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.

Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate

Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate
Clarion Books

Rating: 5 stars

In case you haven't heard, there's this book that has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 108 weeks called The One and Only Ivan. Ivan is a gorilla who spends his time drumming his fingers and watching passers by at a shopping mall, where he's been sitting in a very small cage for a very long time. The story is fiction but it's based on a true story. There was a real gorilla Ivan who was purchased and plucked from a jungle and placed in...a shopping mall in Washington State.

This picture book, Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla, is the nonfiction account of Ivan's life.

Brace yourself, because it's not always a fun life to read about. But Applegate, who also wrote The One and Only Ivan, does a great job of unfolding his sad story in digestible bits, and the entire story illustrates one of my favorite maxims: "It all turns out okay. If it's not okay, it's not the end." And Ivan's life does turn out okay in the end. (It's a picture book--it's got to have a happy ending. What a relief!)

He'd grown into a silverback gorilla.
In the jungle, he would have been ready to protect his family.
But he had no family to protect.

Ivan starts his life in the jungle, born to a band of gorillas. He plays with, listens to, and closely observes other gorillas...he learns everything from them. And then one day, he is caught by poachers. He and another little gorilla baby are thrown into a dark crate and shipped to Tacoma, Washington.

Once there, they are treated as exotic baby-pets--everyone thinks these small animals are cute and interesting. But one gorilla baby dies and only Ivan is left. When Ivan grows out of the cute, small phase, his new owner doesn't know what to do with him. Soon, he is placed in a cage in the mall with a TV and an old tire and little else.

He spends twenty-seven years away from other gorillas, in that small cage. (Heart-breaking!)

Finally, after protests and petitions, Ivan is sent to Zoo Atlanta. After helping him adjust to his new environments, Ivan is released into a new band of gorillas. He lives there, happily it seems, until he finally dies at age 50 in 2012--and one year later, The One and Only Ivan won the Newbery.

So why read this book to your child? Is the lesson here simply "animals should stay in the wild" or "poachers should be stopped?" Sure, those lessons are great ones for kids to learn; the jobs in that field are certainly noble ones.

But I think there's a deeper message here about reinventing yourself, or starting a new chapter in life--it's so obvious that Ivan's life was sad and small, but then it changes. He starts a new chapter, and his life becomes big and full. Because a bunch of people cared, took the time, made the effort to help him get to a better place. Maybe some kids (and the grown-ups reading this book to them) can relate. Maybe some kids (and those grown-ups) have felt small or been in dark places, but because they took the time to care about themselves or others made the effort to help, maybe they're in a better place now. Maybe they're in the process of starting a brand new chapter in their lives. Maybe Ivan's story strikes a chord in them and gives them hope.

The One and Only Ivan is "on deck" as Lorelei says for us to read together next--I'll let you know how it goes. (We're reading Wonder now.) She was open to reading it last year, but after reading this picture book, she's very curious and eager to start. That makes two of us.

Little Nelly's Big Book by Pippa Goodhart

Little Nelly's Big Book by Pippa Goodhart, illustrated by Andy Rowland
Bloomsbury

Rating: 5 stars

Little Nelly (the young elephant in this story) and I (the writer typing away at this review) share something: we both believe a lot of what we read. Luckily, I've not had a crisis like Little Nelly. Yet.

Little Nelly opens a book and reads that mice can be gray. Mice have big ears. Mice have skinny tails.

Little Nelly is gray. She has big ears. She has a skinny tail.

Ergo, Little Nelly must be...a mouse?!

After this terrific realization, she pushes through the wall in order to get to the mice den behind it and starts bunking with the mouse family. At first, they are startled. That's pretty reasonable, methinks. But kindly and generously, Granny Mouse leads the way in welcoming big Little Nelly to their small home. They pull the biggest blanket they have over her, comb her hair, give her cheese to eat, play with her.

So Little Nelly went home.

Still, Little Nelly "sometimes felt she was different."

After a while, wise Granny Mouse decides to take Little Nelly to the zoo, where she finds big mice, just like her. Everyone's happy...and a little relieved.

I love this sweet tale of friends being friends regardless of their size or shape or color. I love how the mice are so gentle with Little Nelly's false certainty that she's a mouse. I love how one little mouse picks up the same book Little Nelly did at the beginning and starts wondering if he is, in fact, an elephant. And I really love the last line in this picture book:

"Which just goes to show why books should always have pictures."

Penguin Cha Cha by Kristi Valiant

Penguin Cha Cha by Kristi Valiant

Rating: 5 stars

Julia loves the zoo. She watches the daily performances from a tree branch--she has a good vantage point from which she can spot some black fins grabbing random items from performers on the stage. These black fins belong to a group of penguins that are obviously up to something.

Julia wants to know what they're up to.

She follows them back to their penguin cove, but they just stand around acting and looking like "penguin popsicles"--they aren't doing anything when they know she's around.

This is what Julia sees through her binoculars.

So she does what any kid would do: she spies on them. She goes up high and, with some good binoculars, she spots those penguins DANCING! With the stolen props from the performance, they dance around the cove like nobody's watching. Julia wants to not just watch, she wants to join in! But every time she tries, she gets the same: penguin popsicles.

So she does what any kid would do: she dresses up like them. Her costume is hilarious and spot-on, and she waddles in with her pillow-as-white-tummy doing its best to disguise her human-ness. It doesn't work. The penguins still stand around like big popsicles.

So she does what any kid would do: she puts on her fanciest outfit and aims to dazzle them with her cha cha. She juts out her chin and puts back her shoulders and reaches out her arms and cha cha chas with such enthusiasm and joy and grace that the penguins can't resist joining her. Finally, she gets what she wants: she gets to dance with the penguins!

The penguins can't resist: Tap, flap, cha cha cha!

My kids and I are blown away by this book. It is sweet, it is funny, it is cool. Valiant's illustrations are drop-dead gorgeous. I want to sit and study every single illustration because there are so many great details, so much joy sketched in young Julia's face and arms and movements!

But my kids and I also want to know: will there be another story, similar to this one, about monkeys doing magic in their monkey house?  We hope so, because we've enjoyed Penguin Cha Cha so much...we want more!

Hippos Can't Swim and Other Fun Facts by Laura Lyn DiSiena and Hannah Eliot

Hippos Can't Swim and Other Fun Facts by Laura Lyn DiSiena and Hannah Eliot, illustrated by Pete Oswald

Rating: 4 stars

Please pack this book with you the next time you're going to the zoo!  It screams for all families to do so.  Give a book what it wants, please!

Authors DiSiena and Eliot dug through the zillions of animal facts out there and produced some really fun ones, then placed them together in such a way that a story-less book has a nice rhythm to it.  Lorelei  (now 7) laps up this sort of silly, nonfiction stuff on a normal basis but now, in her first week of Nature Science Camp, is even happier to get her hands on anything science-related. But the book held Kiefer's (now 3) attention easily--the facts might not have stuck as I read this to him over lunch, but the pictures made him laugh and ask questions, like "Why that turtle wearing socks?" Curiosity has got to start somewhere…!

Here are some fun tidbits we learned:

Kangaroos have pouches too, but kangaroos are marsupials. This means that their pouches are used to carry their babies. As you probably know, kangaroos hop everywhere.  They use their strong back legs to hop, and their muscular tails for balance. If you bounce on a pogo stick, you can hop like a kangaroo, too! 

Herons catch fish by standing still for long periods of time and waiting for the fish to swim by. That may sound boring to you, but herons do it to survive!

This is a great book that grabbed the attention of all three of my kids, despite their different ages and interests, which makes it successful and great in this mom's opinion!

Xander's Panda Party by Linda Sue Park

Xander's Panda Party by Linda Sue Park, illustrated by Matt Phelan

Rating: 5 stars

If you want to read a book to understand how some authors make rhymes work--I mean really work--for them, just pick up Xander's Panda Party by Linda Sue Park.  It is, quite possibly, the best rhyme within a picture book I've ever read.  Each time I read it, I'm just floored by the twists and turns in the poem.  It's like riding a pleasant, not-too-crazy lyrical roller coaster.  When accompanied by the sweet illustrations by Matt Phelan, and once you realize the story itself is wonderful, you've got a pretty flawless book.

The story adds to this flawless feel because it's a feel-good, lesson-underneath story.  Xander is a panda who wants to throw a party (for himself), but he's the only panda.  So he decides to invite all the bears.  Including Koala Bear.  But wait!

From her tree, Koala hollered, "Zander, I am not a bear."
Xander didn't understand her.  "Koala Bear, you're not a bear?"
He stared at her in consternation.
"Sorry for the complication.
I know I'm called Koala Bear, but I am not a bear, I swear.
I am a marsupial.  Marsupials--we're rather rare.  Will I not be welcome there?"

Xander cutely distributes invitations to every animal...

He adjusts his invitation list to include marsupials by inviting all the mammals.  But…cranky-looking rhinoceros sends him a note:

It may sound a bit absurd, but I won't come without my bird.

So…  Zander broadens his guest list once more to include mammals and birds.  And then crocodile (with a most beguiling smile) begs politely to have the reptiles included.  Finally, with excitement rather than exhaustion and with the help of Amanda Salamander, the final invitation includes everyone.  And the first gift to Xander (from the zoo): another panda!

This book is quality, no doubt.  I can feel the hours it took to get every word just right, and now you have a rhyme that sure sounds effortless as I read it out loud to my children.  It is just flawless--because of its rhythm and rhyme and illustrations, but most importantly, the story.  And a teachable moment sort of story, too--a nice lesson on including everybody, even the animals you didn't think of first.  (I always forget to invite the crocodiles to my parties, too, Xander…)

Baby Bao Bao

P.S.  This book is great for anyone in the Northern Virginia area as we've been seeing adorable images of baby panda Bao Bao, born at the National Zoo some months ago.  So the kids are already panda-crazy and appreciate Xander a little bit more than usual.

Fraidyzoo by Thyra Heder

Fraidyzoo by Thyra Heder

Rating: 5 stars

We've been reading more books at dinner time.  It's a habit I tried to stop but...it is just too fun, the audience too captivated, the opportunity to read books together too limited that we've started back up again.  I know that we'll have to quit sometime in the future.  But not today.  Or next week.  Let me squeeze a few more months out of this habit of reading with our mouths full!

(Okay, I DO encourage good eating manners--I do the reading, generally without my mouth being full, and they do the eating and listening and adding...)

We checked out Fraidyzoo for the second time in a month this week.  It was just so fun the first time around, and we had an even better time with it on the second check-out.  The story is pretty simple: Little T is afraid to go to the zoo, and her family is trying to guess why.  Which animal she is afraid of?  They guess one for each letter of the alphabet by dressing up as that animal in some incredibly creative (yet doable in your home!) ways.

Does it live in the tropics? Or gloop through the ocean?
Does it hop with a pocket? Does it ROAR?

When we checked this out a second time and read it last night while eating, the kids took turns guessing what animals the family was dressing up as is.  Lorelei, Ben, Kiefer.  Lorelei, Ben, Kiefer.  Three ages, three reading levels, all guessing happily.  Fun times!

The illustrations are spectacular--SO creative they will invite you and your kids to examine them.  We noticed on this second read how the snake had a stuffed animal in its looooong body.  We talked about how the lion sort of looks like a gorilla but it's L's turn so...probably not gorilla because it starts with a G.  And that tail...definitely lion-like.

 It turns out, though, that Little T is not afraid of an animal...well, not exactly an animal...  I don't want to be the spoiler on this one and it's really worth discovering her (funny) fear along with your child.  We laughed like crazy, all together.  It was one of Those Moments, you know?

Dog Loves Counting by Louise Yates

Dog Loves Counting by Louise Yates

Rating: 4 stars

Another review from Washington Family Magazine:

Here is Louise Yates' third book with the sweet character Dog showing us what he loves.  We fell in love with him in Dog Loves Books a short while ago.  Once again in Dog Loves Counting, Dogs problem lies with books: He loves them so much that he cannot stop reading them.  While he should be sleeping, Dog keeps turning pages.  Finally, he puts his last book on the closest stack next to him and tries to fall asleep.  No luck.  "He tried counting sheep, but they weren't helping at all."

So, he reaches for a book.  What else would a book lover do in this or any situation?  In A Big Book of Curious Creatures and Their Habitats, he finds other creatures he can count.

Dog begins, of course, with One.  He first finds an egg that magically and wonderfully begins to hatch. It is a little baby dodo, which looks odd and loveble all at the same time as it looks up to dog as if asking, "What's next?"  Dog carefully takes him by the hand -- or wing -- and together, Number One and Number Two walk into Dog's counting adventure.

To read the rest of the review, please click here.

Where's Walrus? by Stephen Savage

Where's Walrus? by Stephen Savage

Rating: 4.5 stars

Here is a fun book--not much to it, though it's a great one to get kids laughing which, in my book, is always a wonderful sound.

Stephen Savage has drawn for us a series of illustrations of what a walrus does to fade into the background after escaping from the zoo.  As the zookeeper chases him from city place to city scene, the walrus tries to camouflage himself.  See for yourself in the images I have grabbed thanks to my buddy Google...

There is nothing funnier to Ben than me pretending not to see something that he sees so very clearly.  So when I say "I don't see a walrus!" he erupts in giggles and yells in his loudest inside voice (therefore making it a questionable inside voice):  "THERE MOMMY!  THERE!  THERE!!!"  I'm tempted to use size 38 font so you truly understand how loud and excited the response is!

Because there are no words, you can make up your own or just play dumb like me, which is always a hit at our house.

Sometimes the point of a book--or an activity, or a whole day--should be pure fun.  Not educational, not anything but f-u-n fun.  That is what this book is.  Oftentimes mom friends ask me for hints or suggestions to get their kids into reading. I often suggest books like these--ones that are pure fun, where the images are captivating and silly and make you want to turn the page to read the next one.  Maybe this one will be the "gateway book" that helps your child really get excited about books...or maybe it's just one in a long line of great ones they are already talking about in offensively loud decibels while your youngest child naps...

The Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle

The Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle

Rating: 4 stars

Another chameleon book today...  And, like the other chameleons, this one is having an identity crisis with some pretty silly results.  This chameleon's life simply involves changing colors and eating bugs.

"That was his life.  It was not very exciting."

But one day, this chameleon happened upon a zoo and added some excitement into his life.  He wished to change not just his color but also his shape...  And his wish is granted!  After he wishes for several attributes of other animals, he looks pretty funny indeed: he has deer antlers, a fox tail, fish fins, and flamingo feet.  Lorelei and Ben howl at how crazy he looks!

And then, when he's totally mixed-up, he gets hungry.  Uh-oh.  And he realizes that he no longer has the ability to catch flies.  How's a guy to eat??  So he wishes himself back to normal again, catches a fly, and is happy to be just...himself.

Makes me think...what is that line in the Sheryl Crow song?  "It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got..."

Wild About Books by Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown

 Wild About Books by Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown

Rating: 5 wild stars

This is, hands down, one of the best books we've stumbled upon in the past year.  It.  Is.  Awesome!  Sometimes you just get lucky, and the librarians chose to display a book that looks interesting AND fits in with the week's field trip.

Librarian Molly McGrew mistakenly drives her bookmobile into the zoo.  Oops!  Instead of kids coming to look at books, the animals start to peer  from their cages at the page-filled wonders. Molly decides to crack open one and holds her first-ever (we guess) storytime for animals.  Here's the delight-filled passage that tells the reader what happens:

By reading aloud from the good Dr. Seuss,She quickly attracted a mink and a moose,A wombat, an oryx, a lemur, a lynx,Eight elephant calves, and a family of skinks. 

Giraffes wanted tall books and crickets craved small books,
While geckos could only read stick-to-the-wall books

This causes a stampede of animals, all heading towards the bookmobile to get their own books.  Sierra works wonders with her words--she matches beast to book beautifully.  She draws in readers Lorelei and Ben's age by easily by referencing classics that they've already read--The Cat in the Hat and Goodnight Moon--but also makes their parents smile by referencing soon-to-be-known classics: Nancy Drew and Harry Potter, for example.  


Marc Brown's illustrations are the perfect compliment to her words.  Each page shows a different creature clutching a book of some sort (although the alligators are eating their book, something that Ben pointed out as "not a good choice," which is ironic because our board books still have his munch-marks in them).  They are silly and cute and totally captivating.


I'm having a hard time not buying this book right this moment!  I will resist.  I will resist.  I will try to resist...!

I don't use any technology while reading to my kids.  It sorta seems like an oxymoron.  I hear of these mysterious things called "apps" and I figure they are tools for people who have much cooler phones than my not-so-smartphone (a Droid and, for the record, I have one app I don't use).  But I came across this little clip from Random House showing the app for this book (or maybe an app for more children's books?) and I might check it out.  After bedtime, in case I decide it's not worth introducing.  Here it is:

I am skeptical.  Call me a luddite, but I like the whole pages-on-my-fingertips thing.  But I'm very curious if you use an iPad with your preschoolers.  How?  When?  At what age?  Do you sit with them, or let them do it themselves?  Do they still want to read the old-timey page books, or just want the ones on your iPod?  Or (it's hard for me to type this, but...) their own iPad?

1, 2, 3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle

1, 2, 3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle

Rating: 4 stars

We didn't leave Kiefer out of the library book-fest (this time).  He, too, got a zoo book.  This one, by the wonderful Eric Carle, is  totally right for him at 13 months.  There are no words--just huge, bright pictures of elephants and giraffe and lions and seals.

Each animal rides in his own train car, packed with others of his kind.  At the bottom of each page the train cars get added, one by one, so that I can remind Kiefer of the numbers of this animal or that when we get to a new one.  Each animal also gets his own excited yell from Kiefer, who seems to like dogs the best but...jury really is still out as communication is, well, limited.

We have had the puzzle version of this book--the first four animals--for a few years, so it was a fun surprise when Ben opened the book for the first time and realized that.  The puzzles have brought us a lot of quality play (I often take them to restaurants as they are small but there are four of them).

At the zoo yesterday we did a counting game--we wondered which animal was there the most of?  (That seems so grammatically wrong...hmmm...)  The answer?  18 turtles, seen the first 10 minutes of our time there!

Animal A-Z by Louisa Cornfield

Animal A-Z by Louisa Cornfield, designed by Bethany Side and Nicola Friggens

Rating: 5 nonfiction stars

So we're wandering around the zoo this morning, waiting for the houses to open so that we can see some animals up close and personal (and to get a break from the heat) when we come across the flamingos.  They are Lorelei's favorite animal right now--only because of their color.  (Blech.)

But they are cool in their own right.  We looked at them for a good five minutes, Kiefer screeching his hello from the stroller, and the kids and I observing them, checking them out.  We noted how they rested with their heads on their backs, as if their fluffy bodies were built-in pillows.  We saw how their necks made "Ss."  There weren't any babies this time around, but we remembered that they are born gray and turn pink.  We tried to stand on one leg like them.

As we chatted and looked and waited, Lorelei turned to me and said: "They turn pink because of something that they eat."  What?!  Nah!  Really?  I had that moment of motherhood that I knew would come but I didn't expect it so soon.  Does she already know more than me?!  Not really, but...I have to get to the bottom of this (because that sounds sorta fishy to me).

Checking out the flamingos.

We had brought this great book in the car with us, and I knew that F was for flamingos, so I looked to see if this random fact-that-might-not-be-a-fact could have come from this book.  Nope.  But it does share an interesting tidbit: No one knows why they stand on one leg.  How comforting.  I love unsolved mysteries.  Makes me feel somehow relieved to know that some things just...are.  For no reason.

Anyway, it's a great book.  We have given it as a gift a few times, and I highly recommend it as a gift for a 3- or 4- or 5-year old animal lover.  And what kid isn't an animal lover?  It helps to have a mom who is truly curious and enthusiastic about all of these species (we saw a blue frog, a yellow frog, and a red frog today.  who knew there were so many colors?!), but kids are pretty fascinated independently of nerdy parents.

One of my favorite things about this book is that on every page there is a small diagram comparing the animal to an average human male.  For not-yet-reading Ben, I ask him which is bigger, the man or the animal?  He gets to "read" something from the page, and is happy about that.


P.S.  Lorelei was right!  They are pink because they eat brine shrimp, which has a high content of beta carotene, the same thing that made each of my kids turn orange when they ate carrots as infants.  Go, Lorelei!  Click here for full answer...and a cool wildlife website.

If I Ran the Zoo by Dr Seuss

If I Ran the Zoo by Dr Seuss

Rate: 4 stars

I'm not sure if we could have had a more perfect first day of summer.  My day started at 5 (thanks, Kiefer), with the other boy (that'd be Ben) joining us shortly.  We woke Sleeping Beauty (aka sweet Lorelei).  By 7:30 we were all dressed, breakfasted, and heading to the National Zoo.  I think the sloths were still snoozing when we got there.

Heat advisory?  Bah!  We laugh at thee.  

We live about 45 minutes from the "big zoo," as we call it (not to be compared to the "little zoo," which is approximately 8 minutes or one Eric Carle book away).  The great thing about this book is it takes almost 45 minutes to read.  It's one of those books that you suggest your child request when it's your spouse's turn to read bedtime books.  And then settle yourself into the sofa, because it'll be a while.

In truth, it's not my all-time favorite Dr Seuss tale (in case you're wondering, it's a tie between "Yertle the Turtle" and "The Big Brag").  It's soooooooooooooo long.  I get a little tired of the crazy new animals and the crazy new places they come from.  And the crazy new methods that the crazy new zookeeper uses to capture them.  

However, there are some things that I DO like about this book:

Lorelei, reading book #519 of the day.

First, I spend a lot of time asking my older crazy questions, and listening to their answers.  We talk about places we would like to travel (they insist on China, and have begun to dig a hole in our backyard to get there...geez...), places we all remember traveling to (Colorado.  Sigh...), animals that we want to see (always a giraffe!).  And then there's the made-up stuff: it could just be a name or place that they come up with, but also animals like those in Dr Seuss' creative mind.  I ask them about their made-up animal, what it looks like, how big it is, what it eats, where it would live in our house, just fun stuff.  This book lends itself to creative talk like this.

This is the stuff that happens when you don't have a DVD player/TV in your car.  Just sayin'.

Second, the whole book is about a young boy saying "This a cool zoo, but I'd run it differently."  I'm always asking my kids that--how would you paint a flower?  what would you have done in that situation?  why do you think he wanted to do that?  I want them to be able to see something and figure out how they'd make it better or just do it differently.  We emphasize, in our house, that there are more than one way to do something, mostly because I hate being railroaded with "it's my way or the highway" attitudes.

Lorelei is in a huge Dr Seuss stage; we checked out The Bippolo Seed last week, and she read it three times from cover to cover that I know of.  Who knows if she's already started to read with a flashlight under the covers after I ask her to stop?  She loves the rhyming, she laughs out loud at the silliness of the words, and the pictures are equally entertaining.   She actually woke up Kiefer while reading this book, laughing at something she read.  Luckily he passed right out again.

Oh, and how did our perfect summer day end?  Well, since you didn't ask (but since I know you want to know, Mom)...  We zipped home to feed our hounds and let them out, though the kids didn't even get out of the car.  Then we went to the library because there was a Summer Reading Kick-Off party with a magician.  We couldn't miss that!  From there we came home and collapsed, still wilted from the morning's heat.

Then we played baseball in the kitchen, chased Guidry around the table a few hundred times, and clapped for Kiefer every time he took a few steps.  We ate pancakes for dinner, danced before clean-up, and bathed the sweat and sunscreen away.

Yup, I'm pooped.  In a great way.

Field Trip Report: Shape Hunt at the Zoo

Oval eyes, triangular head and noes.  Such a cute baby goat.

 Field Trip number two...and a shape hunt, too!

We are fortunate to live very close to a small, local zoo.  It's nothing extraordinary and a lot of people pooh-pooh it because it's sorta dusty and sorta poopy and sorta small, but...we really like it.  It's small enough for the kids to run wherever they want, and familiar enough that they have their favorite animals but still see new things every other time we go.  I'd like to pass along my "easily amused" gene to them; my fingers are crossed that they'll keep that in tact for the rest of their life.

This first half-week of summer was "Shape Week" at our house.  I doubt that every week will have a theme along with a field trip, but I needed a framework in which to work in a bunch of books, activities, and just general fun.  I'm not a math whiz but because we are so book-focused at our house I'm especially eager to provide math and science twists on anything I can so as not to brand our kids, especially Lorelei, as ONLY good at language arts.

How cool is this?!
Triangular neck, lines out, triangles at the end of the feathers.

Circles for eyes, triangular webbed feet.

Shapes are just a foundation piece for geometry, and as my kids are 5, 3 1/2, and...um...1 (he got a shape puzzle that he threw around...), they are just learning the basics.  There are so many activities when teaching shapes that it's pointless to list them here, especially because I'm supposed to be writing about the books involved in this whole child-rearin' thing.  But google it if you're looking for something to do on a hot summer afternoon and you'll find a ton.  We had a great time playing with food, making shapes out of shapes, drawing with shapes, using shapes as the base of a piece of artwork.  I knew the kids really got into it when this afternoon at swim practice they actually SWAM in shapes--Lorelei, a triangle; Ben, a rectangle.  The lesson is clear: if you are enthusiastic about something, your kids will be as well.

Kiefer and I had mixed feelings about the llamas...we were
worried about spit and couldn't look for shapes.

But really, teaching them to look for shapes is, for me, about sharpening their sight.  Looking beyond what is simply in front of them.  Being observant.  I can't tell you how important I think this is--about learning from simply watching and looking and observing.  Hopefully I taught them the basics of this lesson.

So we went to the zoo--which was actually our fallback as the botanical garden didn't open until late morning and looked for shapes.  We looked at the animals' faces and found circles and triangles and ovals.  We saw feeding bins shaped like rectangles and lines, or stripes, on snakes and zebras.  Ben said that a snake was a line when slithering and a circle when wrapped up.  On the tractor we saw big circles and little circles as the wheels, and we even saw cylinder cages for some animals (gold star for Lorelei!).  The antelope had cones for horns.  See all the stuff you can find if you just look?

Field trip number two for the summer...already behind us.

Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire

Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire

Rating: 4 stars

We've discovered the I Can Read It All By Myself Beginner Books.  (For a complete list, click here, and make sure you click to show all 70 book covers...what a trip down memory lane!)  I am having a great time introducing them to Lorelei and Ben.  They both really enjoy them, and Lorelei is really enjoying being able to read a few words on each page. 

But we are also discovering that not all of the books are awesome.  According to my standard, that is, which includes my children's reactions and opinions.

This book is a funny little rhyme where a lioness-like creature really, really, really wants to live in the zoo, but the zookeeper says no.  He shows off all of his neat tricks to a little boy and girl standing by, who are super impressed and thus inform him he belongs not in the zoo, but in a circus.  (Don't they know that circuses are sad, scary places for animals?!?)

It's funny and silly and catchy and inviting, all good things for little kids who are trying to read.  We're heading to the zoo tomorrow, so I was trying to find a book about zoos.  This one won't exactly prepare the kids for what they'll see at the National Zoo, but...it was a fun read anyway.

The Baby BeeBee Bird by Diane Redfield Massie

The Baby BeeBee Bird by Diane Redfield Massie, illustrated by Steven Kellogg

Rating: 5 loud stars!

I'm a big list person. I have found a bunch of "best books" lists on the web and am slowly making my way through them. For the most part, I've not been too impressed. Even the Caldecott book winners, which have plenty of gems among them, have a bunch more duds. I understand it's the lens through which you view the book that makes you think one is spectacular and another is not so awesome. It just seems that the Caldecott people are looking at and reading books with a grown up mindset. I'd like to know if they take all of the nominees home with them or to children's hospitals and read them out loud. Do they see the reaction of the illustrations on the kids' faces? Do they see which ones they select to read quietly (or loudly) by themselves? Because The Baby BeeBee Bird is definitely a book that would win over a children's vote for an award, especially one based not just on illustrations but the story, too. It is wonderful!

Humor in toddlers and preschoolers is a funny thing. Sarcasm is dangerous, and much of adult humor is, sadly, sarcastic meanness. But it's not yet middle school boys farting (though toots are funny in our house any time of day) and flicking boogers on girls. Somehow, Massie gets this and has produced a book that makes both my three year-old and 17 month-old giggle. I'd like to think that it has something to do with my reading of the book. Or Grammy's reading of the book; Grammy was in town visiting when we picked this up from the library. Grammy unknowingly volunteered to be the book Sherpa before she realized we check out about 20 books at a time. Is she still icing that shoulder?? Hope not.

Anyway, Grammy read this book to Lorelei and Ben during dinner last week. It's about a new animal at the zoo, a baby bee bee bird, who naps all days and then sings "BEE BEE BOPPI BOPPI!!" loudly all night long because she's wide awake. Then, in the morning, when she settles in for her nap, all the other animals in the zoo work together and trade in their respective sounds for "BEE BEE BOPPI BOPPI!" to keep the baby bee bee bird awake. Moral of the story: Nighttime is really for sleeping. I LOVE that moral! Since the reader has to say "BEE BEE BOPPI BOPPI!" precisely 4,235,902 times in the book, that alone is pretty funny. (Facial expressions that would be embarressing at any adult-only affair are a requisite for this book.) But what do all kids over 1 year know? What sounds animals make. So when the lions say "BEE BEE BOPPI BOPPI" instead of roaring, and the bears say "BEE BEE BOPPI BOPPI" instead of growling and the hippos say "BEE BEE BOPPI BOPPI" instead of...what do hippos say, again?...it is FUNNY!

This is a great, great book. I almost want to go out and buy it because I want it on-hand every night. Call me a mere mortal, but there are plenty of days when I hit 5 PM and I'm counting the seconds till bedtime--mostly my kids' bedtime, but also my own. This book revs me up, gives me a needed chuckle, lightens the mood in the whole house, and lets my kids and I laugh together. THIS is worthy of an award.

Never, EVER Shout in a Zoo by Karma Wilson

Never, EVER Shout in a Zoo by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Doug Cushman

Rating: 2 stars

Lorelei just ran up to my husband and said "Don't say I didn't warn you!" He looked surprised, then looked at me, and I told him what book it is from--one of the many Karma Wilson books lying around, Never, EVER Shout in a Zoo. There are a few good lines like "Don't say I didn't warn you!" (but that's the best) in this book, and the illustrations are really fun.

BUT it might be a little scary for some little folk. I have to chuckle at myself as I type that...a preschooler book about a zoo that might be too scary? But there are some little ones in our life that are pretty sensitive to some things that you wouldn't quite expect. Here's the story: A little girl shouts in a zoo because her ice cream falls off her cone. This sad yell causes a huge stampede of animals that chase after her--think lions and zebras and apes and bats and foxes and bears chasing after a little 4 year old. The animals then shake the keys out of the zookeeper and lock up the little girl and the other humans in a cage. That might just MIGHT be a bit much for some little kids. Ok, now that I typed this I can understand why it really might be too scary for some kids.

The other BUT in this post/review is that, um, well, you might want to take this review with a grain of salt. Because the copy of the book we got from the library is, um, kind of missing the last page. So we don't know how it ends. I mean, it's pretty obvious--on the left-hand side of the page are three humans, locked up in the cage, glaring accusingly at the right-hand side of the page. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's the little girl with her empty ice cream cone. So let me know if you actually do read the book. Let me know how it ends! I'll be on the edge of my seat until then.

I'm a big, huge fan of Karma Wilson, but this is definitely my least favorite book of hers. Oh well--I guess they all can't be fantastic!