Dolch Word List

Dolch words are the 220 most frequently used words in the English language. Learning these words makes learning to read easier. Most of these are sight words, words that don’t follow decoding rules. The author and artist, Jan Brett has put these words on eleven decorated lists that you can download and print here. Check out the first one:

Win a Visit to Your School by Jan Brett

How would you like children’s book author, Jan Brett,  to come to your school next year? The third annual win a visit to your school or library by Jan Brett Facebook Contest has started. It ends April 8, 2013. Is is simple to enter. Go to Jan Brett's Contest page, click like. A form will pop up. It asks for your first name, your e-mail address, the name of your school or library, the city, state and zipcode. That’s it. I entered this contest last year and had maybe a half dozen posts from Jan Brett  since. One entry per person. The 2nd to 10th place prize is 10 Jan Brett books and the 11th to 100th prize is a signed Jan Brett poster.

Jan’s visit would be sometime in the 2013-2014 school year.

Jan’s website has games, videos, coloring pages and cards. You can also find out about her books and find out how she writes and illustrates her books by reading her blog. Her next book is called Cinders, A Chicken Cinderella.

Jan Brett

Jan Brett’s books are used in many kindergarten and first grade classrooms at Yulupa, especially in December.

Mossy is Jan Brett’s newest book. Mossy is a turtle who lives in a cool damp place. A garden begins to grow on her shell. On the day she meets Scoot, another turtle, she is scooped up by Dr. Caroline for an exhibit in her museum. Dr. Caroline and her niece, Tory, make a beautiful home for Mossy, but Mossy wants to go back to her old home and her new friend, Scoot. Visitors flock to the museum to see the extraordinary turtle. On the day of her class visit, Tory notices that Mossy looks sad. She asks her aunt if she thinks Mossy is happy at the museum. Will Dr. Caroline and Tory devise a way for visitors to see Mossy’s beautiful garden and let her go back home to her friend, Scoot?

The author actually saw a snapping turtle with an underwater garden on his back. It was her inspiration for the book.

The Sonoma County Library has several copies of this book. The Yulupa Library does not have this book, but has a huge selection of other Jan Brett books.

A  recently published seasonal  book is Home For Christmas. It is about a troll named Rollo who runs away from home because he does not want to do his chores.  Rollo lives with an owl family, a bear family and an otter until it turns cold. Then he travels with a Lynx who was as wild as he is until food gets harder to find and he notices the hungry look in the lynx's eyes. Next he comes upon a Moose family who eventually lead him home in time for Christmas.

  Like all of Jan Brett’s books, this one is lavishly illustrated.

The Sonoma County Library has many copies and it can be found in many local bookstores.

Jan Brett’s Website

Jan Brett has a wonderful website.  It is not just about her books. She has coloring pages, videos, games (both computer and printable), cards, a wide variety of activities (like puzzles, flash cards, ornaments, recipes and learn to draw lessons), and information about her books. Right now she is running a contest, the prize is a visit to your school during the 2012-13 school year. If you are on Facebook,  go to her website, click on the Facebook link (left side of the screen). This will take you to the Jan Brett Facebook page. On the left side, under her picture, is a link to the Contest Entry Form. It asks for your name, e-mail address, the name of your school, city, state and zipcode. Wouldn’t it be great to have Jan Brett come to Yulupa next year? Yulupa already has at least one vote: mine!

Jan Brett

When I was in grade school, I was fascinated with the exotic and fantastical. My grandmother indulged me with beautifully illustrated books of fairy tales and Scandinavian  themed books like the Flicka, Ricka and Dicka series by Maj Lindman.

Jan Brett’s books remind me of the ones that entertained me as a child. She illustrates old classics like The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore . She finds several places to add pugs in her illustrations. That is well appreciated in my family.

 

A page from The Night Before Christmas (sans pugs):

She illustrates nursery tales like Goldilocks and the Three Bears:

And folk tales like the Ukrainian one retold in The Mitten:

And classic fairy tales like The Beauty and the Beast:

 

Jan Brett also writes and illustrates her own stories.  Most of Yulupa’s first grade teachers read The Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends to their classes in December. Some classes made edible gingerbread houses and others used different materials to make the Gingerbread Baby a house.

In Mrs. Hopkins' class, December is Jan Brett month. At the Pen Pals and Picture Books blog, January is Jan Brett month. They will be featuring their favorite Jan Brett books all month. According to the two bloggers at Pen Pals and Picture books, there is a hedgehog in every Jan Brett book. I can’t swear to that but I have seen plenty of hedgehogs. A couple of my grandchildren are very interested in animals, especially dogs. Jan Brett wrote a book called The First Dog about an Ice Age boy who befriends a wolf who saves his life. In another of her books, Comet’s Nine Lives, Comet leaves the lighthouse on Nantucket Island. He visits a garden, a bookstore, a boat and a party but what he really wants is a home.  

 

In her books, Jan Brett takes children to visit the North Pole, Bavaria, Africa, Scandinavia, the Ice Age and Nantucket Island. Her subjects range from Christmas stories to animal tales to fairy and folk tales and even to trolls (very Scandinavian).  Her richly detailed and beautifully illustrated books can take your child on many adventures. Her books are suitable for preschool-third grade.