Story Time in the Library: Cats

Aug14

I had such a pleasant morning in my private subscription library this morning. I had two story times, one for preschool and another for primary age children. Next time I’ll probably combine the two, but I wasn’t sure how many children to expect. There were seven children in attendance in all, and we read all sorts of books about cats. Here are a few of the treasures we read:

Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag.
“Cats here, cats there,
Cats and kittens everywhere,
Hundreds of cats,
Thousands of cats,
Millions and billions and trillions of cats.”

Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes.
Poor kitten! This adventurous kitten, who thinks she sees a full bowl of milk in the sky, travels all over to find that the only real bowl of milk is at home on her own porch.

Three Little Kittens: A Folk Tale Classic, illustrated by Paul Galdone. I love Mr. Galdone’s illustrated folk tales and nursery rhymes. “Oh, Mother Dear, we sadly fear/Our mittens we have lost!”

Puss in Boots, illustrated by Paul Galdone. Since I like Mr. Galdone’s versions of these tales so much, we read another one. This one is in a large format book featuring a huge Puss with fancy red bots and a wise aspect. Of course, a cat like the one in this book could make a fortune for the miller’s son!

Hot-Air Henry by Mary Calhoun. Illustrated by Erick Ingraham. A couple of the moms remembered this story from Reading Rainbow, and that may be where I first heard it myself. Henry the Cat accidentally flies solo in a huge hot-air balloon, averts danger, and comes safely home after his adventure.

We made some cute little cats of our own during and after reading the stories. We had pink cats, blue cats, red cats and rainbow cats, nothing so ordinary and boring as a black and white cat or a tiger-striped cat.

I also had a few other books that we didn’t manage to read this morning as a group, but the children were looking at these after story time, still wanting more cats and kittens:

Cats by Gail Gibbons. (nonfiction)
Dick Whittington and His Cat by Marcia Brown.
Mittens by Claire Turlay Newberry.
William and His Kitten by Marjorie Flack.
The Fire Cat by Esther Averill.

Do you have a favorite picture book about cats or kittens, one that I missed? Or do you have a suggestion for my next story time which I think will be about Dogs?

Yellow Copter by Kersten Hamilton

Jul22

For those helicopter and airplane-loving boys and girls in your life, Yellow Copter is sure to please. The story is rather slight: Yellow Copter, the rescue helicopter, rescues the schoolteacher from the top of the ferris wheel. The end.

Still, the pictures are bright and simple. The story is short and sweet—with sound effects and some rhyme and rhythm. So, toddlers and younger preschoolers should enjoy looking at his one over and over again. The blurb in the back of the book refers to Ms. Hamilton’s first “action-packed adventure for young readers”, Red Truck. I haven’t seen it, but if your child likes Yellow Copter, and you’re looking for more of the same, Red Truck might be a good choice.

I wouldn’t give either book to “young readers”, but I would buy it for those who are just past the book-chewing age and who love vehicles of all kinds and shapes. Maybe a toy helicopter to go with the book would make it a perfect gift.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Five Things to Make You Smile on March 2nd

Mar2

Texas independence Day. On March 2, 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico.

Coincidentally, March 2, 1793 happens to be the birthdate of that most famous Texan, Sam Houston. If you haven’t read Jean Fritz’s biography of Mr. Houston (see list below), you should.

Read Across America Day. Oh, the Places You’ll Go when you read!. March 2, 2015 is NEA’s Read Across America Day and this year, the book is the Seuss classic, Oh, The Places You’ll Go. Be sure to follow Read Across America on Facebook and Twitter with #readacrossamerica.

“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child.”

Not coincidentally, March 2nd is Dr. Seuss’s birthday also.

Related books that I have in my library:
By Dr. Seuss: The Foot Book, Green Eggs and Ham, And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Â¡CÃ³mo el Grinch robÃ³ la Navidad!, Horton Hatches the Egg, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, and several more.
Sam Houston, the Tallest Texan by William Weber Johnson.
Make Way for Sam Houston by Jean Fritz.
Remember the Alamo! by Robert Penn Warren.
The Story of the Lone Star Republic by Conrad R. Stein.
Remember the Alamo!: The Runaway Scrape Diary of Belle Wood, Austin’s Colony, 1835-1836 by Lisa Waller Rogers.

Christmas in France, c. 1930

Dec17

From Noel for Jeanne-Marie by Francoise Seignobosc:

“Listen, Patapon,” says Jeanne-Marie. “Noel is the birthday of the little Jesus.”

“And there is something more about Noel. If you are very good, Father Noel brings you presents. He comes in the night. No one sees him, no one at all. I put my wooden shoes near the chimney and Father Noel fills them with presents. You will see, Patapon, you will see . . .”

Unfortunately, Patapon is Jeanne-Marie’s pet sheep, and sheep have no wooden shoes to place beside the chimney for Father Noel to fill with presents.

I love both the illustrations and the story in this simple picture book about a little French girl and her pet sheep. Ms. Seignobosc, a French-American author and illustrator who used the pen name of simply “Francoise”, wrote and illustrated over 40 picture books between the years of 1930 and 1960. I would suggest that if you find any of her books about Jeanne-Marie or any of her other lovely picture books that you snap them up. They are not only collector’s items, but they are also delightful, simple stories for reading with preschoolers and for the young at heart.

Take a look at this one about Biquette, the white goat with a lovely special-made coat.
Or Springtime for Jeanne-Marie, one of my favorites.
More from Springtime for Jeanne-Marie.
And here’s some information about another Francoise book, The Thank You Book.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Cybils: Picture Books

Oct7

Nominations are open through October 15th for the Cybils, the book awards for children’s and young adult literature that are administered, judged, and awarded by kid lit bloggers. The category description for Picture Book Fiction says:

The category contains titles for toddlers and third graders, funny stories and moving tales, history and fantasy, traditions and diversity, elegance and silliness, education and entertainment. An amazing conceptual range for books with typically 32 to 48 pages.

Here are a few Picture Book Fiction books that may deserve a look, but haven’t been nominated yet. If one of these is your favorite, please nominate it for a Cybils award.

The Christmas Cat by Maryann Macdonald. NOMINATED
Stone Soup with Matzo Balls by Linda Glazer.
Deep in the Sahara by Kelly Cunnane.
The Artist and the King by Julie Fortenberry.
Audrey Bunny by Angie Smith.
Those Magnificent Sheep in Their Flying Machines by Peter Bentley.
Mikis and the Donkey by Bibi Dumon Tak. NOMINATED in Middle Grade Fiction.

Keep turning in nominations for all your favorites in all of the categories, but remember that only those books published between Oct. 16, 2013 and Oct. 15, 2014 are eligible. And only one book per nominator per category.

Poetry Friday: Yuki and the One Thousand Carriers by Gloria Whelan

Oct3

Yuki and the One Thousand Carriers By Gloria Whelan. Illustrated by Yan Nascimbene. Sleeping Bear Press, 2008.

This week and next in our homeschool we’re traveling to Japan: sushi, haiku, kimonos, rice paper, origami, big city, small farm, tsunamis, cherry blossoms. And what else might we discover in our imaginary journey to Japan?

When you’re looking for children’s books with an international setting and flavor, Gloria Whelan is a go-to author, and Sleeping Bear Press is definitely a premier publisher of such books. Sleeping Bear has published a whole bushel basket of alphabet books featuring different countries, states, regions, and interests from A is for Aloha: A Hawai’i Alphabet to K is for Kabuki: A Japan Alphabet to Z is for Zamboni: A Hockey Alphabet. And their non-alphabet, non-concept books rate high in both beauty and educational value, too. Sleeping Bear Press specializes in picture books, ergo the pictures in the books are delightful, colorful, and rich in detail.

Yuki and the One Thousand Carriers is no exception to that description. The illustrations, in double page and page and a half spreads, are Japanese in flavor, with the delicate figures and light and dark contrasts of Japanese character writing. However, there’s also a lot of color splashed all over these pages to delight the eye and engage the imagination. Yan Nascimbene also did the small, intricate illustrations for another lovely picture book set in Japan, Hachiko: The True Story of a Loyal Dog by Pamela S. Turner.

Gloria Whelan’s text tells the story of an seventeenth or eighteenth century girl, Yuki, who must accompany her family on a 300 mile journey to the capital city of Edo. Yuki must ride in a palanquin (most of the time), and her teacher has given her an assignment to write a haiku every day to chronicle the journey. Yuki writes all of her longing for home and her fears about the future as well as her enjoyment in the small pleasures of each day into her haiku.

Once outside the gate
how will I find my way back?
Will home disappear?

River is busy
making its own long journey;
it doesn’t look back.

Gulls write their haiku
in the sky, dipping and darting,
not caged in a box.

Once during the long journey, Yuki is able to climb out of the palanquin and walk a little way. She writes:

Grass under my feet
plum blossoms drift down on me
just for a minute.

Finally, the family reach Edo, the end of their journey, and Yuki learns to appreciate where she is, instead of always looking back to long for her old home.

The book is a fantastic introduction to historical Japan and a lovely story of overcoming homesickness through poetry and awareness of daily blessings.

Jama’s Alphabet Soup has today’s Poetry Friday Roundup.

Poetry Friday: Hosie’s Aviary by Tobias and Leonard Baskin

Jul11

Hosie’s Aviary is a book of bird poems and drawings. It’s a lovely collection, a family project, and a delight to the ear and the eye. For example, the poem “EGRET”:

Long hair
and pencil bill,
does this egret write poems?

Leonard Baskin was planning and studying to become an Orthodox rabbi like his father until at age 14 he saw a sculpture demonstration in Macy’s department store, and he began studying art instead. Baskin became a famous sculptor and also illustrated many children’s books; however, it was for Hosie’s Alphabet (Viking), text written by his children Hosea and Tobias and by Lisa, his second wife, that he received a Caldecott Honor in 1973. In 1979, Mr. Baskin illustrated and published Hosie’s Aviary, also published by Viking Press and also written by his children Tobias, Lucretia, and Hosea, and by Lisa Baskin.

Leonard Baskin, who died in 2000, seems to have been a fascinating man. He was a friend of Ted Hughes, for whom he illustrated the poetry collection, Crow. The first Crow poems were written in response to a request by Baskin, who had at the time produced several pen and ink drawings of crows. Hughes’ wife, Sylvia Plath, dedicated one of her poems, “Sculptor”, to Leonard Baskin. Mr. Baskin was the sculptor for one section of the memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.

Tobias Baskin, who just happens to have been born the same year I was, became a “self-directed learner” much like his father. He is now a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In the following video, he gives an acceptance speech to a homeschool group called North Star in Massachusetts which gave him an award for self-directed learning, or as he says, for dropping out of high school:

Tobias Baskin, 2010 from North Star on Vimeo.

The 1st Gift of Christmas: The Christmas Cat by Maryann Macdonald

Dec1

“This perfect Christmas read-aloud was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of La Madonna del Gatto, which show Mary cuddling both the baby Jesus and a cat.” ~inside blurb of The Christmas Cat

What ever happened to “the Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes?” Well, like all idealized portraits, the image of a Jesus, even as a baby, who never cried, never expressed any emotions at all, and certainly never made any trouble or expressed a preference, has become inadequate, and we’ve come around and circled back to a Renaissance view of a Jesus who laughed and cried and pooped and even maybe, had a pet cat.

The Christmas Cat tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a stable where a tiny kitten comforted him with it purrs. The story continues with Jesus’ early childhood, and then the flight to Egypt, during which the cat again saves the day, and Mary’s frayed nerves. “The rhythmic rumbling, as always, soothed the baby, and Jesus fell sound asleep.”

I’m not all that fond of cats (or dogs), but The Christmas Cat is a story that will captivate the imagination of young animal lovers everywhere and give them an image of the baby Jesus with whom they can identify. Of course, I would tell my children that The Christmas Cat is an imaginary story, that we don’t really know if Jesus had a pet. But we can be sure that according to Scripture, Jesus was “fully human in every way” (Hebrews 2:17). Why not a pet cat for the boy who would grow up to preach that not even a sparrow falls without the Lord’s notice and care?

The illustrations in this Christmas picture book are by Amy June Bates, who has several children’s boos to her credit, including the easy reader Martin’s Dream by Jane Kurtz. The illustrations in The Christmas Cat a soft and colorful bringing the animals and people and first-century travels of the Holy family to life.

If you want to add a Christmas picture book to your collection this year, The Christmas Cat is a good, solid choice.

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon
A song: Mark Steyn on White Christmas by Irving Berlin.

A movie: Semicolon family’s favorite Christmas movie is White Christmas, corny jokes and all.

Phil Davis: When whatâ€™s left of you gets around to whatâ€™s left to be gotten, whatâ€™s left to be gotten wonâ€™t be worth getting, whatever it is youâ€™ve got left.
Phil Davis: I want you to get married. I want you to have nine children. And if you only spend five minutes a day with each kid, thatâ€™s forty-five minutes, and Iâ€™d at least have time to go out and get a massage or something.
Phil Davis: How can a guy that ugly have the nerve to have sisters?
Bob Wallace: Very brave parenting.
Bob Wallace: Miss Haynes, if youâ€™re ever under a falling building and someone offers to pick you up and carry you to safety, donâ€™t think, donâ€™t pause, donâ€™t hesitate for a moment, just spit in his eye.
Betty Haynes: What did that mean?
Bob Wallace: It means weâ€™re going to Vermont.

A birthday and a book(list): Rex Stout, b.1886.
A verse: Mistletoe by Walter de la Mare and Lines for a Christmas Card by Hillaire Belloc.
A Christmas idea: Let Us Keep the Feast: A Book Recommendation for the beginning of Advent (today)

Charlotte Zolotow, b.1915, d.2013

Nov20

Children’s author and book editor Charlotte Zolotow died yesterday at the age of 98. She wrote and published over seventy picture books for young children, including Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, William’s Doll, Big Sister Little Sister, and Over and Over. As an editor for Harper and Row, she was instrumental in publishing such authors as ME Kerr, Paul Zindel, Kara Kuskin, and Patricia MacLachlan, whose lovely book Sarah Plain and Tall won the Newbery Award.

Some of my favorite books by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by many of the picture book world’s most gifted illustrators:

Here at Semicolon, I wrote a birthday celebration post for Ms. Zolotow a few years ago, and there’s a linky there. I’ve moved it here so that if you want to link to your post about Charlotte Zolotow and her legacy, you can. I’m adding links myself to the tributes I find so that I can go back and read them again when I want to remember. Or I can just read her books. The books will last.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in August, 2013

Sep8

Children’s and YA Fiction:
Imperfect Spiral by Debbie Levy, reviewed at Semicolon.
I also read and reviewed several picture books set in Korea as a part of my Picture Book Around the World sequel to Picture Book Preschool. Someone asked if I had an ETA for PBAW (don’t you like the acronyms?), but I’m sad to say that I’ve been working on it sporadically for a good while now, and I’m not much closer to finished than I was last year at this time. If a bunch of you asked me to “pretty please finish” so that you could purchase Picture Book Around the World, I might get motivated to actually buckle down and get it to the (self) publishing stage.

Adult Fiction:
The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin, reviewed at Semicolon.
A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert, reviewed at Semicolon.
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb.

Nonfiction:
Prayers of the Bible by Susan Hunt.

I can’t say I read a lot of books this month, but what I read was pretty good. I’m still thinking about a review of Wally Lamb’s Columbine shooting novel, The Hour I First Believed.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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