Orange Pear Apple Bear

Here is a perfect book for Maya right now. She loves fruit, but hasn't learned any of their names. She's working on banana and peach. But she is making progress on being able to call her stuffed bear by name.

Orange Pear Apple Bear, by Emily Gravett, is sort of an art book that cleverly manipulates those four words to create a lot of meaning.

The images are arranged in different orders, and the colors of the objects are fluid. This makes it possible to create pages such as "Orange pear/Apple bear".

Finally the bear eats the fruit one by one. "Orange, bear" then "Pear, bear" and "Apple, bear".
"There." (Okay, there are five words)

This is a great book for building vocabulary and practicing rhythm, rhyme, and changing your voice to change meaning. Be creative.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

Speaking of food. The summer reading program theme around here was What's Cooking at the Library. The Saint Paul libraries created a reading wheel with some great ideas for how to incorporate literacy into grocery shopping, cooking, etc.

Here are a couple:

Make a shopping list together and cross out the names of grocery products as you put them in your cart.

Play I Spy - What do you see that starts with B? Banana, bread.

Count grocery items together as you add them to your cart.

Eat smart! Healthy food can increase a child's brain development and intelligence.

It's a nice well-rounded (remember it's a wheel) guide. I wish I had an online version to tell you about, but start with these. I bet you can come up with some more ideas of your own.

Way Up High in a Tall Green Tree

So one of the next projects for our little yard is to make sure that we have an adequate climbing tree. We've got a lot of very tall bushes in the back, but only one tree. Unfortunately, the lowest branches are about seven feet from the ground. Maybe we'll have to find a way to make some steps up the trunk. Otherwise it's the cherry trees by the driveway.

The little girl in Way Up High in a Tall Green Tree, by Jan Peck and illustrated by Valeria Petrone, doesn't let anything get in her way. As she climbs she encounters a variety of tree dwellers.

One thing I especially appreciate about this book is the inclusion of some very unique animals you might not get to talk about unless you see them at the zoo. Along with the familiar butterflies, bats, and birds, our little climber encounters an ocelot, a kinkajou, and a gecko.

The catchy text gives some great descriptors, like "Way up high in a tall green tree, I spy a tree frog winking at me. Hello, tree frog. Google-eyed, tree frog. See you later, tree frog. Climb away."

At the top of the tree, she finds the moon. Climbing back down again, she finds Daddy. "Guess what, Daddy? I climbed to the top of a tall green tree!" Just as you're wondering where this little girl lives that she would see all of these animals, you find that she has actually been in her bed all along using her imagination (Are those real animals or stuffed?)

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

I read an article recently in a parenting magazine espousing the benefits of play for children. TV, Gameboys, and organized sports don't count. Kids need to use their imaginations. One of the suggestions is to take your kids outside, rain, shine, or cold. Looks like we're doing pretty good in that department.

Even babies learn this way. The author noted that when babies and toddlers drop things over the side of their high chair, they're learning. Looks like we're excelling in that department.

Old MacDonald had a Woodshop

Here's another one of those books that changes up a familiar children's song in a fun way. Old MacDonald had a Woodshop, by Lisa Shulman and illustrated by Ashley Wolff, sets several animals to work in a tiny shop.

Old MacDonald does the sawing. "With a zztt zztt her and a zztt zztt there...." The goat uses a hammer. "With a tap tap here and a tap OUCH! there...." And so on (Don't miss that ouch.)

I love when I get to sing a book instead of reading it. Maya does, too. Another book with this many pages and this much text would be too long for her, but we read this one quite a bit (I have to sing pretty fast to get to the end, though).

At the end of the book, guess what these industrious little critters have created.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

I was reading a study recently about reading with children, and the routine that's created by the way we do it. The researchers observed several mothers reading to their sons, and how they responded to the boys' interest in the activity. After a few months they noticed that the boys who were coerced to sit still for the reading in a negative manner or were read the book straight through with no interaction developed or maintained an aversion to book sharing. Boys who were allowed to roam, flip back and forth in the book, or interacted with their mothers during the reading tended to develop more of an affinity for book sharing.

I had a few problems with the approach the researchers took and some connections they made without considering age and general activity level, but I did learn something from this. I struggle with allowing Maya to hurry through a book or turn the pages the wrong way. I of course want to read the whole thing. But I have to remember that it's the quality of the experience that will lead to Print Motivation (or the love of books) and more reading in the future.

There's a wonderful video on the Hennepin County Library website of a grandfather, I think, reading to a little boy who hops off his lap to go look at something else in the room. The grandfather continues to read and talk with the boy about the book. And the boy comes back, goes away, and comes back again. It's very inspiring.

http://www.hclib.org/BirthTo6/readtome/index.cfm

Don't Eat the Teacher!

All right, I finally got a hold of one of my favorite books today to go with this one. They're both about sharks, so that's our Special Double Issue theme.

Don't Eat the Teacher, by Nick Ward, is about Sammy the shark who gets a little too excited and bites without thinking (Sound like any kids you know?) . Sammy is going to his first day of school, but unfortunately he doesn't even get in the door before he chomps one of his new friends during a game of tag (he hiccups, and the friend pops out).

Storytime, painting, and music all lead to tragic results. As Sammy dances to the piano music, imagining himself as a terrible storm, he gets really excited and, well, you can see the title. Hopefully your kids aren't bothered by the fact that the teacher doesn't reappear (I usually brush over that part pretty quickly).

There are repeated lines that are fun for kids to say along. Of course, with each 'accident', they get to holler out a big "CRUNCH!" And afterwards everyone says, "Oh Sammy, don't eat the table."

It's a fun book, and I read today that fun is a really good thing....

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

Some Educational Psychologists found in their research that "parents who believe that reading is a source of entertainment have children with a more positive view about reading than do parents who emphasize the skills aspect of reading development."

I was thinking about this a bit today. You know there is a lot of pressure, both internal and external, on parents to raise their children in the best possible way. I want to be careful that I'm not adding to that pressure by talking about early literacy development and sharing tips.

The most important thing really is to just enjoy some time together with your child exploring books together. The first rule is to have fun.

John Willy and Freddy McGee

John Willy and Freddy McGee, by Holly Meade, is a tale of two guinea pig friends who have the most perfect, and most boring, life in their little cage. One day the door is accidentally left open. Off they scamper.

John Willy and Freddy McGee wind up in guinea pig paradise-the tunnels of the pool table. But look out! The cat is trying to flush them out with pool balls. Luckily they escape. Dashing back to their cage, with the cat in fast pursuit, a furry friend comes to their aid.

Safe back in their cage, the door is still open. Do you think they will stay there?

The text is filled with occasional second-person sentences to lend urgency-"Scamper, John Willy! Scamper, scamper, Freddy McGee!" These lines should be read excitedly. There is also some challenging onomatopoeia. How do you sound like a pool table? "THUMP SMACK SMACK Wumba wum-wum...."

This pleasurable book has fun language and just a hint of peril. And you may have names for your first low-maintenance pets.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

When you're talking with your baby, be sure to pause long enough to allow him/her to babble back at you. These are the beginnings of words and the first signs of Narrative Skills. Maya has recently developed her question voice, raising her intonation at the end of a string of babble. So I try to answer back. Hopefully I'm answering correctly.

Stuck in the Mud

I helped out at an all day conference concerning building spaces within libraries that are conducive to early literacy development and welcoming to both children and their parents. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal. I'll share a little bit with you at the end.

Stuck in the Mud, by Jane Clarke and illustrated by Garry Parsons, is a building tale similar to the classic Old Man and the Great Big Turnip type of story. Hen is frantic after counting her chicks and finding that one is stuck in the mud. She tries to get him out but gets stuck herself. One by one, Cat, Dog, Sheep, Horse and the farmer try to help out but meet the same fate, culminating in a long pull-out spread showing the desperate scene.

Then the chick hops out. He was never really stuck, and he appreciates all the friends who played with him in the gooey mud.

The story is told with a great rhyme scheme. Remember that rhyming is good for recognizing the individual sounds within words.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

Maya's cousin, Addy, likes books well enough. But she is a very active little girl and has trouble sitting still long enough to enjoy a book from beginning to end. The good news is, that's ok. She's still developing those early literacy skills.

One of them is Print Motivation, or the enjoyment of books. If your child enjoys only one page of a book then runs off to do something else, it's a positive experience. If, on the other hand, you force your child to sit through an entire reading, they may have heard the words and seen the pictures, but the experience was not a positive one.

I heard a quote today by Perri Klass, Medical Director at Reach Out and Read (I wonder if they use the acronym ROaR).

"There are lots of different ways to cope with an active child and still incorporate reading. As parents, we have to get over the idea that "success" is making it all the way through a book, and sometimes be willing to read one page-or one sentence-at a time, then watch the child get up and run around! Choose books on his favorite subjects (fire engines, dinosaurs, whatever works), or look for books that actually involve an activity (a song to sing together, a rhyme to shout, even movements)..."

So if you have an active child, chin up and keep on reading.

Laura Numeroff's 10-Step Guide to Living with Your MONSTER

So, if your kids are begging for a monster of their very own, don't just give in one day and buy them a monster they don't know how to take care of (Most monster pounds have a five-day waiting period for just this reason). Monsters are a lot of responsibility. A neglected monster may turn out to be a, well, monster. Do some research and make an informed decision. The third book in our FIVE-DAY MONSTER MARATHON is a handy, concise guide that you can check out from the library and reference to get ready for the big day.

Laura Numeroff's 10-Step Guide to Living with Your MONSTER, illustrated by Nate Evans, is a practical guide that breaks down the proper selection and care of a monster into ten easy to follow chapters.

Numeroff takes you from Step 1, Buying Your Monster ("...do not pick one who grabs you and starts to eat your shirt. Pick the monster who can play the banjo and tie his own shoes.") to Step 10, Putting Your Monster To Bed ("Do not tell your monster to count sheep. Counting sheep will make him hungry.")

Other chapters cover feeding, training, grooming, and singing with your monster. Bet you didn't know monsters love country-and-western music.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

Before your child can draw, they can still practice their letters. Have them make the letter shapes using their bodies. You can show them how. This helpful exercise will likely result in some giggles and is a bit like yoga, don't you think?

Chuck's Truck

I've always liked old trucks. My days of driving them are over (they're horrible gas guzzlers and no good in the winter), but I still turn my head when I see one going down the road. Kids love trucks too. So Chuck's Truck, by Peggy Perry Anderson, ought to go over well.

One by one, all of the animals on the farm hop into Chuck's truck for a ride into town. Unfortunately, before they can get there the truck falls apart and has to be towed home. Poor Chuck is heartbroken. But the animals have connections, and Chuck's truck ends up looking better than ever.

As you can probably tell by the title Chuck's Truck has a lot of internal rhyme and alliteration, making for fun reading. "So Sue and Lou and the goat Flo too, Nip and Tuck and the burro Buck, Fat Cat Pat and the workhorse Huck with the duck Luck, the chicken that goes 'cluck,' and Chuck get a friend to tow the truck." Take a deep breath, and remember that this type of rhyming helps your kids distinguish individual sounds within words (see tip below).

The art is unique also. Though it is not listed, I believe most of the art is crayon, though the gleam of the new-improved truck at the end must be something else. The texture of the very colorful images gives a nice embossed feel.

Chuck's Truck is a good read-aloud which can be paired with One Dog Canoe.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

We mentioned distinguishing sounds within words above. This is called Phonological Awareness. It helps in the learning-to-read process later on. Here's a game you can play to work on this skill. Change the first or last letters of words to make new words.

Where Does It Go?

Here is another one of those dangerous books. After reading Margaret Miller's Where Does It Go?, you might start finding everyday objects in the most unlikely places. Such as crayons in the cat's dish or jackets in the refrigerator. But then doesn't that already happen?

In each four-page sequence of this photography book, we're asked to find a proper place for something we use daily ("Where does Amanda put her book?"). Then we're given four ridiculous options ("Under the chair?/Under the parrot?/On her baby brother?/In the mailbox?"). After a few giggly NO's, turn the page to find the answer ("On the shelf").

And the best part is there really is a photo of a parrot sitting on a book (Another Margaret Miller book, by the way). Imagine the possibilities.

We've been talking about some ways to work with our children's vocabulary and narrative skills. This book is quite a useful and guaranteed fun tool you can put in your book box.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

To keep working on that Print Motivation, make books a part of everyday life for your small child. Put a few books in the toy box. Especially board books. Those are toys as much as anything anyway.

Museum Trip

Museum Trip, by Barbara Lehman, is a wordless book with a great deal of mystery and a surprise ending. No small feat, eh?

A school group is visiting the museum. While tying his shoe, one boy is separated from the group. Wondering through the museum's halls, he comes upon a closed door. Through the door he finds a small room with a display case containing six small mazes. After a look of surprise comes across his face, he finds he is in the display, standing at the edge of the first maze.

He finds the center of that maze, and the next, and the next, until he reaches a stout tower at the end of the last maze. Inside a medal is placed around his neck by a figure off the page. Returning to normal size, he once again finds his class. Leaving the museum, we see that the boy is perhaps not the only person to have made the discovery.

Remember, all of this is told without words. The characters are drawn in a Sunday comics style, so the facial features are done simply. But with that Lehman creates some subtly distinct expressions. She also uses white space very well. In fact, the cover of the book is mostly white.

Museum Trip would be a nice book for young grade-schoolers to explore and use their imaginations. Or for a parent and smaller child to explore together. Which brings up our...

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

Have your child point out pictures in a newspaper, book, or magazine and describe what is happening in the pictures. An old favorite book that I think is great for this type of exercise because it adds a few words to tantalize you is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg.

This is from the Minnesota Parent Center (www.pacer.org/mpc)

What's on my Head?

What's on my Head?, by Margaret Miller, is a great board book with photos of babies with various things on their heads. Some are to be expected like a fancy hat or a pretty bow. Others are silly like a froggy or a rubber ducky.

This will be a silly fun book to read with Maya when she knows each of these objects. It's fun now too.

Early Literacy Tip of the Day

It's okay to read books that are just silly and fun. There's probably more going on than we realize anyway. But a silly book that your child enjoys fosters one of those early literacy skills, Print Motivation. This means simply your child is interested in books.

Later on, if your child is struggling with learning to read, it's that interest that will help him/her to not give up. They'll want to read because they have good feelings associated with books.

This is from Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library

Frankie Stein

Boy, deconstructionism makes for great reading. I actually don't know that much about deconstructionism or post-modernism (Apparantly, I don't even know how to spell them, but my spell-check isn't giving me any good options). But isn't one of the things to take an accepted archetype and turn it around to create some sort of absurdity? All of those fractured fairy tales, for example.

One day a librarian friend told me an applicant she interviewed that day said that someone had once asked him for post-modern children's books. We quickly tried to come up with a list. Mr. and Mrs. God in the Creation Kitchen was our best example (It might offend you, which is a good indication you got the right one). I also like Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She was Extinct. Anybody know any other good ones?

In Frankie Stein, illustrated by Kevan Atteberry, Lola M. Schaefer takes an archetype (what it means to be a monster) and turns it around. Frankie is a Wednesday Adams type. He worries his family because he is just too cute.

Oh, he tries. He lets his parents plaster his face with ugly markings. He wears ill-fitting clothing. He practices his scary face and scary walk.

In the end he figures out a way to be his own kind of scary. After cleaning up, and hugging and kissing his parents, they decide he is definitely the scariest Stein of all. Until his sister is born, and you wonder if the Steins have a defective gene or something.

It's a little early for Halloween, but you could probably read this book and chuckle any time of the year.

So I've been reading a lot about early literacy development for my internship, and I'm thinking there's a lot of good information to share. So from now on, I'll try to include an:

Early Literacy Tip of the Day:

When you're reading one of those books with very little text, especially a jazzy one, try clapping out the words or the syllables. A great book I've heard done like this is Tanka Tanka Skunk. This little game builds phonological awareness, which is the ability to distinguish the sounds within words. It's an early step toward learning how to read.

This is from Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library

Shape Capers

For those with preschoolers who are heading toward learning their letters and numbers, Shape Capers, by Cathryn Falwell, would be a good book to check out from your library.

There are fun rhymes about different shapes that you can sing with your kids. Each one begins with "Shake, shake, shake." Perhaps having some actual shapes around that your toddler can shake while you read would be fun. There are a couple of pages in the back where you can practice identifying shapes.

One of the steps on the road to reading is letter knowledge. When kids first begin to learn their letters, they are really distinguishing the shapes of the letters. Identifying shapes is a good way to prepare for that.

I learned this from the Every Child Ready to Read at Your Library program. Here is their website:

http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/ECRR/ECRRHomePage.htm

It's not the easiest website to navigate, but there is a lot of good information there. For a more user friendly site, try the Hennepin County Library's Birth to Six page:

http://www.hclib.org/BirthTo6/

There are some great booklists there as well.

Happy capering.