Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Friday, June 20, 2014

Green Books

This week we requested and read several books about Green and Green things from the public library and our home library.  We read:

Green, by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

"Green" talks about things that are... green.Various types of green.  There were die cuts in the book but they weren't really noticeable (mostly because everything was green).  Toddler was not impressed.

Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss

Classic.  It took her a page or two to get into it, but then Jo started to try to "read" along with the rhymes and repeating phrases.

The Little Green Witch, by Barbara Barbieri McGrath

Cute version of the little red hen story.  Would be cute to read again around Hallowe'en.  I don't think toddler really "gets" this story yet.  We'll try it again during our Red week with a typical little red hen story.  I did like how this one ends, though. ;-)

Green Wilma, Frog in Space

Story of a green frog just trying to catch a fly when all the sudden it is scooped up into a space ship and the little alien that belongs in the space ship gets left behind.

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Green, by Keith Baker

Two crocodiles? alligators? and their adventures together going camping, eating pancakes, and going to the fair.  It's three stories in one and we broke it up rather than read the whole thing through.

The Green Bath, by Margaret Mahy

I read through this one prior to introducing it to my toddler.  It's about a boy who is disappointed when his friends get to go to the beach and he has to take a bath, but then he ends up at the beach and all over the world having adventures in a green bathtub.  I got through about a page and a half with my two-and-a-half.  Older kids might enjoy this one more.

Grandpa Green

This story takes you through a topiary garden in which a man has sculpted plants to tell his life story.  My toddler liked looking at the pictures in this one.

Green as a Bean, Karla Kuskin

This was not an exclusively green book, but had you think about "if you were green, what would you be?" "If you were square?" "If you were bright?" It was a creative book and toddler enjoyed hearing it.  I would like to revisit this one in a year or two and do some creative activities and play around some of the ideas it talks about.

Go Away, Big Green Monster!, by Ed Emberly

This is a great book for a green unit! ... if you get a full book, that is.  We heard this book at a story time at Hallowe'en last year and I thought it would be great for our green week. Unfortunately, the book we received through inter-library loan was missing at least half of it's pages, which really ruins the book because of the die cuts -- the purple hair wasn't purple, and we never ever saw the big green monster.  It was very disappointing, because my toddler was really excited for this one just based on the cover.  So, if you can get a copy with all the pages, I highly recommend it.  (There's also Nighty Night, Little Green Monster by the same author, same die cut concept, also very cute and would be perfect also.)

Did we miss any great books about the color green?

Friday, June 13, 2014

Yellow Books

As part of our Yellow Week, we read several books with the color yellow as a focus or with yellow ducks, as that was one of the popular things in her yellow basket.  As I kind of decided to do a Color of the Week program on Sunday and start it on Monday, I didn't have as much time to request books from the library, so I also started requesting Green books at the same time.  I'm a week or so ahead in terms of requests and am compiling a list of color related books so that I can request them as we approach that color.


Toddler liked this one.  It has only one word or short phrase per page, so it's super fast, but she liked pointing out the yellow ball in each scene and talking about what happened to the ball.  This was probably her favorite of the set.


This was a cute idea - it follows the journey of a little girl who rides on a yellow giraffe scooting toy but instead of the everyday world we see, she interprets things as a magical.  2.5 year old wasn't very impressed though.  Maybe for a 3yo?


Toddler liked identifying the baby duck in each of the pictures and discussing what she was doing.  Not much plot, but it was ok.


Another quick story.  This is a good one for prepositions, which is something my 2.5 yo is working on acquiring.


Toddler and I both enjoyed the illustrations in this book.  I read the book to her and then she read it to me.  (Her version mostly consisted of "Little duck in the water." Turn page.  "Little duck in the water."  Turn page.)  Much more wordy than the others, but a very cute story.

We also requested "Little Yellow Pear Tomatoes," "10 Little Rubber Ducks," "One Little Duck," and "Henry and Pawl and the Round Yellow Ball" from our library circuit, but they didn't arrive before our yellow week was over.

Did we miss any good ones? Share your YELLOW book suggestions with us!