Scholastic Book Fair Comes to Yulupa

This week is Yulupa's annual Scholastic Book Fair held in the Library/Media Center from 8-9 AM and 1-4 PM on Monday, March 5 thru Friday, March 9. 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.  The Yulupa Book Fair home page is here. You can find the link to this year's book flyer on the bottom of the page. 

These are just a few of the books available at the book fair:

Every Elephant & Piggie book is perfect for beginning readers but this is my favorite. Two of my students read this book to me with expression this past week and loved it too. Mo Willlems structures these books with lots of white space, just a few words on a page, picture clues and plenty of humor. Piggie's speech balloons are pink, Gerald's (Elephant) are grey. The font is small for a whisper and large for exclamations, making it easy for new readers to read with expression.

 I reviewed Let's Go for a Drive! in 2013.

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea is the first book in the Narwhal and Jelly series by Ben Clanton. Told in three short stories, this graphic novel introduces us to the adventures of Narwhal and Jelly; friends who despite their differences have much in common.

The Bad Guys in Attack of the Zittens by Australian author and illustrator, Aaron Blabey. The Bad Guys are four classic villains: Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Piranha and Mr. Shark who want to do good deeds, mostly. There is a bit of a problem of trying not to eat each other though. This time they save the world from zombie kittens with the help of a granny alligator. 

This is book #4 of The Bad Guys graphic novel series. Check out my review of the first The Bad Guys book. I have used this series with a few second graders who love the humor and mayhem.

The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Adam Rex is another kid favorite. You can read my review here. 

Upside Down Magic: Dragon Overnight by the team of Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle and Emily Jenkins is the fourth book in the series about Nory and Andres and their wonky magic in an upside-down magic class. One of my granddaughter's loves this series because she loves magic and cats.

Sarah Mlynowski is also the author of the Whatever After series that updates classic fairy tales. My review of the first book is here.

The Value of Fairy Tales

Fairy Tale and Folk Tale recommendations at A Mighty Girl from picture books to chapter books including books with diverse characters. One of my favorites is Uni the Unicorn by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munch is one of my go to books for baby showers. 

The Sonoma County Library has eighteen copies. The AR is 3.8.

The Princess in Black series by Shannon and Dean Hale is a favorite of my youngest granddaughter.

The Sonoma County Library has eighteen copies. Thr AR is 3.2.

The Whisper by Pamela Zagerenski 

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee

The Sonoma County Library has thirteen copies. The AR is 4.9.

This just a sample of the almost 200 books with mighty girls as heroines at A Mighty Girl. There are literally hundreds of articles and topics all with book recommendations, check it out.

The Good for Nothing Button!

 The third Elephant & Piggie Like Reading book is out: The Good for Nothing Button! by Charise Mericle Harper. Red Bird and Blue Bird see Yellow Bird who has a button. What does it do they ask. Nothing says Yellow Bird and he demonstrates, nothing happens. Blue Bird wishes to try pushing the button. He pushes it and is surprised. Surprise is not nothing! Red Bird tries, but is not surprised, but then is sad because she wasn't. Sad is not nothing! Yellow Bird is frustrated with his pals. A button cannot make you sad. Blue Bird tries again, this time he is surprised again. The button makes them happy. Yellow bird is frustrated, the button does NOTHING! He presses the button again and again. Does it make him mad? Or calm? Or icky? No, the button makes funny. He likes being funny. The three birds press the button and frolic until they are exhausted, then head off to do more nothing. Elephant & Piggie introduce the book and end it with Gerald wanting to push a button, the only available looking one is Piggie's nose. She is im-press-ed.

All the words in the book are in speech balloons. the fonts are large and well spaced making it easier for beginning readers. The entire story is told using less than 75 different words. If your child does not know the words button or nothing, they surely will by the end of the book. They will laugh, too.

 The Sonoma County Library has twelve copies.

Nanette's Baguette

Mo Willem's sabbatical year in Paris has yielded two books for children (so far): Diva and Flea (more about that in a later post) and Nanette's Baguette. For the first time Nanette's mother sends her to the bakery to get today's baguette. This is a big responsibility. On the way she she sees her friends, Georgette, Suzette and Bret (with his clarinet!). They meet  Mr. Barnett with his pet Antoinette. Do you see a pattern here? The author finds at least two dozen words that rhyme with Nanette to use in the story. Rhyming is a great way to quickly increase your child's reading vocabulary. Back to the story. Nanette finally heads to the bakery, she buys the baguette, it is warm and it smells so good and it is so big...KRACK! She takes a bite. Does any of the baguette make it home to Mom? Does Nanette come by her love of baguettes honestly?

Here is a short video of Mo Willems creating Nanette's three dimensional French village. It is hard to tell from the photo but the 3-D look of the cover is created by using a gloss finish on the window, very eye catching.

The Sonoma County Library has seventeen copies. This book was published on October 25th and has yet to be assigned an AR level.

Elephant & Piggie Like Reading

Last spring, the final Elephant & Piggie book, The Thank You Book, was published. Now Mo Willems and a series of writers are bringing you the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series. Each book has a book within a book: Gerald and Piggie introduce each book, we read it with them and then they come back and comment on it. Like every book in the original series, there is plenty of humor and drama in each one.

The first book, We Are Growing by Laurie Keller is as Gerald (Elephant for the uninitiated) says about watching grass grow.  We meet eight blades of grass, one after another start to grow, each in their own way. One is the tallest, one is the curliest, one is the silliest and one is a dandelion. Two are pointy and one is crunchy but one, named Walt,  does not know what he is. What is that buzzing noise? It helps Walt find out. 

The Cookie Fiasco by Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat is the next book in the series. Again Gerald and Piggie introduce the book. The story involves  a crocodile, a hippo, two squirrels and three cookies. How can everyone have an equal share of cookies when there are four of them and and three cookies? After much mayhem, the answer involves a hippo who breaks things when he is nervous and division. Gerald feels hungry after reading the book and Piggie brings just the right number of cookies and glasses of milk for them to share.

The Sonoma County Library has eight copies of We Are Growing! and six copies of The Cookie Fiasco. Since both books were published today no AR level has been assigned yet. The original series had AR levels from .5 to 1.3, these books have bigger words but can be sounded out by kids with the phonics skills of mid to late first grade. The font is large and there are limited words on each page. Fans of the original series will love this one, too.

Reading and Bookish Links

First an important message:

Long gone are the days that comic books were considered inferior reading materials, even harmful. Jennifer L. Holm, three time Newbery Honor recipient, writes for Brightly about the benefits of comics or graphic novels for beginning readers. Check out What Comic Books Teach Young Children at Brightly.

A companion to the previous link is Start 'Em Early: Comics for Young Kids with reviews of several comic books. One of the favorites around here is A Trip to the Bottom of the World With Mouse by Frank Viva. 

My review is here.

From a Mighty Girl, a quote from Carl Sagan: 

Finally, an article from the New York Times Mo Willems and the Art of the Children's Book. Mo Willems is the author and illustrator of the wildly popular Pigeon series, Elephant and Piggie books and the Knuffle Bunny books (which are wildly popular with a couple of my granddaughters). While Willems has written dozens of books for children, the exhibition at the New York Historical Society focuses on these three series. Reviews of some of his books can be found on this blog.

Early Readers and Chapter Books From an Animal's Point of View

One of the websites I follow is Book Riot. It is a great resource for books, not only for adults but for children and young adults. This morning they posted a list of books for early and middle grade readers from an animal's point of view. Most of the ones on the early reader list are new to me except for The Story of Diva and Flea. On the middle grade list is one of this blog's favorites: The One And Only Ivan. Note that several of these books are the first of a series. Series are great for reluctant readers. If they like the first book, they will often want to read the entire series.

Early Readers

The Sonoma County Library has ten copies. This is the first of a series. There is no AR for any book in this series.

The Sonoma County Library has twenty-nine copies. The AR is 4.6.

The Sonoma County Library has seven copies. This is the first in a series and the AR is 2.6.

The Sonoma County Library has seven copies. This is part of The Park Pals adventure series. The AR is 4.7.

The Sonoma County Library has nineteen copies. This book is the first in a series. The AR is 4.2.

Middle Grade

This book will be published on February 9, 2016.

The Sonoma County Library has four copies. The AR is 4.9.

The Sonoma County Library has one copy. The AR is 4.9.

The Sonoma County Library has thirty-one copies. The AR is 3.6.

The Sonoma County Library has three copies. The AR is 5.1.

The Sonoma County Library has eleven copies. The AR is 3.7.

The Sonoma County Library has eight copies. This the first book of a series. The AR is 4.5.

You may have noticed that some of the early readers have as high or higher reading levels (according to the Accelerated Reader rankings) than the middle grade books. In this article the categories are according to interest. One of my first grade granddaughters has read The Story of Diva and Flea; the only word trouble she had was with the very few French words in the story. 

I Really Like Slop!

Mo Willems' latest Elephant and Piggie book, I Really Like Slop, cracks me up. I have known my fair share of Geralds! Piggie has made her favorite dish: slop. Slop is part of pig culture and Piggie really, really, really likes it. Gerald questions her about the smell and the flies (flies are how you know that the slop is ripe) before Piggie asks him if he wants to try some. Gerald's first reaction is NO WAY! He sees that he has hurt Piggie's feelings so he agrees to try a small taste. Gerald takes a pea sized morsel. It takes him four pages to get it to the tip of his tongue, then we have six pages of Gerald's reaction to the taste while Piggie explains the flavors. Does he  really like slop? Not, but he's glad he tried it because he really likes Piggie.

Mo Willems uses lots of color and pattern to show Gerald's reaction to the slop. It is his most colorful Elephant and Piggie book yet. 

The Sonoma County Library has twenty-eight copies. After being on the market only three weeks, I Really Like Slop, is number one on the New York Times Children's Best Seller List. 

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award

It was a busy morning at the American Library Association meeting in Chicago. Another category that is pertinent to this blog is the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished beginning reader book. The Award winner is You Are (Not) Small written by Anna Kang and illustrated by Christopher Weyant.

The Honors were awarded to Mr. Putter & Tabby Turn the Page written by Cynthia Rylant and illustrated by Arthur Howard and Waiting Is Not Easy written and illustrated by Mo Willems.

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.

A Big Guy Took My Ball

Perennial Theodore Seuss Geisel medalist and honor winner, Mo Willems, has written and illustrated a 2014 Honor book,  A Big Guy Took My Ball. True to form, this book is both funny and sweet.

Piggie has found a big ball and is having fun but a big guy came and took it. Upset, she goes to Gerald for help. It is not right and Gerald offers get her ball back. Big guys have all the fun! Gerald goes to confront the big guy. Turns out that even for an elephant, the big guy is really, really big. He is a whale. As Gerald is explaining to Piggie why he did not get her ball back, the whale comes to thank her for finding his little ball. He says that no one wants to play with him because he is so big. Little guys have all the fun! Gerald and Piggie offer to play “whale ball” with him and all of them have BIG fun.

The AR level is 1.0. The Yulupa Library has one copy and the Sonoma County Library has  several copies.

2014 Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal and Honors

The Medal winner for 2014 is The Watermelon Seed by Greg Pizzoli. Quite an auspicious start for the first time picture book author and illustrator.

 

The Honors were awarded to Ball by Mary Sullivan. Dog books are always a favorite in my family.

A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems who seems to have an honor reserved for him every year.

And Penny and Her Marble by Kevin Henkes whose name you might remember for receiving a 2014  Newbery Honor for The Year of Billy Miller.

There is a wonderful video on Kevin Henkes website about how he writes and illustrates. For a relatively young man he is old school.

Reviews will be forthcoming as soon as I can swipe a couple of these books from my grandchildren or find them in a bookstore or the library.

NYPL Top Children’s Books of the Last 100 Years

The New York Public Library (NYPL) presented its first ever list of the Top Children’s Books of the Last 100 Years. Many of the books are no surprise: Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. Some have been featured on this blog: Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, Holes by Louis Sacher and The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. There are books that I loved as a kid: Charlotte’s Web by E B White, Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans and The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien. A generation later my children loved: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. My grandchildren love: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J K Rowling .  Check out the  complete list at School Library Journal.

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.

That Is NOT a Good Idea!

The prolific Mo Willems is back with a new picture book that comes with its own Greek chorus. That Is NOT a Good Idea! is a tale about a fox, a plump goose and dinner. Fox spies Goose. Like in a silent movie, the next two pages is text that says “What luck!” “Dinner!” Fox asks goose if she would like to go for a stroll. She says yes. Immediately, a gosling pops up to say, “That is NOT a good idea!” He invites her to continue the walk in the deep, dark woods. Now two goslings pop up to say, “That is REALLY NOT a good idea!” At each point in the story, one more gosling appears and one more REALLY is added to the chorus. The ending will surprise and delight the reader. It is a great book to read aloud, especially if you have a Greek chorus of your own.

The book was just published yesterday, April 23, 2013. The Sonoma County Library is waiting for several copies to arrive. A cute preview of the book is on YouTube.

Two out of two first graders who read this book love it!  One loved it so much, he read it twice.

Let’s Go for a Drive!

Another Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor book for 2013 is Let’s Go for a Drive! by Mo Willems. Gerald and Piggie are the best of friends. Gerald is a little OCD, Piggie is not.  They decide to go for a drive. Gerald says you cannot go for a drive without a map. Piggie has a map, so they do their happy drive-map song and dance. Then Gerald thinks that it might be sunny on the drive, so they need sunglasses. Piggie has sunglasses, so they do their drive –sunglasses song and dance. Gerald keeps thinking of things they might need on a drive and Piggie has all of them, except for the most important thing when you are going on a drive. But quickly they change plans and use all their gear to play Pirate.

 

This is the latest Elephant and Piggie book, a series that has won the author Mo Willems two Theodor Seuss Geisel Medals and two previous honor awards. There are over a dozen books in this humorous series; they are great fun for beginning readers.

The Sonoma County Library has many copies.

2013 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award

The American Library Association gives the Theodore Seuss Geisel Award for the “most distinguished beginning reader book”. This year’s winner  is Up, Tall and High! by Ethan Long.

  

The Honor books were Let’s Go for a Drive! and Elephant and Piggie book by Mo Willems, Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin, created and illustrated by James Dean and Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover by Cece Bell.

I’ll be reviewing these books as I track them down and will add library links to the reviews.

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

Mo Willems’ books are a favorites with my grandchildren.  This book  is a rather twisted, but hilarious retelling of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story. It seems that the three dinosaurs are very hungry so they make up some chocolate pudding at three different temperatures, but decide to leave to go …uhhh…someplace else. The three dinosaurs go someplace else and were definitely not waiting for an unsuspecting kid to come by. Very soon a poorly supervised little girl named Goldilocks entered the dinosaur's house and ate all three bowls of pudding. The story proceeds with the dinosaurs hoping to return to find a chocolate-filled-little-girl-bonbon (which are totally not a dinosaur’s favorite treat in the whole wide world). Goldilocks finally catches a clue that she is not at the three bears house when all the chairs are too tall and all the beds are too big and escapes out the back door just as the dinosaurs return home.

The Sonoma County Library has several copies. As an added bonus read Mo Willems’ Secrets for Raising a Reader. The interest level for this book is preschool to third grade.

Kid Approved Apps

Horn Books has posted a list of recommended apps for preschoolers through the intermediate grades. My grandson, Noah, who spent a week with us during his spring break checked out two of the apps. The first  Mo Willem’s Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App. True to his ideas in his  Zena Sutherland Lecture  this app needs a kid to run it. You can learn to draw the Pigeon with Mo and save your drawing with can be used as the Pigeon character in the story you create with the Bus Driver from Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. Noah gives this app a thumbs up.

 

Al Yankovic’s book When I Grow Up has been made into an app

Weird Al will read you the book, you can follow along while he reads the book or you can read it yourself. It is Thursday and time for show and tell. Today in Mrs. Krupp’s class the subject is ‘what do I want to be when I grow up’. Our narrator has a laundry list of things he would like to do. Some of the more interesting future occupations have their own games such as Tarantula Shaver and Gorilla Masseuse. Noah gave this one two thumbs up because he loved the tarantula shaver game and it is funny.

This next app was not on the Horn list, but it is one my husband found. It is  called Bats! Furry Fliers of the Night by Mary Kay Carson.

Bats! is an interactive 3-D app to help kids explore the natural world of the only flying mammals. Noah, true to his name loves animals. He loved this app because it was a real book about real animals and fun too.