Eye candy kid books

Mimi the Merry-Go-Round Cat
Written by Dorothy Haas
Illustrated by Florence Sarah Winship 

1972

Poor Mimi.  She is "nobody's kitten."  All of her friends have a person to love, but Mimi, with her affinity for candy and bright, colorful rides, is all alone in the big world; at least, until she meets Charlie Chuckles.  It's a simple story with a happy ending.  This little book is really for early readers, but it has a short, colorful story that appeals to little kids who like to flip through books on their own.  Arthur makes up his own version of these kinds of stories at reading time.

Have You Seen a Giraffe Hat?
Written by Irma Joyce,  Illustrated by Robert Storms
1969

This little book has the same kind of appeal as Mimi...it's great for individual reading time.  Arthur recognizes the watering hole animals from one of his favorite movies, The Lion King (his other favorites are Despicable Me and anything starring Scooby Doo). How Benny the Giraffe got his hat is a jungle mystery, but he looks fly in it. This book is a primer on karma.  When the little giraffe acts out of compassion for others, his kindness comes back around threefold.

One Kitten for Kim
 Written by Adelaide Holl
Illustrated by Don Madden 
1969

As a little girl, I was wholly preoccupied with the protagonist's girl name. This is not a book that's age-appropriate for a two-year-old if read verbatim. The incredible images and colors (blue, green and yellow) make it worth a "toddler paraphrase."  It's an adorable little story about how sneaky kids can be, something two-year-olds LOVE.

Grandpa's Policemen Friends 
Written by Bernice Frankel
Illustrated by Florence Sarah Winship 
1967 

This book is a terrific place to talk about what police officers do. Johnny's Gramps takes the reader from patrol car to detective desk.  I like breaking out the toy police car when we read it.

Wrong-way Howie Learns to Slide
Written by Sylvia Peake, Illustrated by Carol Wilde 
1969

Little boy, big head, Deus ex Machina. Great American pastime.  Lovely book.

Here is a link to printable baseball coloring pages to go along with the story.

Aren't You Glad 
Written by Charlotte Zolotow, Illustrated by Elaine Kurtz 
1962 

A little girl with an enormous flower garland, surrounded by butterfly and bird, a little cowboy in Chuck Taylors, twirling ballerinas, fluffy cats tangled in yarn with large, geometric eyes, looming stars and suns all make this book absolutely beautiful.  The message is very zen, focusing on how we are all part of the same universe  

Here is a bio on the artist. 

Here are resources for teaching her books to your child. 

I Love You, Mouse 
Written by John Graham, Illustrated by Tomie DePaola 
1976 

Another book to suit a child's zen education.  The little boy in this story (sketched in lovely monochrome pencil shading) communes with the animals and imagines himself as each of them. This is one of those terrific books for transitioning to bedtime; the last few pages introduce the child's Daddo, who at last scoops up the little boy and declares, "I love you, baby, and since we're people, I've built a house for you, and given you a bed with warm quilts, a cool drink of water, a kiss on the nose, and a quiet good-night." The final image is a beautiful sketch of Little Boy snuggled in his bed surrounded by encroaching trees, moon and owl.  Too sweet! 

Here is a terrific article about the author and here is the illustrator's web page, filled with her lovely art.

Coloring pages by artist Tomie dePaola. 





  

Eric Carle post for Noah

My little blue-eyed extra awesome nephew Noah Michael John loves Eric Carle, so this post is for him.

Part of the whole going to school to teach English includes lesson building...each book is taught as the foundation of a unit, hopefully an interdisciplinary one.  As an undergrad, I found this part of my education intolerably dull.  As a mom, I am really darned glad they made me do it.

So today, I am going to post about a few books we've been reading recently and include some extras for your child's experience with them, whether you are doing the whole home-ed thing or just like us enjoy doing a little extra with the books you read.

The Internet makes being a mom so much easier! 

Ideas for teaching this book

More ideas

Printable coloring page

In the classroom
How to throw a hungry caterpillar party
Here's another one and yet another.
Hungry caterpillar snack tutorial and a cute little printable to go with.
And have some caterpillar cakes while you read it!
An art project suitable even for littles

In the classroom

Classroom ideas
Fun art project from one mama's blog (although this clearly won't work with smunchkins, Roo likes watching us draw so much that we actually do the art and let him "help")

Learning colors printable worksheet PDF from the Eric Carle page

Brown Bear connect-the-dots pdf

Brown Bear in the classroom

These are the EC books we are reading so far this summer (at least until we pay our library fines!), but here's an idea for The Very Lonely Firely: make some adorable firefly lanterns with instructions from The Long Thread.  Thank heaven for bloggin' mamas!

And if you can read Japanese, you can spend some of your kids' college fund on awesome merch from this Japanese web site.

I meant to post more links, but my own little hungry caterpillar just woke up from his nap.  Have fun, people!  Peace and love.

Arthur in Wonderland...A Mad Tea Party Pictorial

Roo turned 2..happy happy boy, happy happy day!

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat...

'Twas brilling and the slithy toves

Did Gyre and Gimble in the Wabe

All mimsy were the Borogoves

(and the mome raths outgrabe)

Arthur's Book Reviews at 21 months

Andy Warhol's Colors by Susan Goldman Rubin

Arthur loves color, and as I mentioned before, the arts are very important to Justin and me, and Justin's parents are artists, so we really want to instill in the boy a strong love of art; for those reasons, I picked up Andy Warhol's Colors at the cutest little pop art store (Pop Gallery) in Downtown Disney (think Suess prints, Kosheki dolls, wooden robot toys, and original pop art everywhere--I was smitten).  

Neither Justin nor I are big Warhol fans (gasp!) just as we are not really (hope I don't lose readers for saying this) Kahlo fans, much to the chagrin of generally everyone we know.  But we do enjoy some of their art and certainly their contributions to modern art.  

That said, the book is a lovely, bright, enchanting display of color, and Arthur loves looking at the pink cows, the blue horse, the golden butterfly (Vanishing Animals: Butterfly, c.1986 [Yellow on Purple]), and it's not one of those generic, run-of-the-mill Learn about Colors kind of books.  Seeing color in context is cool, but sometimes I think Arthur looks a t a red ball and doesn't know if red means the ball or the color or the shape. The Warhol book emphasizes color so strongly that I believe the colors are unquestionable even to a toddler.

Nutsy the Robot books by Mark Shulman

 Nutsy the Robot books are by far Arthur's new Is Your Mama a Llama? (his favorite around 9 months or so all the way up to about 15 months or so).  He has loved these books for a while, but his love only seems to grow with time.  It's a pop-up book collection, and Arthur loves rotating Rusty's arms to help him clean up for bed, and I love that the books focus on rituals that we are working on ourselves.  And it's no big secret that Yorktown Owens dig the heck out of robots (add to Arthur's limited vocabulary the peculiar fact that he says the word "robot" quite well).    I wish there were more than two of these books for us to enjoy.

Another thing I love about these books is that they are rhymed in alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter a la Emily Dickinson (the meter of the "Gilligan's Island" theme song or "Amazing Grace,":

ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

Dickinson is one of my favorite poets, and after having familiarized Arthur with the meter and rhyme, I sometimes read her poems to him.  

Given his way, Arthur would have us read Nutsy the Robot over and over again.  There are two things Arthur just can't get his fill of: Nutsy books and bananas.

                                                                   

Hush, Little Alien by Daniel Kirk

This book is that classic, soothing nursery rhyme in outer space and with four-armed, candy-nosed aliens.  What more can I say?  We all love it.  Instead of a diamond ring and a mockingbird, the little alien dude gets a laser beam and a tool belt to build a rocket ship...freaking sweet. Replace the word "alien" with your kid's name, and the little man will be utterly entranced.  Sing it, and you have a lullaby that doesn't make you feel like an anachronistic 19th-century wetnurse.  

Arthur's Book Reviews, Summer 2009 edition

With Us, on the Earth and Sea by Eric Carle  This book is from the collection All Around Us.   Arthur loves its vivid illustrations and it keeps his attention well with images of words he is learning like "cars" and "trees."  

As a mom, I find the simple text of Eric Carle books make it easy to discuss what's going on in the page and ask questions without Arthur hitting his toddler ADD limit.  Also, this is one of those books suited for bedtime, ending with "People Sleep," a nice transition into Arthur's lights-out routine.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle It's no wonder that Arthur's cousin Noah simply flips over an Eric Carle book.  Like Wtth Us, the illlustrations here are captivating.  The text is a little more suited to older children, but Arthur still really enjoys it, and the text can always be "truncated" by the parent reading it.

One of the things Arthur really likes about this book is the whimsical juxtaposition of real animal colors with silly ones.  Among the yellow duck, white dog and green frog is a purple cat and blue horse (some of Arthur's favorite animals...he enjoys adding a little "Mew Mew" to the story when he sees the cat, a "meep meep" for the red bird and a rich, throaty "Woo Woo" for the dog).

The other thing Arthur likes is the rhyming.  He giggles at the repetition of sounds.  As a parent, I appreciate this book help with his color learning.  I prefer the more succinct stories that end with some kind of sleep reference for bedtime, so I find this one's good for times when Arthur's more mentally active earlier in the day and we can discuss the pictures.

My Animals/Mis Animales, My Garden/Mi Jardin, and My Food/Mi Comida by Rebecca Emberley 

I first found this (treasure!) collection of books on the shelf on one of my dirty little secret excursions to Pottery Barn Kids.  We live just over a mile from Tulsa's charming outdoor little semi-upscale shopping mall Utica Square, and sometimes I can't help myself; for all my talk of and commitment to simple living and avoiding the demon corporations and the materialistic trappings of many suburban moms' dreams, I am, after all, human, and I love stuff. Cool stuff.  Stuff from Pier One and Crabtree & Evelyn and Pottery Barn Kids.    

Our commitment to expose Arthur to multiple languages and prepare him for immersion school has been a challenge, so I was very excited to see these books, which are perfectly appropriate for his age.  Each book focuses on one theme and the pages are simple, each with a bright image and the corresponding word in Spanish.  Arthur loves the pictures and giggles at the sound of the Spanish words, which he is starting to recognize as having a distinctly different sound at this stage in his language acquisition.

With Mis Animales, we make the appropriate animal sounds or motions (wiggly nose for el conejo, for example).  This book is lots of fun and easy to read.

My Garden/Mi Jardin is a book we enjoy reading before outdoor play.  It's fun to say "los parajos" as we watch the birds cross the sky, and gets a big smile from Little.

Arthur's top pick is My Food/Mi Comida.  Much of the food is produce, and so many of the words and images are familiar to him.  His favorite, of course, is his favorite snack, las bananas.

ABC's by Charley Harper

Arthur loves this book, Mom and Dad love this book.  Charley Harper is rad.  We love modernism and the illustrations in this book are beautiful!  Each page is divided geometrically into neat squares of color and image, and would be lovely just hanging on a child's wall (a child whose room wasn't already a Peter Max shrine, that is!).  Most letters correspond with an insect or animal, and as I mentioned before, the animals are always great fun for Arthur.  This is another simple text, easy read book perfect for learning time and Moms and Dads who want their children to be enveloped in art and sound and beauty.  The inside cover is a print I am in love with and even Arthur gets stuck pointing at all the little animals and saying " (gasp) MOM!" (his way of saying "Look!  Check it out Mom!"

HERE is a bit of the inside cover:

And a page from the book:

And that brings me to 123's by Charley Harper.  

I love these books so much, the unnecessarty apostrophes don't even make me cringe.  Much.

Each page in this book has a number and a description of the image to follow, beginning with the alliterative "1 Ladybug Lounging" (Arthur loves alliteration and it is an excellent poetic/linguistic device for a 17-month old to be exploring) followed by the image seen on the cover.  With "3 Chimpanzees Playing" we get an adorable image of a parent ape and his/her two babies, so we get a whole discussion out of that page, as with many of the pages in this book.  This is another good one for learning time.

The image of the water striders is my favorite.  Arthur likes them all.

Please, Baby, Please by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee

Spike Lee, amazing producer, writer, director, actor...um, children's book writer?

I love Spike and the illustration on the cover charmed the heck out of me AND Arthur.  He cracked up over just about every page.  This isn't a super educational book, but it's adorable, and Arthur and I could both relate to the toddler-adult communication gap all too well!  This book was cute for Abot and he loved it, but one thing that makes it fun to read is the built-in parent comedy for moms and dads.  The book follows a little curly-headed angel through her day, beginning with "Go back to bed, baby, please, baby, please," our little darling bouncing on her near-passed-out mommy's tummy full of life and energy, mommy sprawled across the floor, a book on her knee, a toy ring on her toe, baby chaos all around.  

Underwear Do's and Dont's by Todd Parr

Arthur isn't really into undies yet, but he knows what they are, he thinks they are pretty cool, and also we call his diapers "undies."  This book is very silly, and Arthur being the kind of child prone to wearing undies and bras on his head whilst doing laundry particularly enjoys the discussion of wearing underwear on one's head.  Bright colors, silly illustrations, zebras in striped undies, what more can we say???