New Early Reader Books

The Bad Guys Do-You-Think-He-Saurus?! by Aaron Blabey goes back in time to the Jurassic era because, of course, dinosaurs, the perfect foils for this group.

The Sonoma County Library has one copy. This book will also be available at Strawberry's Scholastic Book Fair November 8-16, 2018.

Baby Monkey, Private Eye by Brian Selznick and David Serlin is a 192 page very beginning reader book. Baby Monkey solves three cases once he manages to put on his pants. The ending makes it a perfect bedtime read. Like Brian Selznick's previous work, much of the story is told in beautiful black and white drawings.
The Sonoma County Library has nine copies. This book will also be available at Strawberry's Scholastic Book Fair November 8-16, 2018.

Big Foot and Little Foot by Ellen Potter and illustrated by Felicita Sala is about how an unlikely friendship between a human boy, Boone, and a Sasquatch, Hugo. This is the first book in a series. The first chapter of The Monster Detector is included at the end of the book.
The Sonoma County Library has seven  copies.

Beatrice Zinker Upside Down Thinker: Incognito written and illustrated by Shelley Johannes is the second in a new series about Beatrice and her best friend, Lenny. It is the second week of third grade. The two friends have a great idea, Operation Upside. It is a plan to anonymously acknowledge people who are doing good things or are good at something. Beatrice gets a little ahead of herself and gives an upside to her teacher who is really good at being strict. Her teacher does not take it the way it was intended. How will they save Operation Upside?
The Sonoma County Library has two copies.

Two New Beginning Chapter Books

I may not have spent the summer writing much but I did read a couple dozen children's books, two of which, I will review today. The first is the 17th book in the Fly Guy series Fly Guy's Big Family written and illustrated by Tedd Arnold. 

Buzz finds Fly Guy drawing pictures of his family because he misses them. He decides to throw a surprise party for his friend. He makes up little signs inviting Fly Guy's family to the party. He puts them in all the places you'd expect to find flies: garbage cans, rotting fish and spoiled food. The first guest to arrive is Cuzz. Once Buzz assures him there are no Swatterzz in the house, he calls out "Okayzz!" and thousands of flies fly into the house yelling "Surprizze!!!" After Fly Guy hugs his many cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and finally his mother and father, it is time for dinner. Buzz has thought of everything: a garbage truck pulls up and dumps a load on the front lawn and the flies party in the garbage. 

Kids love this early chapter book series. It is funny, easy to read with a large font and only a sentence or two per page. The Sonoma County Library has sixteen copies.

Hilde Lysiak is a ten year old journalist who publishes The Orange Street News in Selinsgrove, PA. Now she is also the author of a new Branches series for Scholastic, Hilde Cracks the Case: Hero Dog! Hero Dog! is the first book in the series, Bear on the Loose comes out on Halloween and Fire! Fire! comes out the day after Christmas.

Hero Dog takes place on Orange Street. It is the day of the yearly bake off sponsored by the Kind Kat Cafe. Three of the past winners have their baked goods or ingredients stolen the morning of the bake off. Hilde is on the trail of the culprit. A good journalist tries to answer six questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? After each interview, Hilde writes the clues under those questions. Her sister, Izzy, is a photographer and together they sift through the clues and confront the perpetrator with the help of the hero dog, Zeus.

I am a big fan of Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mysteries, Hilde reminds me a bit of Kinsey Milhone, the private eye protagonist of the series. You get to see the step by step of solving the mysteries in each book much like a real PI would work. You get to see Hilde's method in this book, too.

Hilde's co-author is her father, former journalist Matthew Lysiak. The black and white illustrations are by JoAnne Lew-Vriethoff. There are pictures through out, a map of the Orange street neighborhood, the type is large and easy to read. There are one or two paragraphs on each page with 15 chapters versus three for the Fly Guy books. The Sonoma County Library has one copy. The book will also be available at Strawberry's Scholastic Book Fair this fall and at Yulupa's in the spring.

Barkus

Newbery Medalist, Patricia MacLachlan, has written a charming beginning chapter book about a girl and her dog. Barkus is a gift from Nicky's Uncle Everton. Barkus is smart, he does tricks and he doesn't bite. Perfect! In five chapters, Barkus becomes class pet in Nicky's classroom, has a birthday party, finds and mothers a newborn kitten and goes on a backyard campout with Nicky and the kitten.

Dog lovers will love this book, I have had a dog like Barkus and I bet many of you have, too.

The full color illustrations by Marc Boutavant animate the story. The font is large and the words are well spaced. Emerging readers and older reluctant readers will find this beneficial. If you look closely at the tag on Barkus' collar, you will see it says "Book 1". A sequel is due out next year.

The Sonoma County Library has five copies. Great book for first and second grade classrooms.

The Bad Guys

Aaron Blabey, like his fellow Australian, Andy Griffiths, knows what kids like. He has picked characters that everyone knows are bad guys: Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Shark and Mr. Piranha, but has them form a gang to do good deeds and redeem their reputations. Of course, they aren't particularity talented at doing good deeds but the job gets done one way or an other. 

The original idea belongs to Mr. Wolf. He's a good guy at heart; maybe he has blown down a house or two and dressed up like an old lady but he is really a nice guy deep inside. We get a peek at his rap sheet. There appear to be a few more incidents than he reported. He introduces Mr. Snake whose rap sheet includes a rampage at Mr. Ho's Pet Store. We are next introduced to Mr. Piranha who has come all the way from Bolivia. His rap sheet includes one crime: eating tourists. The last to arrive is Mr. Shark, Mr. Wolf covers up his rap sheet. About all we can see is a notation "Will literally eat ANYTHING or ANYBODY".

Over cupcakes, Mr. Wolf introduces the idea of the Good Guys Club. The others are a tad skeptical. After some coaxing the guys decide to try a small project: rescuing a cat stuck in a tree. The cat gets down from the tree by being scared to death by Mr. Piranha. But they still feel pretty good about helping the cat so they plan a bigger caper. This time it is freeing 200 puppies kept prisoner in the maximum security dog pound. The scheme is elaborate, not everything goes according to plan but the puppies are freed, terrified of their rescuers. Success! To be continued...

The story and pictures each tell part of the story, every page has just a few sentences with dynamic black and white drawings and the fonts are bold and easy to read. The series is a good transition to longer chapter books. Two of my second grade students read out loud all 138 pages in less than thirty minutes laughing all the way. There are two more books in this series, with a third due out in August.                             

The Sonoma County Library has six copies. The AR is 2.4.

Scholastic Book Fair February 27-March 3

This week is Yulupa's annual Scholastic Book Fair held in the Library/Media Center from 8-9 AM and 1-4 PM. On Wednesday it will stay open from 1-7:30 PM. This is a great opportunity to get your kids some books, both for read alouds and for reading on their own. And maybe even pick up a book for your child's classroom; teachers fill out slips of paper with the names of books they would like to add to their classrooms. Check out the Scholastic Book Fair Flyer. This is just a small sample of the books available.

One of the books I plan to purchase is Dog Man Unleashed by Dav Pilkey of Captain Underpants fame. This is the second book in the Dog Man series. In this short clip, Dav Pilkey talks about why graphic novels should be in every classroom. You can here more from him in this January, 2013 interview on NPR.

Another book that interests me is Pig the Pug because it is 1) a dog book and 2) it is about a pug, albeit a rather naughty one. This book is part of a picture book series.

One of my granddaughters loves the Upside Down Magic books. The flyer features Showing Off, the third book in the series.

To help you and your child find the just right book to read here is the Five Finger Rule again:

The Infamous Ratsos

The Ratso brothers, Louie and Ralphie,  want to be tough just like their dad, Big Lou. But try as they might every time they try to  be tough they wind up doing a good deed. One day, their father confronts them with a letter from school commending them on welcoming a new student to school and stopping a bully from harassing another student. And to top it off, Mr. O'Hare told him that the boys shoveled his sidewalk during the snowstorm. What did they have to say for themselves? They want to be tough like their dad. Dad thinks he should be more like his boys and help others. So that is what the three of them do.

The Infamous Ratsos won a Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor for 2017. Kara La Reau has written several other books for beginning readers. Most of them fall into the 2.0 to 3.0 AR range. This book has not been assigned an AR as of today. One of the things that I like about the book is that the font is easy to read, the letters large and spaced so beginning readers can tell where one word ends and another begins. Beginning readers will like this funny chapter book and Matt Myers' illustrations.

The Sonoma County Library has one copy.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day. In honor of this special day, a couple of pirate-related links: A Pirate's Guide to the First Grade and Talk Like A Pirate fiction and non-fiction book lists with a special added bonus of a pirate's code of conduct

Hat tip: Raising Readers

Reading and Bookish Links

This week let's start off with a fun quiz to see how many of the 100 Best Children's Books of All Time you have read. I got 69 of 100. Bonus feature: it makes a great list of book ideas for the kids in your life.

Some young kids pick up reading quickly and want to read chapter books. They may be good readers but the content of books they can read is not age appropriate. Ellen from the Cutting Tiny Bites blog has done the hard work of compiling and reviewing a list of chapter books for very young readers. Hat tip: Growing Book By Book

Would you like a way to check your beginning reader's progress? Reading Is Fundamental has a Reading Check up for Beginning Readers (Grades 1/2) to help.

Jodie Rodriguez from Growing Book By Book wrote a guest post at parenting blog, Childhood 101, How to Support an Early Reader. Her five tips include understanding a new reader, coaching a new reader, modeling fluency, checking for understanding and picking "just right books". Scroll down to see links to other articles by Jodie about beginning readers.

Parents are their child's first teacher. It is their job to lay the ground work for future success  in school. That job begins at birth. Maya Smart from Book Riot has a quiz for parents to see how they are doing in Are You Raising A Reader?

Along this same theme is An Expert's Opinion: What Parents Can Do That Apps Can't. There are many commercial programs and apps that claim to teach young children to read. Brightly has published an excerpt from Tara Haelle and Emily Willingham's The Informed Parent: A Science Based Resource for Your Child's First Four Years. Their research-based advice for parents is talking and reading to children from birth and having lots of books around. Just handling (or even chewing) books is an early literacy behavior.

100 Great Children's Books

New York Public Library's children's librarians have compiled a list of 100 great children's books.  Many of these books are decades old but are still widely read because they tell great stories. The very first book on the list was my oldest daughter's favorite book in the second grade, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good ,Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. My youngest daughter's favorite book (and mine, too) was Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis was one of my son's favorites.

My favorite book  reviewed for this blog is Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. Others on the list reviewed here are The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Holes by Louis Sachar, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L Konigsburg and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. Authors included on the list include David Wiesner, Beverly Cleary, Eric Carle, Gary Paulsen, Jon Scieszka, Kevin Henkes, Maurice Sendak, Mo Willems, Dr Seuss, and Roald Dahl.

There are books for every level of reader on this list. Some of the books like Amelia Bedelia, Curious George, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone are the first books in a series. If you like the first one you'll probably like the rest, great for reluctant readers.

Moldylocks and the Three Beards

My son-in-law asked  for a list of chapter books with pictures to share with my granddaughters who are emerging readers. While researching books on the Kirkus Review website, I ran across the highly rated Moldylocks and the Three Beards the first book in the  Princess Pink and the Land of Fake-Believe series written and illustrated by Noah Z. Jones. Since I have a weakness for fractured fairy tales, I checked it out.

Princess Pink does not like princesses nor the color pink, her parents named her Princess because they were so excited that after seven boys they finally had a girl. Their last name is Pink.  Princess falls into the world of fake-believe by opening the refrigerator door. She lands smack dab into a slightly twisted  version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Moldylocks has green hair and the bears have become beards, just a couple of letters make the difference. Princess accompanies Moldylocks to the home of the Three Beards where they look for the just right chair, taste chili and jump on the beds before they fall asleep. When the Beards return home, Princess escapes through the refrigerator to the safety of her home but decides to return and save Moldylocks.

The story will appeal to first and second graders but it might be a little snarky for younger kids. The reading level is second grade and the book is available through Scholastic Book Service. The Sonoma County Library has a few copies and one copy of the second book in the series Little Red Quacking Hood. The Yulupa Library has two copies.

NYPL: 100 Best Children’s Book for 2013

The New York Public Library is out with an interactive list of the best children's books of 2013. You can search by reading level, genre and theme. Click on a book that interests you and it will take you to a short description  of the story. There is something for everyone.

Penny and Her Marble

Kevin Henkes not only won a Newbery Honor for The Year of Billy Miller but also won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor for Penny and Her Marble.

Penny is feeling  uncomfortable. She didn’t want to help Mama  make sugar cookies, she wasn’t hungry  and had a hard time getting to sleep last night. Why is she feeling uncomfortable? The day before, she was pushing her doll, Rose, in her stroller down the sidewalk. When she passed Mrs. Goodwin’s house, she saw a beautiful blue marble on the grass. Penny thought Mrs. Goodwin was too old to play with marbles, so she picked it up and put it in her pocket and rushed home. In her room, she found that the marble was smooth and fast. She held it up to the blue sky, it looked like a piece of the sky. Through the window, she spotted Mrs. Goodwin in exactly the place where she found the marble. Was Mrs. Goodwin looking for the marble?

The morning after her rough night, Penny wakes up with a plan. She puts Rose in the stroller and heads to Mrs. Goodwin’s house to return the marble. How is this story resolved? Did Penny take something that wasn’t meant for her?

In four short chapters, Kevin Henkes explores a common childhood dilemma using age appropriate words and simple sentences.

The Sonoma County Library has several copies. Even though this is a Level 1 I Can Read book, it has an AR 0f 2.5.  I’ll leave it to someone at a higher pay grade than me to explain the discrepancy.

More Best Books of 2013

Horn Books and James Patterson’s Read Kiddo Read blog have published their list of best children’s books for 2013. You will notice a great deal of overlap with the Nerdy Award finalists and between the two lists. There is a book to please very kid. Check it out!

Now Something for the Six to Ten Year Olds

From the There is a Book for That Blog is a list of read aloud books for 6 to 10 year olds. Carrie Gelson teaches 3rd and 4th graders in Vancouver, BC. She has read these books to her children and to her students in grades 1-4.

In another post, she recommends books for early readers: Ease into Reading-ready for chapters. Check them out!

Hat Tip: Children’s Literature Network

Five Finger Rule Graphic

From Ebook Friendly via Book Patrol the best “Five Finger” rule graphic I’ve seen yet:

More Ideas To Get Kids Reading This Summer

Melissa Taylor, on her Imagination Soup blog, has some ideas to help your kids get reading this summer. At the bottom of the post are links to Easy Chapter Books (in a series) and Chapter Book Series That Kids Love. One of the best ways to get your kids to read over the summer is to find a series that interests them. They will already know which book they want to read next. The Chapter Book Series features one of the blog’s  favorite series, The Red Blazer Girls.

Kelsey Green, Reading Queen

How could I pass up a book called Kelsey Green, Reading Queen? Besides, I know a young lady who  definitely is a reading queen. The story by Claudia Mills is about a one month reading contest at Franklin School. The classroom that reads the most books in April wins a pizza party and the student in each class who reads the most books gets their name on a plaque in the library and a certificate (that may not be a lot of motivation for your average 3rd grader). As an added incentive, the principal will shave his beard if the the number of books read passes 2000. Kelsey is an avid reader and she is going to place first in her class. Her only possible competition is Simon Ellis. At first, Kelsey focuses on beating Simon, who halfway through the month is a few books ahead of her. Kelsey’s class is also coming in second to a fifth grade class. To change that Kelsey helps a student who is a poor reader read lots of books  and in the process help him become a better reader.

What I loved about the book was all the books talked about in the story, like Harriet The Spy,  Sarah, Plain and Tall and The Secret Garden (one of my all time favorites). Kelsey and Simon become allies when they discover that both of them love The Secret Garden. Maybe the reader will want to check out some of the many books mentioned within the story.

The illustrations by Rob Shepperson add to the story, especially the before and after of the  principal's beard.

Since the book was just published today (June 4, 2013), there is no AR level yet. This is the first in a new series by author, Claudia Mills.

Summer Reading Recommendations 2013

The Horn Book, a publication about books for children and young adults, has published a long list of recommended summer reading from picture books to books for young adults. All were published in 2012 or 2013. For first and second grade readers, the Early Readers and Young Fiction category may be especially helpful. There is a list of books and description for each one  here.

Some of the featured books have been reviewed here: The One And Only Ivan, This Is Not My Hat and That Is NOT a Good Idea! Even more are in my to-review or to read pile: The Dark, Who Could That Be at This Hour?, Three Times Lucky, The Great Unexpected and H.O.R.S.E: A Game of  Basketball and Imagination. I have also been meaning to read at least one of the Bink & Gollie books because they are co-written by Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee. Bink & Gollie: Best Friends Forever is on the early reader list.

Summer Book Ideas for Beginning Readers

Melissa Taylor of the Imagination Soup blog recommends some picture books and easy chapter books for beginning readers. You can view her list and short reviews at  Summer Book List for Beginning Readers. Many of these books are the latest in a series, so that gives you even more book ideas to help prevent summer brain drain in your beginning reader.

The Sonoma County Library has several copies of Nancy Clancy, Secret Admirer as well as several copies of Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth. The Library also has the following books: Critter Club, Amy and the Missing Puppy, Swamp Thing vs. the Zombie Pets, Amelia Bedelia Unleashed, Mermaid Tales, Battle of the Best Friends, Zeke Meeks vs. the Stinkin' Science Fair, a truly horrifying tale Zeke  Meeks vs. the Horrifying TV Turn-Off Week, Pinch and Dash and the Terrible Couch and A Trip to the Bottom of the World.

The Dog Rules

The Dog Rules by Coco La Rue, illustrated by Kyla May, is the first book I have read authored by a parrot. A parrot on a mission to get rid of the monstrous mutt, Monty. The parrot, Coco La Rue, finds Monty to be dim-witted, dirty and smelly. She is on a mission to get him banished from the house forever. Both Coco and Monty live with the Lane family: Coach Walker, Dr. Aurora and Parker. The Coach (or the big hairy human) has six rules for Monty: don’t act like a dog, gym shorts are for wearing, not for eating, don’t touch the Coach’s meat loaf, the couch is a dog-free zone, if your name is not “Trash”, stay out of the can and Mr. Famous* is not a toy. Coco’s plan is to trick Monty into breaking all the rules so that he will be banished forever and she can live in peace. Her plan is working beautifully until, Monty, quite by accident, rescues Mr. Famous and becomes a hero.

The story lends itself to the graphic novel format with plenty of humorous asides and questionnaires. The AR level is 3.2.

* Mr. Famous is a cat, who is also a movie star. He lives next door.