed, at which point George’s monkey skills save the day.

A monkey and pizza! What more could Daniel want?

Really, there’s nothing particularly special about Curious George and the Pizza, but it is a crowd-pleaser in this house. My favorite reason to read it with Daniel is for the identification of facial expressions. When the pizza parlor owner is frustrated to the point of tears, Daniel points at him and yells “crying!” Between this and just the joy of reading, Curious George and the Pizza is a frequent visitor to our storytimes.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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The Lost and Found Pony – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jul 232011
 

lostandfoundpony pictureWelcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

The Lost and Found Pony by Tracy Dockray
Published by Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan

The eponymous and unnamed pony is small, but she (or possibly he, along with being unnamed she is never explicitly given a gender, but let’s just make her a she for the sake of argument) is perfectly happy with herself. That happiness is even more pronounced when she is given to a young girl as a birthday present. She and the girl are a perfect match, until one day it becomes apparent that the girl has outgrown her, and the girl’s parents replace our dear pony with a larger horse.

The pony is sold off to the circus, which is not a bad life, but she misses the girl each and every day. Still, life goes on – until the circus  begins to lose money and the animals are sold off. This is perhaps the scariest time in our pony’s life, but it results in a reunion with her girl, now all grown up.

This is just a lovely book. Dockray’s illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. I wanted to reach into the book and stroke the pony’s muzzle in the early pages. The circus illustrations are particularly vibrant, the ones of the circus’s dissolution still beautiful but tinged with despair. The story is incredibly sweet as well. The pony knows love and won’t give up on it, but also makes the best of the situation at hand. Her reunion with her long-lost girl makes me go “awww.”

My only real problem with The Lost and Found Pony – which is not a fault of the book itself, but evidence of a slight mismatch between the book and my family – is the fact that it is far too long for even my book-obsessed two year old’s attention span. Although I assumed she would be reunited with the girl, I never actually made it all the way through until I reread it prior to writing this review. Still, he enjoys the half or so of the book he’ll sit through, and absolutely adores the pictures (horsey! elephant!).

The Lost and Found Pony will definitely be keeping a place in our permanent collection, so we can continue to revisit it as Daniel grows older and can perhaps even sit through to the ending.

5210693610 37ae2ff460 m pictureBuy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Review copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.
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