How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanakah?

When looking for holiday books for preschoolers, it is important to remember that Christmas is not the only December holiday celebrated in the United States. Of course, as adults, we know this but for preschoolers, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are as foreign as their spellings might be to us. How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague is a great way to introduce preschoolers and early elementary school students to the magic of Hanukkah. But wait, confused by the spelling difference? I was too, until I learned that ch is pronounced as a hard h in Hebrew. So its still pronounced the way we are used to hearing it. 

If you are familiar with the How do dinosaurs...? series, this book has the same great pictures and catchy rhymes. But the best thing about this book is that it introduces students to the concepts of Hanukkah using the words latkes,dreidel, gelt. For those of you who need a little Hanukkah refresher course, latkes are potato cakes traditionally eaten during Hanukkah. Dreidels are used to play a game during Hanukkah and gelt refers to money or chocolate coins that are given to children during the holiday. The book also teaches that Hanukkah is an 8-day holiday during which there are special prayers and presents. This is a wonderful book to share this holiday season!

Turning a New Page

I must admit, I have let dust collect on the electronic pages of this blog. After graduate school, I had quite a physical and emotional journey, but that journey has finally brought me back to something that I hold very close to my heart: children's books. I recently accepted a position at Evendale and Glendale Elementary schools as their new Librarian Paraprofessional.

I am so excited, and I have decided that as part of this new chapter in my life, it is time to revive this blog dedicated to children's books. And so I will start with a book that has come to be very close to my heart...The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen.

While working in preschools, I have found that 3 and 4 year olds LOVE this book. Perhaps the best part of the book is the refrain:

I'm a Pout-Pout Fish
with a pout-pout face,
so I spread the dreary wearies all OVER the place.
Blub..
Blubbb..
Blubbbbb.....


Will Mr. Fish ever find his smile? I'm not telling, but I would suggest you to get the version with the CD recording. Alexander Gould does a wonderful job narrating, and it can give you a much needed break because your child is sure to want to read this book again...and again....and again.

 

Roald Dahl's Childhood Autobiography

Maybe it is because I am a grown-up, or maybe it is because I was never a 9 year old boy, but I was not particularly fond of this story. I read it as part of a graduate course book club. Although I think it is really cool that Roald Dahl actually wrote an autobiography about his childhood, many of the stories were mildly disgusting/gruesome.

I'm not sure which bothered me more, the story about the time he almost had his nose cut off in a car accident, or the story about how he watched as a doctor cut a large boil off of a little boy. Perhaps I am bias because I was trying to eat my lunch while I read about the latter of these incidents, and it completely ruined my appetite.

These things aside, this book does have a very distinct voice, and has a very comfortable rhythm to the words. It also taught me about what all boy British prep schools were like during the early-twentieth century. They were not fun places! Full of words like "fagging", "bog", and "nib", this book is sure to teach readers about a type of life that they cannot rightly imagine without Dahl's colorful descriptions.

Go Straight to the Source

In this book, Rosa Parks briefly tells about her life and accomplishments. Most elementary schools are required to teach about Rosa Parks at some point, and it makes sense for teachers to use this autobiography, because it tells the story in her own words. For example, when she is talking about the day that she refused to give up her seat to a white person, she says, "Some people think I kept my seat because I'd had a hard day, but that is not true. I was just tired of giving in."

Students need to have access to primary sources when they are learning about history. This book is the perfect example of one such source because it was written by the person in question, and it was specifically written for children. Sometimes it is hard to incorporate primary sources into elementary classrooms because the writing style is too foreign for students to understand. In this book, Rosa Parks tells her story in a simple but truthful way. This book is appropriate for 2nd grade and up.

Although it has more text than your traditional picture book, it does contain a number of illustrations done by Wil Clay. These illustrations help students visualize what Rosa Parks is describing.

How Do You Build a Racecar?

Do you have students in your class that love to take things apart and find out how they work? Do you have students that are addicted to graphic novels? The book series "Why Things Don't Work" capitalizes on both of these interests.

The basic idea behind each of the books is that something (train, airplane, race car, tank, motorcycle, or helicopter) isn't working, and the main character has to make it work again. In the process, the character explains all kinds of things about how the object works. There are helpful diagrams that go along with each concept.

The books are all written in graphic novel format. They are great books to have in your classroom library for individual reading time. They are probably meant for students in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade. It might be good to introduce one of them as a guided reading book, to get students used to the format before they try to read the books themselves. The books are wonderful because they take very complex engineering and break it down into language that elementary school students can understand.

So What is a Noun?

" Hill is a noun. Mill is a noun. Even Uncle Phil is a noun."
-A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What is a Noun?

Non-fiction books come in all shapes and sizes. The book, "A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink" is one of a series that introduces grammar concepts to kids in interesting and fun ways. This book introduces the concept of "a noun" to children using the traditional definition of "a person, place, or thing" but it elaborates on that definition in a sing-songy fashion. Other books in this series address proper nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns. The series is written by Brian P. Cleary and illustrated by Jenya Prosmitsky.

The students of my second grade class have just started learning about nouns. The teacher introduced the concept by telling them the definition, and then having them make a list of people, places, things, and animals that they know. However, many of the students got stuck, and really had problems coming up with ideas. This book would be the perfect supplement to an introductory lesson because it provides students with all kinds of concrete examples of different kinds of nouns. The book ends with the question, "So what is a noun?" and this is the perfect lead-in a student-initiated discussion about nouns.

And the Rainforest Grew All Around and Around, and the Rainforest Grew All Around

This was a book that was recommended to me by one of my classmates. It is a great way to introduce children to the rainforest, or to wrap up a unit on the plant life cycle. Many young children have heard the song The Green Grass Grows All Around, and this book plays off of that by creating a song/book about the rainforest to the tune of "The Green Grass Grows All Around." On each page a new animal/plant is introduced, and there is a fact box on one side of the page that goes into details about the animal/plant. At the end of the book there is a "For Creative Minds" section that gives teachers and parents extension ideas for the book. There is also recipe for "Rainforest Cookies" that inclues 8 different ingredients that come from the rainforest: cinnamon, banana, sugar, vanilla, sugar, coconut, chocolate, and cashews.

This book starts and ends with "the fluffiest seed that you ever did see" and that makes it a great way to integrate music into a lesson about plant life cycles. This particular song lets students practice their fluency in a call and reply pattern while at the same time introducing them to new knowledge about the rainforest.