Need Some Book Ideas for Your Beginning Reader?

Finding interesting books for a new reader can be difficult. We want to find the "right" book for each child, one they want to read and one with a little help they can read. For the newest ones, you can find seasonal books with some good tips to help your emerging reader at EDventures With Kids.

For kids ready to advance to chapter books, Melissa Taylor has 30 ideas for Beginning Chapter Books with Diverse Main Characters. The great thing about these books is that many of them are part of a series.

Children's author, Doreen Cronin, wrote an article for Brightly about the joys of reading funny books with your kids. As an added bonus she gives you some suggestions and some of them like Dory Fantasmagory are part of a series.

Time Magazine’s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time

The list includes books we have reviewed here: Extra Yarn, Journey, The Day The Crayons Quit, The Snowy Day and Press Here. Where the Wild Things Are, The Cat in The Hat and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day and Madeline are also included. Since this is a list of picture books it is a puzzle as to why Out Of My Mind, a very worthy book, was on this list.

Click, Clack, Boo! A Tricky Treat

Farmer Brown and the cows, chickens  and Duck from Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type are back in a new adventure from Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin: Click, Clack, Boo! A Tricky Treat.

Farmer Brown does not like  Halloween. As the night approaches,  he puts a bowl of candy on the porch, closes up the  house and goes to bed. In the barn, a party is just getting started. As the party goers approach the barn, Farmer Brown hears sounds he does not like: crunching, creaking, tapping. Then he hears quack, quack, quackle Quackle? Farmer Brown goes to his door, the candy is gone and there is a note on the door: Halloween Party at the Barn. Angry, he runs to the barn, where he is invited in and awarded “Best Costume”. A book for Halloween that is spooky but not scary.

 

The Sonoma County Library has several copies of Click, Clack, Boo!. The AR level is 2.5. This book has been kid-tested and approved.

November is Picture Book Month

Caldecott Honor winner Doreen Cronin explains why picture books are important. Picture Book Month is an international literacy initiative that celebrates the printed picture book. Doreen Cronin’s book, Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type is a big hit with my grand kids and the kids I tutor.

She even wrote a picture book for moms called M.O.M. (Mom  Operating Manual). A hilarious attempt to explain moms to their kids.

Last April I reviewed her first chapter book The Trouble With Chickens in a post about dog books at the book faire.  

Every day in November there is a new post from a different picture book author about why picture books are important. Each author has one book featured in their post. It is a great way to find new picture books to share with the young people in your life.

Dogs at the Book Fair

We love dogs around here, so the first bo0ks I checked out at the Book Fair were about dogs. The picture book I picked was Charlie The Ranch Dog by Ree Drummond and illustrated by Diane DeGroat.

Charlie and his pal Suzie are ranch dogs. Charlie likes to think he works hard on the ranch but the pictures tell a different story. But in the end, Charlie saves Mama’s garden from the marauding cows. This is a light hearted story that is true to  real dogs’ natures. The book is AR level 2.2. For more about this book check here. Oh, and it comes with a Lasagna recipe!

The next book, Travel-Size Pups Around the World by Ed Masessa , looks at small dogs and the countries they came from.

You visit countries on four continents and learn about the dogs from those places. Cute puppies and lots of dog facts. This is a Level 2 book. For more information check here.

 The Puppy Place books by Ellen Miles are about the Peterson family, especially Lizzie and Charles, who foster dogs from the animal shelter until they get their “forever” home. The book I chose was Muttley.

This book is fiction, but the author bases her dog portraits on dogs she knows, so at the end of the book you learn about the real dog, Barley. She also includes ‘Puppy Tips’ to help kids understand their dog friends. There are more than two dozen Puppy Place books including a gratuitous pug appearance, Pugsley.

You can find out more about this series here. The AR level for these books is 4.0-4.2.

2002 Newberry Award winner, Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, is about an eleven year old boy, Marty, and the dog he grows to love and tries to save from an abusive owner.

Marty faces and resolves a moral dilemma is his quest to  rescue Shiloh. The book  does have a happy ending.

The final book, The Trouble With Chickens by Doreen Cronin and illustrated by Kevin Cornell, is not about a real dog or a dog who could be real like the previous books. This one is about J.J. Tully a recently retired search and rescue dog who has retired to a farm. 

Doreen Cronin (Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type) uses her deadpan humor and a film noir style to tell the story of J.J. and his search for some missing chicks.  Their mother, Moosh, asks J.J. to help locate Poppy and Sweetie. A ransom note complicates things as does the presence of the mysterious Vince the Funnel who lives in the farm house. The AR level is 3.8. To see a video preview, click here.

Cronin’s second J.J. Tully Mystery, The Legend of Diamond Lil, is also at the book fair.