animals « reading with zadie

animals

18 months + / 2 years + / 2.5 years + / 3 years + / 3.5 years + / 4 years + / animals — Comments Off
28
Mar 12

Books featuring mice

“A New House for Mouse,” written and illustrated by Petr Horáček

Mouse can’t fit her big apple into her little house, so she goes looking for a new home.

Age range: 18 months and up

“Tiny’s Big Adventure,” by Martin Waddell. Illustrated by John Lawrence.

Tiny, a mouse, and his big sister go exploring.

Age range: 2 years and up

“Mother, Mother, I want Another,” by Maria Polushkin Robbins. Illustrated by Jon Goodell.

A baby mouse and his mother have a miscommunication at bedtime.

Age range: 2 years and up

“Mouse Soup,” written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel

A mouse tells silly stories to trick the weasel who is trying to cook him.

Age range: 2 1/2 years and up

“Livingstone Mouse,” by Pamela Duncan Edwards. Illustrated by Henry Cole

A young mouse tries to find the most wondrous place on earth (China) to make his new home.

Age range: 3 years and up

“The Subway Mouse,” written and illustrated by Barbara Reid

A young mouse finds his way out of the subway tunnel he grew up in.

Age range: 3 years and up

“The Tale of Two Bad Mice,” “The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse,” “The Tailor of Glouster,” and “The Tale of Johnny Town Mouse,” written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter

Delightful tales of mice raiding a dollhouse, tidying up after bees, doing a tailor’s work for him, and visiting unfamiliar places.

Age range: 3 1/2 years and up

“Stuart Little,” by E.B. White

Our first big chapter book! Stuart is an adventurous little mouse who doesn’t get into situations that are too scary for a four year old.

Age range: 4 years and up

12 months + / animals — 2 Comments
1
Feb 10

“Hooray for Fish!” by Lucy Cousins

cousins_eyefish2

We spend a disproportionate amount of time at the library parked in the stacks in front of the Lucy Cousins shelf. Her “Maisy” books have been in heavy rotation all fall and winter, which has been kind of maddening. As much as I can appreciate Maisy and her adventures, I do wonder if Maisy *ever* frowns (except in “Maisy Big, Maisy Small,” of course). And after repeatedly reading such varied titles as “Sweet Dreams Maisy,” “Maisy Goes to Bed,” and “Maisy’s Bedtime,” I’ve pretty much reached my limit. So I was happy to find “Hooray for Fish!” on the shelf next to all the Maisy books and happier still that it was compelling enough to subvert a fourth reading of “Maisy Goes Camping.”

“Hooray for Fish!” features a little fish who is greeting all of her fishy friends. She greets the spotty fish, the stripy fish, the happy fish, the gripy fish, etc. The fish are colorful and clever in such a way that makes it fun to talk about all of them. There’s a fish that looks like a bee, one that looks like a strawberry, and an “ele-fish,” which looks like an elephant. The text is pleasantly rhyming, but with only a few words on each page you don’t feel rushed by the rhymes. The illustrations have the same look as the Maisy books–heavy black lines and bold, solid colors–but you’ll never once have to wonder if that damned squirrel’s name is pronounced “Sigh-ril” or “See-ril.”

cousins_hairyfish

18 months + / animals — 2 Comments
27
Jan 10

“If the Dinosaurs Came Back,” by Bernard Most

Dino dentist As a former geologist I’m overly sensitive to intimations that dinosaurs and people overlapped. I have this fear that when kids read books featuring children who find a newly hatched dinosaur or dinosaurs who give their human parents goodnight kisses, they’ll start buying into the idea that the dinosaurs went extinct because humans didn’t invite them onto the Ark. The fact that no person has ever seen a living dinosaur means that any books featuring the two species have to somehow convey a sense of fantasy, which can be tricky when you’re writing for toddlers.

“If the Dinosaurs Came Back” makes it very clear that the dinosaurs are no longer with us while reading (happily) like a brainstorming session amongst 6-year old dinosaur enthusiasts. Each page features a different task that a dinosaur could perform if they made a comeback: Taking the place of ladders for painters, giving dentists a whole lot of teeth to take care of, keeping the grass short, etc. It’s a potentially great way to convey their scale, and some of the scenarios do this well: A dinosaur could, for instance, give people rides to work. But it’s misleading to suggest that dinosaurs were as tall as mountains, thus giving mountain climbers new mountains to climb. And it’s doubly inaccurate to suggest that dinosaurs could push rainclouds away so that the sun shines all the time. But it’s a fantasy, right?
Iguanodon fighting fires

Dinosaur beach

Our favorite part of the book is the key in the back, which shows a couple dozen dinosaurs and lists their names. We frequently skip right to it so we can “talk about all dinosaurs,” and I’m planning to photocopy it before returning it to the library. Any misgivings I have about the human-dinosaur interactions or the errors in scale are more than made up for by this key. It’s unbelievably adorable to hear Zadie rattling off names like corythosaurus and diplodocus, and I’m grateful to be learning learning along with her.

We’re in full-on dinosaur obsession mode here and I’d love to find a few good dinosaur books. If you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments.

18 months + / animals — 4 Comments
20
Jan 10

“A Zoo for Mister Muster,” by Arnold Lobel

We’re reading in themes these days, or at least in two themes: zoos and dinosaurs. We lucked out again on the zoo front by finding “A Zoo for Mister Muster” at the library last week. “A Zoo for Mister Muster” was published almost 40 years ago. I don’t remember reading this one as a kid, but I read a lot of books that had a similar feel. The peachy tones overlain by sketchy black lines are like the words to nursery rhymes: You might have forgotten them after the 6th grade, but they come back in a flood of familiarity as soon as you’re re-exposed to them with your child. When I read this one to Zadie, I kind of feel like I’m sharing a bit of my childhood with her.

The story is simple and sweet. Mister Muster, a well-dressed fellow with rosy cheeks, spends every sunny day at the zoo. The animals love him so much that when the elephant steals the zookeeper’s key and lets all of the animals out of their cages, they go straight to Mister Muster’s house. He happily lets them in and serves them a big chocolate cake while the zookeeper and a crew of weapons-brandishing policemen (“Open up in the name of the law!”) search for the missing animals. They eventually find them at Mister Muster’s and bribe them back to the zoo by offering Muster a job as the assistant zookeeper.

Monkeys

Police
“A Zoo for Mister Muster” is a good companion to “Goodnight, Gorilla,” by Peggy Rathmann. Both stories involve animals letting themselves out of their cages. But the former ends with a person going back to the zoo with the animals while the latter ends with a gorilla and mouse sneaking back out of the zoo and into the zookeeper’s bed. I find it odd that both of these books have animals getting out of their cages because they want to be with people, rather than for any of the real reasons why animals might want to break free. But I suppose the stories wouldn’t be as heart-warming if the animals trotted off into the jungle, lazy and vulnerable after years of being fed blueberry muffins from Starbucks.

12 months + / animals — Comments Off
18
Jan 10

“Welcome to the Zoo,” by Alison Jay

Koala Zadie started demanding “more zoo books” when we got home from a day at San Francisco Zoo last weekend. After we read the two zoo books we had at home (“Goodnight Gorilla” and “Put Me in the Zoo”) about a dozen times, we headed to the library for more. As anyone who has visited a library with a toddler in tow knows, trying to find a book about a specific topic can be like trying to sing one song while listening to another through headphones. So I was especially pleased that the one zoo book I managed to find during our visit was a wonderful one.

The illustrations in “Welcome to the Zoo” are all two-page spreads of the type of zoo that we all wish we could visit: where giraffes sneak licks of your ice cream cone when you’re not looking, gorillas sit on benches, reading the paper as you walk by, and you have to watch out for penguins sliding across your path on their way to lunch. It’s a fanciful book where the animals and people do both ordinary and extraordinary things. The pictures are warm and bright, done with oil paint and a crackling varnish that gives them an old fashioned feel. There are no words (a quality I love in a book), but amid the chaos at the zoo there are stories hidden within the pictures. Sometimes we tell the little stories, other times we do more of an “I Spy…” kind of thing. The endpapers have hints of more things to look for.

jay_dolphins
Racoons It’s a funny thing, watching a kid reconcile the images of animals she has only seen in books with the real things at the zoo. A monkey in a book incites squeals of joy and cries of “swing! ape! greela!” But real life gorillas, even ones with tiny little babies in tow, were of no interest. Watching a grizzly bear catching and eating a live fish? Ho hum at the time, but a story we tell over and over again now, partly because the grizzlies in “Welcome to the Zoo” are also eating fish. And thanks to the zoo visit she now realizes that animals eat real fish, not goldfish crackers. Perhaps some food chain friends are in our future.

18 months + / animals / feelings — Comments Off
13
Jan 10

“Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!” by Candace Fleming and G. Brian Karas

Mr. McGreely There are a lot of Zadie’s books that I love, but few that I find myself relating to as an adult. Yes, “Who Likes Rain?” reminds me of how it felt to go puddle jumping when the puddles came up to my ankles, “Olivia” reminds me of being sent to my room for misbehaving, and “Miss Bindergarten…” reminds me of my own kindergarten Thanksgiving celebration. But when Mr. McGreely battles with three little bunnies for control of his garden in “Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!,” I’m reminded of my frustration with last summer’s attempt to grow tomatoes in pots. As much as I adore and admire the little bunnies, I find myself rooting for Mr. McGreely with all of his crotchety middle-aged obsessiveness.

In this book Mr. McGreely plants a vegetable garden. When the sun goes down three hungry bunnies get into his garden and “Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!” He wakes up in the morning, sees his decimated plants, and builds a fence around the garden to keep the bunnies out. The bunnies get in again, and he builds a bigger fence around the smaller fence around the garden. The battle escalates until there are two fences, a trench, and a high brick wall around the garden. This keeps the bunnies out until they sneak into McGreely’s basket as he’s climbing over the wall to collect his veggies. The story is simple but all too familiar to anyone who has planted a garden with high hopes.

muncha_tippytippy

Mr. McGreely and the bunnies

The illustrations are scribbly and earth-toned, but it’s the text that stands out. It’s filled with internal rhymes, so it doesn’t sound quite like a poem, but is as fun to read. The sounds of the bunnies breaking into the garden become more involved with each additional hurdle they face so that by the time they’re navigating the trench and two fences we hear:

Tippy-tippy-tippy, Pat!

Dive-paddle, Splash! Splash! Splash!

Dig-scrabble, Scratch! Scratch Scratch!

Spring-hurdle, Dash! Dash! Dash!

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!

This book has more words per page and a more complex plot than Zadie is accustomed to, but we always make it the whole way through. To my surprise, when she wants to read this one she doesn’t say anything about the bunnies or about munching. Instead, she says “Em-greely.”

18 months + / animals / feelings — 3 Comments
11
Jan 10

“Boo Hoo Bird,” by Jeremy Tankard

This book is currently on Zadie’s list of haunted items in our house. We’ve witnessed the posession of toys before, but this is the first time it has happened to a book. I usually have no idea why a once-beloved object (a benign plastic boat, a green monkey, a flashcard with a baboon on it…) becomes taboo. In the case of “Boo Hoo Bird” I have a guess.

“Boo Hoo Bird” is the story of a blue bird who gets bonked on the head while playing catch with a raccoon. He’s hurt and no one seems to be able to make him feel better despite offering hugs, kisses, cookies, or rounds of hide-and-seek. When all of the bird’s friends are crying, upset because they can’t make him feel better, he cheers up and you realize that he’s been milking it the whole time.
Fox and bird
Much as I’d like to believe that Zadie’s with me on the awkwardness of the book’s conclusion, I think her aversion to the book has more to do with the fact that the bird’s inability to feel better doesn’t fit any of the story lines she knows. She’s in a big storytelling phase and knows a dozen or so stories about things that she’s experienced, whether she remembers the actual events or not. One of these stories is about her cousin who bumped his head. We go through the story pretty much daily: Charlie bumped his head, he cried, his mom picked him up, gave him a hug and kiss, rubbed his back, and said “It’s OK, Charlie.” The protagonist’s slow recovery in “Boo Hoo Bird” deviates from the story she knows so well, and I think it distresses her. I don’t think she’s consciously aware of the concept of manipulating a situation so that others can continue to dote on you, though if we’re up from 3:30-5:00am again tonight I’ll start to wonder. But for now she clearly doesn’t get that bird is being a whiny baby.

We have the book for another couple of weeks before it has to go back to the library, and I’m hoping that Zadie comes around and gives it another shot. The illustrations are bold, bright, and cartoony. The pages are filled with chaotic flowers and the animals’ expressions are loving and kind. And for an extremely mom-attached kid it’s a good example of the ways in which different people can help.

Racoon, Bird, and Rabbit

18 months + / animals / weather — 1 Comment
7
Jan 10

“Who Likes Rain?” by Wong Herbert Yee

Umbrella During the one year I spent living in San Diego, the lack of winter didn’t bother me, but the lack of rain was really unsettling. As an east coaster, I’d never realized how much I relied on rainy days as an excuse to do quiet things inside and work through blue thoughts. Rather than being a shining respite from the dreary grey springs of Cape Cod, the perpetual sunshine in Southern California seemed an affront to my occasional need to wallow. Wong Herbert Lee’s “Who Likes Rain?” captures the range of feelings we, and other creatures, experience on rainy days–from boredom to contemplation and elation.

The book starts off with a girl looking sadly out of her window at the rain falling on a cherry tree. “Who wants rain?” she asks as she listens to the sound of the rain hitting the windowpanes and awning. We see trees and flowers, ducks and fish, frogs and worms enjoying the showers while cats, old trucks, and the neighbor’s dog take their places inside to stay dry. The girl pokes around outside, catching raindrops in her hat, chasing her umbrella, and observing animals until the rain stops. The story ends with her jumping happily into a puddle.

"Down, down, down come the drops of rain."

"Who likes rain? Not my neighbor's dog."

The text is filled with rainy, rhyming onomatopoeias: “Pit-pit-pit on the windowpane,” and “Pitty-plip-plop, Pitty-pat-SPLAT,” and “On my umbrella rum-a-tum-tum” that pleasantly roll of the tongue. The illustrations are done with Prismacolors on watercolor paper, and they have a lovely, grainy, washed-out texture. The pages are filled with grey streaks of rain falling onto spring green grass and colorful raincoats–again a nice combination of gloomy and cheerful. Zadie loves the rain sounds as well as guessing the answers to questions like “Who likes rain? Croak, croak…” Yee has a website with links to more illustrations and books. I’m especially curious to check out “Tracks in the Snow.”

12 months + / alphabets / animals / numbers / school — Comments Off
4
Jan 10

“Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten,” by Joseph Slate and Ashley Wolff

Sometimes it seems like half of our home library–or Zadie’s portion of it anyway–consists of books featuring a different animal for each letter of the alphabet. How many animal alphabet books could one possibly need? Yes, A is for alligator, but it’s also for allspice, allen wrench, and almonds, three things I hope Zadie encounters more frequently than alligators. “Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten” is an animal alphabet book, but it’s more complex and engaging than most in this category.

The premise is that for the class’s 100th day of kindergarten, each student has to bring in 100 of something. The students range from pigs to voles and their teacher, Miss Bindergarten, is a dog. The pages alternate between illustrations of the children getting ready (“Patricia sorts her crayons. Quentin* revs toy cars. Raffie lifts the lid up on one hundred dinosaurs.” ) and scenes of Miss Bindergarten getting ready for the 100th day of kindergarten. The first few times I read this book, I felt a sense of melancholy surrounding Miss Bindergarten’s preparations. We see her walking through the rain to get to her classroom, umbrella dripping as she lugs tote bags and carts full of supplies. And we see her making ice cubes at home in her pajamas the night before. In each case, she looks like she’s exhausted from the effort. But the more I read it, the more I felt soothed by the calmness of her work. After all, doesn’t everyone want to have a patient, dedicated kindergarten teacher who cooks up mini-celebrations that involve counting and sharing and 100th day punch?

"Ian brings a relative who's lived a hundred years."

"Miss Bindergarten gets ready for the 100th day of kindergarten."

With its hodgepodge of colors and strangely anthropomorphized animals (e.g. a dog in duck shoes, a trenchcoat, and a kerchief), the illustrations didn’t immediately draw me in. But each page is incredibly detailed with wonderful kindergarten-y things: labelled cubbies tucked into shelves, drawings of each kid’s favorite food hanging on the wall, and an aquarium with 100 baby fish. As Miss Bindergarten moves around the room you find yourself spotting the same objects from a new perspective. That “Can you find…?” quality combined with the animals, letters, and numbers makes this one book that I’m hoping we’re still reading when Zadie’s in kindergarten.

* Quick! Can you think of a marsupial that starts with the letter Q?

12 months + / animals / extreme habitats / pop-ups — Comments Off
28
Dec 09

“Creatures of the Desert World,” by the National Geographic Society

Owls For years, my little sister’s favorite book was “Wonders of the Desert World.” I was hoping to track it down at my parents’ house over Christmas, but it apparently–and ironically–was left out in the rain at some point. We were able to recall peccaries, owls, jackrabbits, pack rats, and snakes, but that was about it.

“Creatures of the Desert World” features a similar set of animals, but presented in a truly amazing pop-up/action format. When you pull on something, it doesn’t just slide in the direction you’re pulling. Instead, the animals jump, pounce, and flap in surprisingly creative ways. At this point, I think we’ve found every little lizard, pocket mouse, and snake that there is to find, but for a long time we’d discover something new during each reading. Some of our favorite features are the cacti that stand a good 8 inches high off the page, a pack rat that scurries into a nest that’s viewable only by opening a secret door in a cactus, baby wrens nestled that can be seen through the window in the cactus spines, and peccaries that you can barely see peeking out of the sand.

Cacti

Scorpion

Mountain lions

We have lots of books featuring photos of animals and a great many more with animals that are so anthropomorphized that they’re unrecognizable (um, Arthur is an anteater). This is one of the few books we have with realistic, artistic portrayals of animals in their natural habitats. The illustrations are lovely, and I get a kick out of the fact that the book had an illustrator (Barbara Gibson), an Art Director (Jody Bolt), and two Paper Engineers (John Strejan and James Roger Diaz).

My mother-in-law gave this book to Zadie when she was only 6 months old, and I remember thinking that it would be years before she’d be able to understand that some books need to be handled with care. But she’s an unusually gentle kid (and unusually smart, but whose kid isn’t?) so we pulled this book off the shelves several months ago and it has been a staple ever since. But parents of spastic rippers should probably keep this on a high shelf until their children go to college.

reading with zadiebooks for a little bookworm