Thursday, June 03, 2010

children's books

We've been reading some fun books lately, and I wanted to share a few of them:


Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
We bought this with a gift card from Amy and Ben. It was one I felt we needed for our collection.

Here Are My Hands by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
I just realized this was by the same authors! (Bill Martin Jr. also wrote Brown Bear Brown Bear...). We read this at infant story time and now frequently check it out from the library. Anna loves to find her own body parts as the poem progresses. I love that he has some creative purposes for the different body parts. An example: "Here are my cheeks for kissing and blushing. Here are my teeth for chewing and brushing." Cute, colorful, multi-cultural illustrations as well.


Creature ABC by Andrew Zuckerman
Beautiful, crisp photographs of animals for each letter of the alphabet with a blurb about each animal at the end of the book. I like that Anna can see what real hippos and bears look like rather than just illustrations of them. There are some unconventional inclusions as well. Like S for Scorpion.
I want to check out his original Creature now too.


One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root
A fun, tongue twisting counting book with great onomatopoeias. Each number's rhyme is just different enough to keep me interested and engaged while I read this to Anna over and over and over again.


The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
We've had this since Anna was born and it's one of her favorites. I absolutely love it's simplicity and how it captures how a young child thinks, acts, and plays so perfectly. It won a Caldecott for it's illustrations as well.

What are some of your favorites?

4 comments:

Jocelyn Christensen said...

OOh those are some good ones!

rusted sun said...

Thanks for the recommendations. We have been discovering a whole new lot of Kiwi and Australian kids books. Our current favorites are"Jasper McFlea Will Not Eat His Tea", "Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency", and "Who Are You, Baby Kangaroo".

I love that after just two or three readings that my kids can say some of the words before I say them. We have "The Hungry Caterpiller" memorized and we will often have the kids tell us the story when we are trying to keep them occupied.

rusted sun said...

Here is a link to a reading of "Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39lhgxrImHY

Marci said...

I saw your review of Creature on Goodreads and can't wait to check it out! I hadn't heard of One Duck Stuck either, but Chicka Chicka Boom Boom has always been a favorite (and FYI, the number one isn't nearly as good). Our favorite bedtime story is Time For Bed and one of my favorite quotes of all time came from Priscilla Superstar (Priscilla was soaring she felt like a star, and if that's how you feel, then that's what you are.). I'm trying to think of others, we cycle through books so quickly we don't get stuck on too many. Oh, you HAVE to read The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven. Ella picked it out at the library when she was litle and as soon as we finished reading it the first time I ran to order our own copy online. The illustrations are great and the story is so cute. Even the girls still love reading the Leslie Patricelli books and I love the Roger Priddy books too - the simple photographs and bright colors (I have used them to help our kids learn their signs and identify objects). I'll stop there :-)!
(other titles I found good enough to blog about awhile back: My Mommy is Magic, Masai and I, Panda Whispers, The Moon Might be Milk)