Thursday, February 17, 2011

Good Books - Reviews of our Favorites

We LOVE a good book!
Strangely there are no pictures of me reading to our girls -
I wonder why?  I'm always the one behind the camera :)
We usually read quite a bit throughout the day. 
Always before nap and bed times. 
VIDEO:  Silver Reading to Summer

I regularly find our girls exploring a book either alone or together. 





Reading is such an important skill -
If you can read, you can learn anything.
Ideas, how-to, history, knowledge...anything you are interested in -
the world is in-front of your eyes! 
Especially sharing that adventure with someone cuddled next to you is extrememly rewarding - Mom, Dad, sister or a doll! 



Silver reading to Summer

While there are many good books - the Book of Mormon is the greatest!
Our girls love scripture stories.
We try to read them a couple of verses of scriptures a day in the mornings before Colt leaves for work.
Before nap or before bed we read at least one story out of the Friend magazine. 
It is chuck-full of great stories that bring the gospel to a child's level.
Wonderful gospel resource!!


Here are a few of our FAVORITE books!
**K Library - An Undone Fairy Tale - by Ian Lendler  Illustrated by Whitney Martin
One of our all time favorites!!  This is child's writing at it's best!  A story about a princess locked in a tower and the brave night that rescues her....except that your child reads so fast that the illustrator isn't able to paint the pictures fast enough...We laughed all the way through it at each page turn...the horses and armor weren't ready the only costumes available were tutus.  So the knights rush into battle wearing tutus and riding fish!  The dragon wasn't ready and was still in the shower because you read so fast!  We have grape popsicle walls, banana swords and crayon-trees in this great adventure!  A MUST read!
**The Hippo-Not-Amus by Tony and Jan Payne  Illustrated by Buy Parker-Rees
Portly is a hippo that's not sure he wants to be one.  He keeps trying to be different animals and ends up as a "hippo-gir-ele-bat-onoceros!"  Great story about being yourself and wonderful illustrations.
**Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson Illustrated by Kevin O'Malley
We read this book in my Marriage classes at BYU - lots to learn about marriage from this one! A great twist on the Cinderella story - CinderEdna lives next door to Cinderella.  While Cinderella is sitting among the cinders after her work is done thinking about her troubles, CinderEdna is busy with her mean step-sisters too, but whistles while she works, learns all sorts of things, and does extra jobs for neighbors to earn $$.  CinderEdna takes the bus to the ball and wore comfortable loafers with her dress she bought with the $$ her earned herself.  At midnight Cinderella runs to her pumpkin carriage and CinderEdna runs to the bus.  While both girls lost a shoe in their rush, the Prince doesn't even know Cinderella's name while Rupert knows that his is named Edna and goes on a search for her.  Entertaining with a great lesson behind it!
**Fanny's Dream"  by Caralyn Buehner Illustrated by Mark Buehner
Another kids book that speaks volumes about dating and marriage - recommended and read in BYU marriage classes.  Fanny is a sturdy girl from Wyoming who dreams of marrying a prince - or at least the Mayor's son!  The Mayor gives a grand ball and.....her fairy godmother never shows up!  She ends up marrying Heber, worked along-side him on their farm.  Life is never fancy, but it is funny!  They have a family, and one night amid ordinary life...her fairy godmother shows up ready to take her to a mayor's ball that night, and she'll fix everything so she can have her dream.  "Do you want to go or not?"  Not - Answers Fanny. 
**F Library A Day with No Crayons by Elizabeth Rusch
This girls LOVES coloring.  One day she runs out of paper and colors on the wall.  Her mom takes away her crayons for a day.  Her life turns grey and all the color goes out of the pictures because her crayons are gone.  Gradually color returns to the pages as she discovers color all around her.  We enjoyed looking at the art she made with things from nature :)
**Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Conner Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser
Fancy Nancy books are about a little girl who loves to be fancy.  River loves fancy things, and loves to go on adventures with Fancy Nancy.  Nancy uses "fancy" words and then explains what they mean, teaching kids vocabulary.  Example:  Aroma:  Fancy word for smell.
**F Library The Boy Who Loved Bananas by George Elliott  Illustrated by Andrej Krystoforski
Animals are a favorite of ours, so this book was an instant hit about a boy who loves to go to the zoo.  His favorite animals are the monkeys.  He only eats bananas after that and....turns into a monkey!
**F Library How Full is Your Bucket?  by Tom Rath
This story is so well done.  An intruiging story that teaches about feelings.  The characters have buckets above their heads.  When they are serving others and happy, their buckets are full.  If they are mean or look negatively at things, their buckets are empty.  They fill up or empty out depending on their choices and how others treat them.  River took the lesson from this and applied it everyday.  My bucket feels empty Mom.  Or, Can you see how full my bucket is?  All the way to the top!!  Mom, I just helped Silver, Do you see those drip drops going in my bucket Aand hers!
**Art & Max by David Wiesner
Imagination at its best.  This one has very few words.  This is about a lizard who loves art and accidentally turns another lizard into a drawing - his adventures in bringing him back to real life.  Ay one point his lizard friend is just a bunch of squiggles at the bottom of the page.  Too Fun - An imagination adventure. 
**Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You?  by Dr. Deuss
Mr Brown can copy a lot of things with his voice.  Can you?   We enjoy matching our voice with the pictures and then trying to mimick other things we see and hear.
**F Library - Tell Me Why Series - this is put out by Readers Digest and an absolute joy to read. Well illustrated - to me illustrations make or break a child's book. It can be a good story, but if the pictures don't add to it.....for me a good kids book needs to have fabulous pictures!
Back to the books - this series is full of questions that kids ask about animals, science, nature and their bodies - it asks a question and then answers it on a child's level full of fun pictures. This is a must read for River with all her questions and desire for answers!!
**The Monster at the end of this Book by Jon Stone illustrated by Mike Smollin
Grover from Sesame Street is scared of monsters, and the title said that there was a monster at the end of this book!!  He doesn't want to get to the end, so if you don't turn any pages you can't get to the end right?  He tries tying the pages together, nailing them, building walls, as River giggles and laughes and turns the pages.  Fun!
**I Love You as Big as the World" by David Van Buren Illustrated by Tim Warnes
A beautiful book about love

After all - that is what reading is all about - LOVE!

1 comment:

  1. Yay for book reviews! I'll have to get these sometime. Question: I have a hard time getting Rain to sit through a Friend story, probably because you don't turn the pages. Did you run into that at all?

    ReplyDelete