Snowy, Blowy Winter

It's another early winter day here in Minnesota. Maya hasn't been that excited about the snow thus far, but once it starts piling up on the ground, I think she'll get into it. Here are pictures of what may have been our last cookout.

Snowy, Blowy Winter, by Bob Raczka and illustrated by Judy Stead, is a fun winter book with an infectious rhyme. The best part are all the adjectives, real or made-up:
"Six more weeks of snowy blowy glowy frosty freezy stuffy sneezy strappy zippery icy slippery...." It goes on and on.
In the back is a recipe for Snowy, Blowy Ice Cream. That's right, a dessert made of snow. I'm a bit wary, but Patty swears she's gonna try it. I did put my foot down on where she gets the snow.
Mayareads got another nod from a website for parents by teens. We're on the list of 50 Best Dad Blogs. Thanks to the teens who chose us. Here's a link to their site:

http://www.onteenstoday.com/2008/11/10/50-best-dad-blogs/

Birthday for Cow!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY COW!!!!!

If you look inside the front cover of A Birthday for Cow!, by Jan Thomas, today is indeed Cow's birthday (It's also Sari Long's birthday. Happy Birthday, Sari).

This is another of Maya's new favorites. We read through this one once or twice, then Maya turns back to the beginning and reads to us, careful to turn the pages correctly. Because of the nature of the book, she yells out her version of what we say when we read it and bounces up and down and side to side.

The reason for this animation is that almost every sentence in the book is a bold, red, all-caps exclamation. Pig and Mouse begin to prepare a cake for Cow's birthday. Duck is aghast. "Cake?!"

Duck makes several pleas to include "A TURNIP!" But Mouse and Pig don't agree.

Eventually Cow appears, and you can guess what she is happiest to see. But don't worry, there's a cake for Mouse and Pig to enjoy. Duck and Cow walk off into the sunset proclaiming the glories of turnips.

May I say again how much I love the way Maya interacts with books these days. She can tell if I try to skip a page, and she turns back to the missed one. She comments in her own way to the things she sees on the page.

Oh, and if you have some time, you should do a Google search for the title. I can't believe some of the other images.

Katie Loves the Kittens

Ok, I slowed down there for a bit again, but I'll try to get a couple in this week. I've lost a little fire since I lost our camera. We'll get another one soon. Have to before Maya wears her new Halloween costume.

Maya is making so much ground in her interaction with books, and let me tell you, it multiplies the pleasure for me as well. She reacts to particular images on the page and responds to what we are reading. We have a couple new favorites home from the library that Maya brings to us over and over.

One is Katie Loves the Kittens, by John Himmelman. Katie loves Sue Ann's new pets, three tiny kittens. Only problem is, when she tries to play with them ("AROOOOO"), she scares them. Sue Ann scolds Katie, and Katie feels so bad about scaring the poor little kittens.

When Katie tries to control herself, she shivers visibly with excitement. After three failures, Katie falls asleep and wakes to find she has three new friends.

It's a sweet story with so many visual treats, like when Katie is trying to contain herself. My favorite is Katie trying to lick Sue Ann's face when she is being scolded. Patty's is the end page image of the kitten batting at Katie's rapidly wagging tail.

As we read, Maya tries to Arrooooo, she 'meeew's along with the kittens, and she helps Sue ann say, "No, no, no." She's breaking my heart, that one.

One of our readers just had a new little boy, and when I asked about board books, he said,"We've got a couple." I think a couple is far too few. How about a board book share, like the mom's groups do meal shares. If anyone would like to donate a book, go to my profile and email me. We'll come up with a plan.

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.

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes

Well, I think we now have another genuine favorite. Maya is getting to the other end of her stage where she cannot sit still long enough to read even the shortest book through. There are a few that really hold her interest, like All About Ama (see below) or a new pop-up of The Wide-Mouth Frog.

But Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, by Mem Fox and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, is the grand champion. Maya pulled this book off the bed and asked me to read it for her (Patty says she did the same with her the other day). So we read it. Then we read it again. And again. And again. Four times in all. I tried other books a couple of times. But we kept coming back to this one.

And something I noticed was that she seemed to be really concentrating on the illustrations. The spreads are indeed lovely, and the babies (Maya says, "Baby" when she brings us the book) are pudgy and cute.

The text is very sweet and engaging.

There was one little baby
who was born far away.
And another who was born
on the very next day.
And both of these babies,
as everyone knows,
had ten little fingers
and ten little toes.

The formula repeats itself several times introducing more babies two at a time. With each new pair, all of the previous babies look on as they show their digits.

The final baby is special. This baby is your own. And besides ten fingers and ten toes, this baby gets "three little kisses on the tip of its nose."

I think Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes is growing on me, too.

The Cuddle Book

Maya added "achoo" to her vocabulary today. Grandpa sneezed twice and scared her. So he and Nana made a game of it, so that now whenever anyone sneezes, Maya say, "Atoo." Cute, huh?

Here's a cute book I've got to get back to the library tout suite because it's overdue. The Cuddle Book, by Guido van Genechten, is petite and adorable. The text describes how different animals cuddle.

Monkeys cuddle gently
and turtles cuddle slowly.

And in an homage to carrying your baby:

For kangaroos,
cuddling is easy
(because they are always so close)...

But it's not always easy:

...porcupines have to cuddle very carefully!

Have fun asking questions about why do you think that is. What do you know about crabs that makes cuddling so hard?

BTW, everybody say congratulations to Nicole, who is doing her first paid storytime tomorrow. Good luck.

Ducks Don't Wear Socks

And somebody please tell Maya they also do not wear shoes.

The other day we were at the zoo watching the multitude of ducks in the duck pond. An older girl was talking to Maya when I heard her say, "Uh oh, there goes her shoe." I looked down to see Maya's kitty-cat Bobux floating in front of some mallards (Believe it or not, they didn't try to eat it).

We found a zoo keeper nearby who very kindly put on waders and went to retrieve Maya's shoe. As he plodded through the water all of the ducks took to flight and the kids began squealing. I thought, "Oh boy, aren't we making a scene." Luckily they were squeals of delight. After giving us back our lost kitty, the zookeeper shooed a few more ducks around because he liked the reaction he was getting.

The duck in Ducks Don't Wear Socks, by John Nedwidek and illustrated by Lee White, would have jumped at the opportunity to try on something new. Emily, a very serious girl, keeps running into Duck, who is always wearing something new-socks, a tie, or underwear. When Emily informs Duck that "...ducks don't wear ties", Duck always has reason. "Cold feet." "Big meeting!" "Pants on the line!"

Slowly, Emily's shell begins to crack. First she cracks a smile, then laughs to herself in bed, and finally goes all in and walks out of the house wearing something that even shocks Duck.