Reading with Patches

I love hanging out with my brother Patches. He also loves to read and has a blog of his own. You can check Patches' blog out here: readingwithpatches.blogspot.com

I learn something new from my older brother Patches every day. This past week I was surprised – and even shocked – to read his post about how San Diego Public Library compares to  other California libraries when it comes to ebooks (http://readingwithpatches.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-trouble-with-san-diego-public.html). If you care about books, read his post and please tell others what you learn. If enough people speak out about just how smelly San Diego Public Library really is than we have the power to change how it operates for everyone's benefit. 

I know that my focus is on children's literature, and that my brother's is on adults and other reading-related topics but from time to time he'll venture into my area and I may venture into his. Currently Patches is working on a review of the presence of some children's bookstores online, and he'll be posting his findings soon. (I'm so pleased that Patches decided to take my idea and run with it. This is a great help to me as I am up to my ears in children's literature to read and review.) 

Rupert Can Dance ~ Written and Illustrated by Jules Feiffer

If you love cats and children's literature, you'll definitely want to add this book to your picture-book collection. As the title suggests, Rupert is a dancing cat.

I wish that I were as graceful as Rupert, and maybe I will become so soon. (You see, my mom wants me to take dance lessons). However, as Rupert tells us in this story, dancing - or any other activity, for that matter - is enjoyable insofar as it is an unobserved and free activity. Dance instruction, by its very nature (observed!), is anathema to felines and any of the rest of us who agree with Rupert's ideas concerning what makes an activity enjoyable. 

Lola Loves Stories ~ Written by Anna McQuinn, Illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw

I loved reading about spunky Lola and her love for story in this amazing picture book.

Every Saturday Lola visits the library with her father and selects a pile of books to take home. With every book her parents read aloud to her, Lola's sense of identity changes. After reading about fairy princesses, pilots, and tigers, she imagines that she's a fairy princess, a pilot, and a tiger.

Reading a lot of books contributes to Lola's exercises in make-believe, channeling her imaginative powers to lands far away, both real and imagined. 

Dog Loves Books ~ Written and Illustrated by Louise Yates

Just as the title notes, the nameless little dog in this story loves books. He's passionate about reading  and he has a depth of knowledge of different authors and genres. His love of books is so extensive that he decides to open a bookstore.

Yates' story is great to share with especially young readers, even kittens, for it sends home the message that reading is enjoyable. Being a cat myself, I would prefer that the story was also about a feline, but I enjoyed the book nonetheless. Whether you borrow a copy of the story or decide to purchase it, please be sure to share this book with a young person in your life. Trust me, they'll thank you for it later.

Amelia Bedelia Road Trip! ~ Written by Herman Parish, Illustrated by Lynne Avril

Amelia Bedelia Road Trip! is the third book in the Amelia Bedelia series for beginning readers. Like the original Amelia Bedelia picture books by Peggy Parish, the young girl named Amelia Bedelia in these stories also interprets whatever she comes across literally, making for some funny reading, and also offering parents and teachers a wonderful resource with which to teach homonyms enticingly.

Beyond beefing up their vocabularies while still having fun, youngsters will also relish journeying alongside Amelia as she journeys to exciting places. This is an especially perfect book to share with readers who are new to traveling and who may be anxious about leaving home. Initially Amelia's worried about leaving her dog behind, but as she becomes more at home as a traveler her worries melt away.

Avril's black-and-white drawings add to the homeyness of Parish's prose, celebrating how great it is to have a dog for a pet, and how wonderful it is to have parents who are fun-to-be-with, supportive, and caring.

One Green Apple ~ Written by Eve Bunting, Illustrated by Ted Lewin

I've been reading a lot of picture books by Eve Bunting in the past couple of days and I plan on reading loads more. Bunting's stories are timeless. The stories Bunting sets down to paper are the kind that children enjoy listening to at the knees of parents and grandparents, and they are the kind of stories that, now as parents and grandparents, they are likely to pass on to children and grandchildren of their own.

What is it that makes Bunting's stories so appealing? Bunting is one of the few authors who is capable of  tapping into current-day events, making her stories relatable not only to today's readers, but also addressing some of the issues and obstacles that play a timeless role in the growing-up process.

In One Green Apple, published in 2006, Bunting takes readers on a class field-trip to an apple orchard, showing us the orchard through the eyes of a young immigrant Muslim girl. In our post-911 world, it is important for kids to see that the majority of Muslims share the same fears and concerns as they do (e.g. that they also worry about fitting in, maintaining friendships, and getting good marks in school) and that they are far from terrorists. Likewise, it is also important for writers to show how some youngsters, like Farah in our story, additionally struggle with differential tasks such as learning English and adjusting to North American cultural norms. This is an excellent book to address both of these issues.

Frog and Friends: The Best Summer Ever ~ By Eve Bunting, Illustrated by Josée Masse

This is a lovely chapter book for beginning readers, the third book in the "Frog and Friends" series. The illustrations on every page encourage readers to linger over the story as they follow Frog's discussion with Little Brown Bat in the first chapter,

accompany Frog on his summer vacation in the second,  

and sit alongside Frog and Starman as they gaze up at the stars in the sky in the third. 

Frog is a wonderful role model for young readers. Not only is he a curious and smart frog for his age, he is also an incredibly caring and generous one. 

If the young reader in your life enjoys this book, be sure and check out the other books in the series. 

Hurry Hurry ~ Written by Eve Bunting, Illustrations by Jeff Mack

I stumbled upon the picture book Hurry Hurry while poking along on Overdrive today, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to find that flipping through the book (i.e. "reading it on my browser") was easy enough for me to do without asking my brother Patches for help. (Although we're the same age, he's much more adept at whizzing through technological tasks than I am.) 

Bunting's story is a delightful, almost wordless picture book, suitable for even the youngest kitten to read independently. My only complaint is that though Bunting was kind enough to include almost every animal in her story, her kindness does not extend to cats. In other words, you won't find any felines in her story. What you will find is a heartwarming, cheerful tale about barnyard animals running in response to a call from chicken to "hurry". Jeff Mack's illustrations speak for themselves, so I'll just post some of them to get a taste for the book. A wonderful surprise awaits readers at the end.

On a non-reading related note, this book's title brought to mind one of Peyton Manning's favorite phrases

I wonder if this is where Peyton got the idea from.