Cultivating Literacy

Hat tip: MindShift

Building Your Child's Brain

Reading Aloud

Hat tip: Imagination Soup

2017 Children's Book Week

Find out more about the 98th celebration of children's literature at http://everychildareader.net.

Research Tested Way to Improve Reading Test Scores

Standardized testing begins soon. A reminder of what improves a child's test scores:

April Is School Library Month

Hat tip: Mr. Schu Reads

Sick Days

When I was three, I had a very serious illness that lasted a few weeks. My mother read to me several times a day even though I had a baby brother that kept her busy, too. She didn't remember much about that time, but I sure do. Decades later those memories are still very vivid.

Hat tip: Imagination Soup

Reading Ideas

I came across a couple of interesting articles this morning. The first is from the  October 3, 2016  The New Yorker, What Makes A Children's Book Good? by Adam Gidwitz. He is the author of The Inquisitor's Tale Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog. If you have middle-grade age readers, this is a rollicking, medieval and timely story. Gidwitz looks at the criteria that has been used to make judgments about the worth of children's books. Should the judgment be about content or results?

The Sonoma County Library has thirteen copies. The AR is 4.5 and is worth 11 points.

The second article is from Brightly by Jean Reagan, the author of How To Babysit A Grandma and How To Babysit A Grandpa: How to Make Reading Fun: 25 Ideas Kids Will Love. One idea I particularly love is to give kids Calvin and Hobbes books. Bill Watterson channeled  kid's  imagination and emotions perfectly. Another great idea that worked with my oldest grandson is to read aloud a book just to the exciting part. More often than not, even a reluctant reader will want to finish the book. Another great idea is using audiobooks. The same grandson as above just needed the audiobook of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to hook him on the whole series (Jim Dale is a magnificent narrator. He had over 100 distinct voices for the many characters over the seven books. Even if your kids read the books, listening to them is a real treat).

The Sonoma County Library has seven  copies of How to Babysit a Grandma and six copies of How to Babysit a Grandpa. The AR for the Grandma book is 3.0 and the Grandpa book is 2.4.

Lois Lowry on the Power of Books

Hat tip: Reading Is Fundamental

Just Read

A new poster from artist and author Calef Brown:

Libraries

Libraries are vital in a free society.

Hat tip: i love libraries

Reading and Libraries

 I am on a rant today about the importance of libraries.

Hat-tip: Imagination Soup
Artwork by Chris Riddell

The Follow Up to the Previous Post

Raising A Reader

Look how engaged that baby is:

Reading Aloud

I was having a conversation just this morning with a parent about this:

Finding Books for Your Kids

The Power of a Series

Life has been getting in the way of blogging this month but when I saw this article, The Power of a Series by Kathie Muhtaris, I had to reblog it. What caught my attention was the Nancy Drew cover attached to the article. I just passed on four old Nancy Drew books from my childhood to my four elementary school granddaughters. These books started a life long love of mysteries for me. They had been in my mother's attic for half a century and were given to me by my paternal grandmother. Kathie Muhtaris' article is about the power of series to turn kids into voracious readers. The Nancy Drew books weren't the first series I obsessively read, the  Betsy-Tacy and Cherry Ames books came first, but series books kept me reading and still do.

Series books are great for reluctant readers. If the first book is a "just right" book then it is fair to assume that others in the series will be too.

From Erica at The What Do We Do All Day website are 18 Mystery Books and Series for Kids, First Chapter Books: Series About Boys and Series About Girls to get you started. Enjoy!

Word Play

Hat tip: Raising Readers

Gift Ideas for Kids

At this time of year most of us are looking for gifts and it is also the time of year when many book awards are handed out and lists of best books of the year are compiled. The New York Public Library releases their 100 Best Books for Kids list around Thanksgiving every year. It includes picture books, easy readers (both the focus of this blog), fiction, fairy tales and folklore, graphic novels, non-fiction and poetry. There are a few books missing in my humble opinion especially in the easy reader and graphic novel categories. I hope to address that omission later in the week. 

Every year the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) awards the best fiction and non-fiction books for children. The Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children that has a potential to transform children's lives by inviting compassion, imagination and wonder. The 2017 Winner is Ghost by Jason Reynolds. They are Honor and Recommended Books as well. The NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for non-fiction went to Some Writer!: The Story of E.B. White, written and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Honor and Recommended books are included for this category, too.

Brightly has an article about How to Use Book Awards to Find Great Children's Books. The article features the CYBILS (Children's and Young adult Bloggers' Literary Awards). The awards are given out in February but you can find the list of nominees here. One nice feature is that you can click on the title and be transported to Amazon to find out more about the book and read reviews. Some of the books have been reviewed by bloggers and there are links to those reviews, too.

That is enough to get you started on finding the just right book or books for each child on your list. Check back for my personal recommendations in December (I am still reading!).

Hat tip: Raising Readers

Reading Tips

Hat tip: Brightly