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.

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.

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.