Midnight Madness at the Zoo by Sherryn Craig

Midnight Madness at the Zoo by Sherryn Craig, illustrated by Karen Jones
Rating: 5 stars

Arbordale

Just in time for March Madness--a basketball picture book! Add animals, a top-notch rhyme, and practice counting to ten and you've got a winning bedtime (or anytime) book.

What do the animals do after the last guest leaves, after the zookeeper locks up the gate for the night, after the last car exits the parking lot? Play basketball, of course!

The animals must warm up first / before they can roam free.
Some new officials take their place: / three zebras referee.
The trumpet of the elephants / calls players from their pens.
But for a game of basketball, / they'll need a group of ten.

Kids listen and see as one by one, an animal is added to each team, until two teams of five are formed. Then they have a fun game of five-on-five--luckily, these are rule-following animals so no elbows are thrown or fouls earned.

Kiefer has had this book in his room for a few weeks now, and I've read it to him at least five times, which means it has scored high enough to be reread more than once or twice. Ben does his best to pretend that he only reads chapter books, but he stood in the doorway for this one. He couldn't help but be interested in it--he's the child in the family who plays and follows basketball.

--

This book is near and dear to my heart because the author, Sherryn Craig, is one of my critique partners. When I met her nearly two years ago, this book had been purchased by Arbordale and I got to follow along in the publishing process. In the beginning, I simply heard how she and her sons went to the Reston Zoo and wondered why the animals all looked so sleepy. "I think they must play basketball all night," her son said. And just like that, an idea was formed.

It was so fun to see the first sketches by Karen Jones sprawled out on the table in front of us at the coffee shop at which we meet. It was even more fun to see the cover in black and white, then color. But the best part? Seeing my friend with her debut picture book in her hand, smiling proud. A close second? Seeing Midnight Madness on our own shelf, or in my kids' hands as they read through it for the very first time.

Congratulations, Sherryn!

Sherryn will be having a few events around town to celebrate and promote her book:

Sunday, March 13th, at the Greene Turtle in Fairfax from 6-8 PM she'll be selling and signing her book while the NCAA Tournament teams are announced.

Saturday, March 19th, at the Reston Zoo 9 AM-12:30 PM she'll be selling and signing her book to celebrate the zoo's opening (after its normal winter closing). Book readings will be at 10 AM, 11 AM, and 12 PM.

More information can be found on Sherryn's website.

The M&M's Addition Book by Barbara Barbieri McGrath

The M&M's Addition Book by Barbara Barbieri McGrath

Rating: 4 stars

I should probably wait until summer to post a book that has so much potential for math, but...I'm not known for my patience!  So today it is.

Ben has found his brave (must have previously leaked through a hole in his pocket or something) and now writes lists of books he wants to get at the library, then goes up to the information desk to ask the librarians where these books can be found.  He walks up with his big notebook with carefully written, creatively spelled words and asks, "I'm lookin' for books on _____.  Can you help me find them, please?"

So cute.

Kiefer makes rows of tens...

Our librarians are so, so gracious and so, so patient as they figure out a) what exactly he's talking about and b) if they have any books on the subject.  (Two days ago he asked if they have any Crossfit books, and I had a funny, five-minute conversation with an elderly female librarian about Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, and metabolic conditioning.  She said, "Oh! Really?" a lot.  Turns out that there are, in fact, no Crossfit books in the system, but she did chuckle when she admitted that when she put in "Cross" and "fit" separately that something about cross-dressing came up, and she correctly assumed that's not what 5 year old Ben was looking for.)

ANYWAY, he asked Mr. Steven last week to help him find math books.  Mr. Steven showed him the math section, wonderfully far from the children's section, and Ben came back smiling with this book.  It was sort of like hitting the jackpot--he was brave, he got a math book he could read all by himself, AND it involved candy.  SCORE!

...while Ben graphs his M&Ms.

So, last weekend when our family headed to West Virginia for a last-hurrah ski trip, we brought along this book and three bags of M&Ms, and one cold afternoon after skiing we did all of the math problems the book suggested we do--guess how many there are in the bag (about 50, but Ben was overjoyed that his bag had 60), count them all, sort by color, graph them, make fractions by color, then add two colors together until you got three sums, then add the three sums together.

And then the kids had a wonderful time subtracting them right into their mouths.

This is a great little book--and there are others involving M&Ms, some involving Skittles, Gummi Bears, Cheerios, and Goldfish that are worth knowing about and remembering during Spring Break trips and long summer days when you're looking for something fun to do.  Just Google "M&M math worksheets" and you can use teachers' worksheets to help you or you can be like me and make your kids do most of the work!

Either way, enjoy!  (But you have to get your own M&Ms, as your kids will know if you swipe them...)

Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh

Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh

Rating: 5 stars

And to wrap up our shape-a-thon, we'll be going to the Pentagon tomorrow morning.

Just kidding!  Maybe next year...

Of all the books that we've read this is definitely at the top.  Walsh of Mouse Paint fame provides a great little story about mice playing with shapes.  In this one the mice have names: Violet, Martin, and Fred.  They play with shapes, defining them (helpfully explaining that a lot of triangles are tricky, "but any shape with three sides is a triangle."  Then they start to make things with the shapes--first a simple house and tree, then the cat who is chasing them.  And then, to scare that cat away, they make three scary versions of themselves.  It's simple and cute and incredibly easy to do a fun and, for us, wonderfully time-consuming art project afterward.


In the picture is Lorelei with her art--it's New York City, which cracks me up because she's never been to New York City.  Another example of how sponge-like these little brains around me are...did I mention it to her weeks ago?  Yesterday?  Who knows!  But we had a fun conversation about skylines, what they are and how architects take them into account when they erect a new building in a city.  

I'm sure that they have these kits somewhere in our local art supply store... "these kits" meaning a bunch of shapes that kids can punch out themselves.  But around here we do it the old-fashioned way--I actually cut pieces of paper in random shapes and then hand it over to the kids.  The funny twist here at our house today was that we are out of glue.  Completely (thanks to SOMEBODY (BEN!) never putting the cap back on and therefore the glue dries up).  So for almost an hour we heard, "May I please have another piece of tape?" about 60 gazillion times.  Another opportunity to sharpen our manners, so...

Round Is A Mooncake: A Book of Shapes by Roseanne Thong, illustrated by Grace Lin

Round Is A Mooncake: A Book of Shapes by Roseanne Thong, illustrated by Grace Lin

Rating: 3 stars

I couldn't pass up a book that was not just about shapes but also about China.  As an always-student of Asia--especially Southeast Asia--I'm interested myself and eager to open up that part of the world to my kids.  Thankfully diversity exists where we live, and Lorelei had two Chinese students and one Indian student in her class this past year.  So she likes to read about their cultures and explore it.  We're not ready to jump on a plane and head into Asia, so...books it is.

"Rectangles are inking stones /
Paintbrush racks and mobile phones"

In staying with the shape theme, we picked this book up and I like it.  It's another to add to the mix of getting my kids to look around them and notice the shapes of things.  There are just basic shapes in here--no parallelograms or hexagons.  And the things that take shape on the pages are all interesting, question-provoking things: rice bowl, cups of jasmine tea, name chops, tofu, radish cakes, dim sum, inking stones, money envelopes to name a few.

The rhyme is just okay for me--it's not exactly the selling point of the book.  The caption under the picture is a good example of this.  It's fine, but the inclusion of modern cell phones right alongside traditional inking stones seems odd to me.  Grace Lin's pictures adequately illustrates the words and shapes (we have seen some of Grace Lin's artwork before and I like it elsewhere more than here).  The best part of the book for me is definitely the connection to China and therefore Asia. Now I'm in the mood for some noodles...

So Many Circles, So Many Squares by Tana Hoban

So Many Circles, So Many Squares by Tana Hoban

Rating: 4 stars

This old book got us in the mood to look for shapes.  It's a photo book, really, and Hoban has a bunch of them that are all great for a bit o' mind-expanding ideas.  This book and the others of Hoban's that we grabbed at the library last week (it's in Lorelei's room and she's asleep and I'm too comfortable to sneak in and get it right now...) really created a good start to all of the shapes we found around us this past week.

Here are a few photos in the book to give you an idea of what is between the covers:

Chuckle, chuckle...

We thought these were giant's glasses...

Just enough to get the juices flowing.  Juice that formed a line, was poured from a rectangular container, caught inside a cylinder glass, I'll have you know.

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin, illustrated by James Dean

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin, illustrated by James Dean

Rating: 5 stars

This one goes out to all the math people out there...who knew there could be a children's book on math--and a cool one at that?  And one with a foot-tappin' (if you're Kiefer, body-shakin') song?

So Pete the Cat, the resident Jamiroquai of children's books, is back.  And I'm pretty grateful for him.  Just when our house has reached another can-we-be-more-tired level, this book arrived.  We had already listened to it a few dozen times online (listen to it!  you'll smile for sure!), but the actual book did not disappoint.  This book ROCKS.

The story:  Pete the Cat puts on his favorite shirt, one with four, round, groovy buttons (what a joy to teach my kids the definition of "groovy!"  It's a new favorite word) and sings his song: "My buttons, my buttons, my four groovy buttons!"

"OH NO!  Another button popped off and rolled away."

And then...

"POP!  OH NO!  One of the buttons popped off and rolled away.
Did Pete cry?  Goodness, no!
Buttons come and buttons go.
How many buttons are left?  THREE!
Pete went on singing his song..."

(Not much math...no square root...maybe that's in the next one...but just enough for a preschooler.)

The song goes on, going from three to two to one, something easy and fun enough for little ones to work on their prediction skills, which is a huge chunk of why we're supposed to be reading to these tykes to begin with.  And then...they get to zero.  He looks down at his open shirt and...finds his belly button!  I love how he finds a way to smile after all those groovy buttons are gone.  Making lemonade out of lemons.  Finding the good in the not-so-good.  What a lesson.

But my favorite lesson that Mr. Eric sneaks in is "buttons come and buttons go."  I'm always telling the kids: "No big deal, right?" when they argue about whose turn it is to do something or if they didn't get something they wanted.  Sometimes it IS a big deal when something comes, and especially when it goes, but...hopefully they won't learn this lesson anytime soon.

I think I might have a crush.  On a cat.  This Pete guy.