In my previous blog post I confessed that there are certain details about the natural world that I get fixated upon.  Cycles of the moon is one of them.

This new book is a charming educational/fantasy exploration of the moon.

Mae is confused by the fact that the moon looks different each night and one night it seemed to disappear altogether.  She builds a rocket ship to explore the situation up close.

The end pages of this book give illustrations of the phases of the moon and the names for them.

I want children to know that they can see the moon in the daytime as well.  It is only the full moon that is in the night sky the whole time.  The week before the full moon, look for the daytime moon in the afternoon.  The week following the full moon, look for it in the morning.

One of the children in the preschool storytime wanted to know if I was going to read Christmas stories.  I will read some over the next 2 weeks.  Christmas is as big as Halloween for children, and certainly bigger than Thanksgiving.  It’s foolish not to read some books about it.

My choice for today was a llama llama book, because some children are already having “holiday drama” and many more will in the weeks to come.

This was a long story, especially for most of the children who were unfamiliar with little llama llama. (perhaps that is my fault- I must read more of them)  Anyway, it is a hectic story and my storytime children were particularly restless this week.  Lots of craziness happens until llama llama has a melt down.  Then the tone of the story shifts, and I read more slowly.  Mama llama takes him aside and sits him on her lap and focuses on the importance of family and times together.  All ages appreciated that message this week.

We read There Are Cats in This Book last week, so I thought I would try this book.  Quite frankly, it was not as good and didn’t keep the children’s attention.  It was a bit confusing, because there were cats in the book even though the title was There are no cats in this book.  They were trying to escape the pages.  It was not as interactive as the original book, and therefore not as fun – especially in storytime.

We’ve been having only 20-25 people in the preschool storytime on Mondays.  That is a small enough group that we can have interactive activities and have some dialogue.  Today we had more than 40 people in the room.  They were not used to being together at a storytime, so the children had a harder time focusing.  This next book needed more focus and discussion, and so I wouldn’t recommend it when you can’t speak with the children while reading a story.

~Maureen

For this Thanksgiving week, we read books about the holiday, sharing, and gratitude. Click on each book cover to find these titles in the library catalog.

We began with the story of a team of firefighters trying to find time to cook their holiday meal amid the constant interruption of emergency calls. By evening, the turkey is still raw and the potatoes have not been mashed, but the community comes together to serve their heroes a feast with all the trimmings.

Children don’t always realize the long journey food goes through before it reaches the dinner table, or the many individuals who are involved in the process. Before We Eat gives thanks to the farmers, ranchers, truckers, grocery clerks, and others who bring the food from farm to table.

Ma has baked a dozen delicious cookies, enough for Sam and Victoria to have six each! When two friends ring the doorbell, everyone’s share goes down to three. The doorbell keeps ringing and more friends arrive. As the crowd gets bigger, will there be enough cookies to share?

From walks with family to the hair on your head, The Thankful Book is a simple list of things to be grateful for. Several of our recent storytimes have also featured another title by this author, The Peace Book, which is a great choice to read with your family during the holiday season. The author, Todd Parr, has an ever-growing list of uplifting and positive books for young children. Click here to find them in our catalog.

Thursday is Thanksgiving, so we read some holiday stories:

Our activity today was one that had kids and parents working hard– we made our own butter!  We are thankful we don’t have to do that all the time.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!

We are just a few days away from Thanksgiving, so I read another poem from Thanksgiving Day at Our House by Nancy White Carlstron.  It’s great to read poems to young children.  They are short, so it fits the attention span.  The rhymes catch their attention also.  We can often get a child to finish a sentence when the word rhymes with something they heard a moment ago.
Will Shortz, the puzzle master on NPR’s Weekend Edition, often challenges callers with puzzles they can solve by rhyming words.  So it must be great for brains of all ages.

I shared this with the nursery school children last week, and I wanted to share it in my storytime this week.  Children take it at face value.  Of course, everyone helps everyone else.  Grownups, on the other hand, audibly sigh when a simple story is read that shows the power of community service.

It wasn’t a mistake – me reading a book about planting a seed at this time of year.  It’s always good at Thanksgiving to remember and be thankful for our food and all the people who grow food for us.
I also wanted to draw attention to the fact that the book has been featured in our community storywalk, but we’ll be taking it down for the winter.  Finally, I wanted to show the power of sharing.

A new book by Emily Gravett is almost always a cause for me to celebrate.  I love so many of her books.  But I was not leading the preschool storytimes this summer when this book came out.  It is part of a new series.  The most recent one is Bear & Hare: snow!  I decided to keep that for a later date, and shared this one instead – with a grateful heart that there will be no snow this Thanksgiving.  I like it when we read a few books at storytime with the same characters, so we’ll hear more about Bear & Hare this winter.  This is a very simple book where the illustrations tell most of the story, so it is probably better one-on-one.  Check it out.

This was a big hit at the nursery school, and I want to read There Are No Cats in This Book!  soon, so we needed to hear this one again in storytime.  One child was at the nursery school last week and she came rushing up to me when I held up this book – all excited that we were going to do it again.

I just love that kind of enthusiasm for books!

~Maureen