Tiny Treasury

Five books my son is currently obsessed with

1. Johnny Tractor’s Fun Farm Day
This tractor shaped John Deere book features a color on each two page spread and is chock full of pictures for little ones to label. There are “burds” and “ap-pulls” and cows who say “mmmmmmm,” there are “booberries” (just wait until he has the cereal!) and pigs and corn and a number of animals, food items, and farm sights my son has has yet to verbalize. I imagine this on won’t get old for a while.

2. From Head to Toe
Eric Carle’s animal book (published in 1997 so it was new to me) invites kids to copy the movements of the animals and say, “I can do it.” From Head to Toe introduces both animals and body parts. Sam loves to thump his chest like a gorilla.

3. The Fast Rolling Little Engine That Could
Not the best retelling of the classic tale, but it has wheels and a clasp that snaps it shut when you’re finished reading. My mechanical little guy loves opening the book, making me read it to him, snapping it shut, and wheeling it around. Repeatedly.

4. The Going to Bed Book
This was our good night story for months until he started crying and slamming it shut when we brought it out. Now he prefers to read it during the day. Sandra Boynton’s fun and familiar animal cast gets ready for bed. Sam loves the page when they all crowd together to brush their teeth. My favorite page is when they exercise before bed.

5. Counting Kisses
Karen Katz’s kiss and book was another bedtime favorite banished to daytime readings. The tired little baby in the book is kissed and hugged and loved by mama, dada, grandma, sister, cat and dog until she’s peacefully asleep. Sam likes to kiss the baby and name the family members. He’s not yet into getting kissed repeatedly while we read the story, but I imagine that’s yet to come.

Last night while I should have been writing a review of Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One I went over to a friend’s house to watch the second episode of the Gossip Girls. (Yes, I know it’s Gossip Girl, I just can’t quite separate it from Gilmore Girls yet!) I have to admit that I love the show. It’s a guilty pleasure admittedly, but it’s so much fun. I may have to check out whatever’s left of the series from the library this afternoon. I think I’ve only read the first two.

A bunch of creepy weirdos are stealing people’s photos of their children from Flickr and posting them on Orkut, a social networking site. The thieves are setting up fake accounts for the children so other weird lonely people can add them to their friends. Many of the pictures being stolen are copyrighted so the thieves can’t download them. Instead they’re taking screenshots and saving them to their computers and uploading them to Orkut.

You can read more about the thefts and the ick-factor of it all from mothers who learned their children’s photos were used here and here. You need to be an Orkut member to see profiles, but here’s one of the actual fake profiles featuring someone’s little girl.

Orkut, owned by Google, has not responded to any complaints about the picture thieves and fake profiles even though their user policy says you must be 18 years old to create a profile. If you’re outraged or sickened like I am, please go here and see how you can help. If you are a member of Digg please Digg this story so it gets the attention it deserves. And here’s a petition to shut down Orkut, a site that refuses to help parents who demand their children’s pictures be removed.

This makes me sick. I’ve just privatized my more than 2000 photos on Flickr. I suggest that you do too.

Last year I discovered that library system in the township adjacent to mine has a number of different story hours for the preschool and under crowd. My son and I found two we love that meet on Mondays and Tuesdays and one we attend if the Tuesday librarian cancels or if we’re running too late to get there.

The Monday librarian knows how to tell a story. She hops on chairs, uses a variety of voices and gestures and circles the room so all the kids can see. She remembers the children’s names from week to week and makes sure she uses them in different songs and felt board activities. On the down side she’s a bit scattered sometimes and lets the parents and nannies talk too much. She’ll let the wheels on the bus go on for entirely too long and gives every one a turn when there are way too many kids in attendance for it to be feasible. We are talking about a story hour that’s attended by toddlers who are mostly under age two. (She sometimes reminds me of me when I was teaching and unprepared. I’d let the kids share their stories for the entire class period if it meant they’d be occupied.) But she’s wonderful. She always gets the kids up and moving and can usually rein them in when they get too out of control. She also knows when to give up on a story and sing.

The Tuesday librarian is far more organized. She’s got her routine down pat. She tells the moms and nannies to keep quiet before she starts and chastises them when they start to talk among themselves. Her routine is predictable, starting with the same song each week. She usually reads the same familiar books to the kids, bringing out puppets to help her with the stories and songs. She lets the kids (and adults) know when she’s reading something new so they can be sure to pay attention. All of the books she reads are engaging and allow for some level of audience participation. The kids love her story hour and so do the parents. If you get there too late it’s standing room only.

Sadly my local library doesn’t have a story hour. The children’s librarian hosted a series of morning story hours for children ages 3 to 5 last year, an age group that seemed odd to me because most of the children she hoped would attend were in school in the morning. We went the first week and arrived a few minutes late. There were songs and stories but the librarian didn’t have the same enthusiasm as the librarians we visit regularly. After we’d been there for about 10 minutes she popped in a video. Kipper. Sure Kipper is cute and British and all, but it was a video. At the library. She let the VCR do her job for her. I was disappointed and we didn’t go back for the following week’s story hour. She’s retiring at the end of this year and I don’t know that our library will have the budget for another full-time children’s librarian. I wonder if they’d let me run a story hour of my own.

Be sure to check out The Book Stacks’ A Book by Any Other Name game. The word of the week is “big.” How many books can you think of with the word “big” in the title?

Because things never go as planned, I never finished Knots (which I read all but 30 pages of months ago and finally picked up again to finish), which means I never even started Soupy Saturdays, which will most likely take under an hour for me to read. The Chicago Tribune briefly noted the book in their reviews this weekend.

Teaming up with YALSA, Readergirlz is hosting 31 Flavorite authors for teens in 31 days during the month of October to celebrate Teen Read Week. Here’s a full list of the amazing authors who will be available to chat at the Readergirlz forums at 8 pm EST each night.

Week One
October 1st: Meg Cabot
October 2nd: Tiffany Trent
October 3rd: Brent Hartinger
October 4th: Lorie Ann Grover
October 5th: K.L. Going
October 6th: Nikki Grimes

Week Two
October 7th: Ellen Hopkins
October 8th: Justina Chen Headley
October 9th: Chris Crutcher
October 10th: Ann Brashares
October 11th: Sarah Mlynowski
October 12th: Cecil Castellucci
October 13th: Kirby Larson
Week Three
October 14th: Tanya Lee Stone
October 15th: John Green
October 16th: Sara Zarr
October 17th: Deb Caletti
October 18th: Rachel Cohn
October 19th: Kirsten Miller
October 20th: Mitali Perkins
Week Four
October 21st: Sonya Sones
October 22nd: Lisa Yee
October 23rd: Carolyn Mackler
October 24th: E. Lockhart
October 25th: Janet Lee Carey
October 26th: Gaby Triana
October 27th: Lauren Myracle
Week Five
October 28th: Holly Black
October 29th: Cynthia Leitich Smith
October 30th: Dia Calhoun
October 31st: Stephenie Meyer

I just picked up Judy Blume’s new book “Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One” from the library and I’m looking forward to reading it this weekend. I haven’t read a new Judy Blume book since Just As Long As We’re Together was published in 1987, but Fudge’s 35th birthday made me feel a bit nostalgic. I’ll let you know how I like it.

A (crazy) Maine woman, in her anti-pornography crusade, checked out two copies of the book “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health” from two different libraries and refuses to give them back. The Associated Press reports tha JoAn Karkos enclosed $20.95 to cover the cost of the book to each library along with a letter explaining why she won’t return them.

“Since I have been sufficiently horrified of the illustrations and the sexually graphic, amoral abnormal contents, I will not be returning the books.”

She also wrote

“The truth is the contents of the book in question leads to a lot of misery, pain, lack of freedom, and often death.”

The library director returned her check along with a form she could use to request the book’s removal but may need to police assistance in retrieving the stolen book.

“This has never happened before,” said Rick Speer, director of the Lewiston Public Library. “It is clearly theft.”

Yes it is theft and stealing books from libraries won’t make them disappear. Published more than 10 years ago, the book has become so popular since Karkos’ crusade was reported that Speer has ordered two more copies for the library.

censorship, pornography, ill-advised theft

I’m one of those parents who doesn’t like to buy character merchandising from movies or television. You won’t see me buying anything with an Elmo, Dora, or Diego on it. But I’m not too uptight to accept and use gifts that are character related, so Sam does have some Thomas plates and bowls, and some other character items. The good news is that Sam doesn’t recognize Elmo when we pass the creepy photography studio that uses him to lure people in and he doesn’t actually know that Dora is everywhere- on cups, sneakers, blankets, pencils, T-shirts, etc. He doesn’t watch enough TV to know he’s supposed to WANT these things yet.

Want aside, now that the weather is most decidedly fall like here on the east coast, Sam’s fallen in love all over again with the book A Day at the Beach, a Dora the Explorer book. With colorful pages, a few Spanish words for good measure, and lots of items to find and label, Sam loves the book. He likes pointing to and naming the birds and balls on each page and as his vocabulary increases he’s discovered the turtle and fish. Dora and her (creepy, though I’ve never really watched the show so maybe he’s not quite as creepy on TV?) friend boots put on sunscreen, buy lemonade, and throw out their trash. I didn’t want to like it, but A Day at the Beach is a great picture book for the toddler set. It’s brightly colored, interactive, and Sam finds new things to talk about each time we read it. I imagine that kids who watch the show will love it even more.

We took a bunch of books out of the library last week, and to my husband’s dismay “My Book of Trucks” was not Sam’s immediate favorite. Instead he went straight for “I Can, Can You?” and hasn’t yet picked up any of the others.

“I Can, Can You?” is a board book featuring full color photographs of children with Down Syndrome going about their day. Each page shows a different child engaged in a different activity like eating, drawing, and going down a slide. Sam’s particularly interested in the baby building with blocks. Each time he picks up the book he turns right to that page, points and says, “Baby! bock.”

The children featured are mostly white, though two Asian children and one African-American child are also shown. The text is repetitive, engaging and subtly encouraging. It’s perfect for a toddler or a preschooler with or without Down Syndrome, though I’d imagine it would be most reassuring for a child with Down Syndrome, who probably doesn’t get to see to many books with pictures of kids like them.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reviews Walter Dean Myers’ newest short story collection What they Found: Love on 145th Street, where he revisits the characters in love he first wrote about in 2000’s 145th Street.

The Washington Post reviews the first American Girls novels in five years: Meet Julie and Good Luck Ivy. Both Julie and Ivy’s stories in the six part series take place in 1974 San Francisco. And yes, there are dolls to go with them.

The New York Times reviews three new back to school books about teachers and their students, It’s Time for School With Tallulah, Kindness Is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler and Wow! School!

The Tale of Despereaux will be released on film in December of 2008 which feels like forever. If you haven’t read Kate DiCamillo’s wonderful Newbery Award winning novel The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spol of Thread stop now, head to your library and check it out immediately. (You could also buy it, as it’s worth reading time and time again, but I’m a library girl, and like to read first and buy later.) The cast of film looks amazing- Dustin Hoffman, William H. Macy, Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Walken are just a few of the voices in the cast.

It’s rare that I look forward to a movie that’s based upon a book. The film versions tend to disappoint. I’ve been thinking about the children’s books that became movies, that succeed? Some of my favorites, even though they may have deviated from the book, are:

Anne of Green Gables (the Megan Followes version)
The Witches
The Little Princess (total tearjerker)
Holes
Alice in Wonderland (Disney)
Peter Pan (Disney)
The Wizard of Oz
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (I liked Johnny Depp’s version, but not as much as the first)

Which movie versions do you love?

children’s books, book to film, film versions of children’s books, movies based on kid’s books

Happy 5768! May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

Read more about Rosh Hashanah at Judaism 101.

I’ve been looking for books about the Jewish High Holidays appropriate for toddlers. A board book would be ideal with short sentences and bright, interesting pictures. According to Amazon no such book exists. All I could find were books appropriate for ages 4-8. But a closer look showed several books that seem to be toddler appropriate.
Sammy Spider’s First Rosh Hashanah doesn’t have an age range listed, but using the search inside feature it looks like it would be on target for ages 3-6.

Apples and Honey: A Rosh Hashanah Lift-the- Flap as a lift-the-flap book is probably geared towards pre-schoolers based on the excerpt on amazon, but with the lift-the-flap feature I’d think they were aiming for younger children as well. Unfortunately the lone reviewer says the pages are flimsy. Flimsy doesn’t last with my toddler. Even sturdy doesn’t last when he’s teething.

If your child is older you’ve got several books to choose from. Here are a few fiction books about the High Holidays
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
Reading level: ages 4-8
40 pages

The World’s Birthday: A Rosh Hashanah Story
Reading level: ages 4-8

And a few non-fiction

Apples and Pomegranates: A Family Seder For Rosh Hashanah
Reading level: ages 4-8

Celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: With Honey, Prayers, and the Shofar
ages 4-8

Do any readers have any suggestions for books I haven’t linked? Board books I may not have found?

Happy New Year!

Judy Blume’s Tale’s of a Fourth Grade Nothing published 35 years ago still remains a classic. Younger readers from all generations can connect with poor Peter Hatcher who is completely overshadowed by his little brother Fudge. Fudge was so popular with young readers that Blume wrote four more books about him.

To celebrate the anniversary the complete set of Fudge books are being released in a box set with a new look. The set will be available in October. You can pre-order at Amazon.

Read more about Fudge and Peter at Judy Blume’s website.

Judy Blume, Fudge books, box set, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, young readers

Madeleine L’Engle a gifted storyteller, died of natural causes on Thursday at the age of 88. Her great Newbery Award winning novel A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books as a child and remains one of my favorite books today.

Kids Lit writes, Our planet just tilted a little and hole has been left behind.

AmoXcalli has a full list of L’Engle links

The New York Times ends their obituary with

“Why does anybody tell a story?�? Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,�? she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.�?