Easy Readers

Melissa Taylor of the Imagination Soup blog has compiled a very long list of beginning books for 5 and 6 year olds. She includes a brief description of each book or set of books. You can find it here.

10 Ways To Help Kids Who Get Stuck on a Word

Jodie Rodriguez of the Growing Book by Book blog has a great free printable with 10 ways to help  kids who get stuck on a word when reading. It is a great tool for parents and for tutors. You can find out how to use each tip here.

My Teacher Is a MONSTER!

Peter Brown, the author of one and illustrator of two of my favorite picture books of the last few years , Mr Tiger Goes Wild and Creepy Carrots, has written and illustrated a perfect back to school book, My Teacher Is a MONSTER! (No, I Am Not).

Bobby’s teacher, Ms. Kirby, doesn’t like a noisy classroom or paper airplanes thrown during class or dawdling. She stomps and she roars. Bobby decides she is a MONSTER! One Saturday, on his way to play in his favorite park, he runs into his teacher sitting on a  bench reading. Her hat blows away and Bobby runs to retrieve it. He catches it just before it blows into the duck pond. Ms. Kirby tells Bobby that he is her hero. That breaks the ice and they spend some time quacking with the ducks and Bobby shows her  his favorite spot, high on a hill in the park. Ms.Kirby pulls a sheet of paper out of her handbag and gives it to Bobby to make a paper airplane, then they watch it fly all the way down the hill. They decide that, perhaps, that was the greatest paper airplane flight in history. Back at school, Ms. Kirby still stomps and still roars but is she a monster?

I love the slow evolution of Ms. Kirby from green monster to a pretty, young woman as the two get to know each other in the park. It is an experience my seventh grade class had with one of our teachers. She had a fearsome reputation. We were prepared to loath her but because we got to know her outside of class (after school), she became our favorite teacher. Who knew teachers were people, too?

The Sonoma County Library has several copies and the AR is 1.7.

How To Get Your Kids to Love Reading

Jon Scieszka, author of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, The Stinky Cheese Man and the Time Warp Trio series, has some terrific ideas how to get your kids to love reading. Before he started writing children’s books, he was a teacher, so his ideas have been field tested. Find out what your child really loves and then find books, magazines, or any kind of text about that subject. Whether your child loves mysteries or space or fairy tales, there are chapter books, short stories, picture books, graphic novels, comics and audio books. One additional thing he does not mention is READ to your kids! Start early and keep reading to them even when they can read what they want on their own. You can read the whole interview at the Musings blog (Parnassus Books).

Luckily, John Scieszka has a website devoted to getting boys to read called Guys Read. He has organized his recommendations into categories like, How to build stuff, Realistic kids in realistic situations and one sure to be a hit with my grandsons, At least one explosion. Other categories include Series, Ghosts and Action/Adventure and several more. Scieszka includes comics (Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic books are prominently featured), graphic novels, magazines and audio books.

Hat tip: Imagination Soup