One Shoe, Two Shoes (Caryl Hart)

Title:  One Shoe, Two Shoes 

Author: Caryl Hart 

Illustrator: Edward Underwood 

Target Ages:  1-7 

Genre:  Concept, Early Reader 

Publisher Summary:  Shoes, shoes, and more shoes…This book is bursting with shoes of all different colors, sizes, and shapes.  There’s a pair here to suit everyone—even a family of mice. 

First Lines:

One shoe
Two shoes
Red shoes
Blue shoes
Old shoes
New shoes 

Evaluation:
Author Caryl Hart has written a fresh, new text in the vein of the Dr. Seuss classic One Fish, Two Fish.. 

Edward Underwood’s vibrant illustrations add another engaging dimension to the text with his dog and mouse shenanigans. 

One Shoe, Two Shoes is a exciting frolic with a band of mischievous mice and a lively dog.  It is ideal for parents and educators looking for exciting early readers. 

Hart and Underwood also collaborated on another excellent early reader:  Big Box Little Box.  This fun cat and mouse tale is sure to delight children.

Activities and Extension Ideas for Lesson Plans:

• Math:  Practice counting and numeral words.
• Onomatopoeia:  Identify sound words.  Kids can add some of their own sound words to go with the action of the text.
• Colors:  Primary colors are highlighted and often referred to in the text. 
• Rhyming Words:  True and slant rhymes abound for practice saying and identify.
• Reading:  Simple, often repetitive text make for an ideal early reader.  
• Verbs:  Identify action words in the text. Then, create a list of other action words based on the illustrations. 

Perfect Picture Book Friday.

Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary (Julie Larios)

Title:  Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary

Author: Julie Larios

Illustrator:  Julie Paschkis

Target Ages:  2-7

Genre:  Picture Book Poetry Collection

Publisher Summary: 

Have you ever seen a yellow elephant, glowing in the jungle sun?

Have you seen a green frog—splash!—turn blue?

Or a red donkey throw a red-hot tantrum?

In this bright bestiary, poet Julie Larios and painter Julie Paschkis color a menagerie of animals in brilliantly unexpected hues—encouraging us to see the familiar in surprising ways. 

Poem Sample:

“Brown Mouse”

Little brown clown,

looking for crumbs,

comes sneaking, sniffing, skittering

all around—sounds

like she jitterbugging

on tinfoil, sharp toenails

clicking and clacking

through the house.

She’s in a hurry

that’s for sure,

this brown mouse.

Evaluation:

This collection of 14 colorful poems are sure to surprise and delight young children.  The lyrical words capture the real and wonder of the animals while the vibrant pictures illustrate the fantastic and unexpected.  

Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary is a wonderful poetic experience.  I recommend it  for preschool and primary classrooms. 

Activities and Extension Ideas for Lesson Plans:

• Colors:  Practice or review colors and color words. 
• Poetry:  Using a favorite color and animals, children can write their own creative sentence or short poem.
• Sound Devices:  Identify and discuss sound devices like rhyme and alliteration.
• Grouping:  Discuss ways to put the animals in groups like ones the students have seen in real life or touched.  Other groups can be based on type of animal (reptile, mammal, etc.) or where it lives (trees, water, house). 
• Art:  Create one or more animals using unexpected colors, patterns, or textures.
• Fantasy vs. Reality:  Use the pictures as a spring board to discuss the difference between fantasy and reality.  Which parts are realistic?  Which are imaginative?  For older students, ask them to guess why the illustrator used some of the imaginative elements. 

Visit Live Your Poem for more Poetry Friday fun!

Also visit Suzanne Leonard Hill's Perfect Picture Book Round Up.  

The Littlest Things Give the Loveliest Hugs (Mark Sperring)

Title:  The Littlest Things Give the Loveliest Hugs  

Author: Mark Sperring

Illustrator: Maddie Frost   

Target Ages: 0-6

Genre:  Bedtime Picture Book

Publisher Summary: 

From ducklings

to seal pups,

from bunnies

to cubs,

the littlest things

give the

loveliest

hugs!

In this tender celebration of love, you’ll find the sweetest bug hug, the cutest fox cuddle, and the gentlest elephant embrace you’ve ever seen!

First Lines:

How do you do it, my sweet beetle bug?

You’re ever so clever at giving a hug…

You snuggle so nicely, it really is true…

Nobody, nowhere, can cuddle like you!

Memorable Moment:

Every page is a memorable moment! 

Evaluation:

I fell in love with this book instantly!  From start to finish, the poetic language and endearing pictures pulled me in. This story is perfect for little ones cuddled on laps or snuggled close. 

The soft, vivid colors capture animals with their babies, such as seals nose to nose in the ocean, mice snuggling in the wheat field, koalas clinging to their moms in a tree, penguins holding their babies on an icy terrain, and foxes in their burrow under the night sky. 

As the nighttime creeps in, there is a shift from animals in their habitats to a mother and child hugging as they drift off to sleep in their home. 

The delightful refrain and rhythmic language are as soothing as a lullaby.  Alliterative phrases like “my duckling, my dear” and “my darling, my dove” work both for the illustrations and for terms of endearment between parent and child reading the book together.  Other phrases provide feelings of comfort and security, such as “sing to you softly” and “cozy up close.” 

Snuggle up with your little one and read The Littlest Things Give the Loveliest Hugs.  This storybook is sure to bring families closer and to make bedtime sweeter.

Activities and Extension Ideas for Home Learning:

• Animal Identification:  Point to the animals and identify them.  Encourage your children to repeat after you and eventually identify them on their own.
• Alliteration:  Identify words with the same beginning sound.  Brainstorm other words with the same beginning sound.
• Rhyme:  Identify rhyming words.  Practice other words that rhyme with them. 
• Habitats:  Discuss how animals live in different places.  Look for clues on the pages for what type of place they live.
• Counting:  Count the animals or animal babies on each page together. 

Want more recommendations from around the web?  Check out Perfect Picture Book Friday.  

A Place to Start a Family (David L. Harrison)

Title:  A Place to Start a Family

Author:  David L. Harrison

Illustrator:  Giles Laroche

Target Ages:  5-10

Genre:  Non-Fiction Poetry

Publisher Summary:

Many animals build in order to find a mate, lay eggs, give birth, and protect their babies.  The types of structures they create are often extraordinary.  From the prairie dog to the pufferfish and from the termite to the stork, discover how and why many animals build.

Poem Samples (Click for Larger View):

Evaluation: 

Earlier this year, I reviewed another Harrison-Laroche collaboration Now You See Them, Now You Don't.  Like the previous book, this one deserves to be in every library, classroom, and home.  

The poems are insightful. Harrison features many animals and attributes I was not previously familiar with, like the only snake that builds a nest and the spider that feeds its young for weeks after birth.  Young and old will be engaged and fascinated with the creatures’ preparation for and care of their babies. 

The poems are entertaining.  For instance, “Red Ovenbird” has short stanzas with repetition. Similarly, “Termite” uses repetition and predictive phrasing.  Both are perfect for choral reading.  Others connect animals to human behaviors like the animals that kiss and play king of the hill or the animals that keep their babies safe and dry. 

Laroche’s illustrations are stunning and brilliant.  I love the textures, the contrasts,  the colors.  Each sight feels like a peek into the secret lives of these creatures with all its vividness and beauty. 

Whether you come for the illustrations and stay for the poetry or come for the poetry and stay for the illustrations, you are going to love both in A Place to Start a Family.

Ideas for Extension Activities at Home or Lesson Plans for Teachers:

• Science:  Use poems in a unit related to mammals, fish, insects, reptiles, or baby animals. 
• Poetry vs. Prose: Each creature is featured in a short prose paragraph at the end book.  Both the prose paragraph and the poetry include many of the same facts, but one uses figurative elements and experiences the facts imaginatively.  Put the prose and the poetry side by side and compare them to teach the difference of these two writing forms.
• Poetry:  Using a short paragraph of information from science or other subject area, write poems that imaginatively experience the facts. 
• Categorization:  Break the animals into groups like type (mammal, fish), location (air, water, underground), type of home, caring for young, and so forth.  To extend to math, create one or more charts of information.
• Comparison:  Pick two creatures to compare and contrast.  How are they similar?  Different?
• Language:  Identify rhyming words and alliteration.  For younger children, use them as a spring board for reading instruction.  For instance, list the words that rhyme in the poem. (“European Paper Wasp” is a good poem for this exercise.)  Point out similarities in spelling and sound.  Write out new words that rhyme.  Allow early readers to decipher them. 

Nix the Comfort Zone