Beginning Top Ten-ing

Worst title I’ve come up with yet? Perhaps… Anyway, I was going to try and do a quick WTSG newsflash for my posting today but I couldn’t pull together any fascinating news at the last minute. Also, we’ve been somewhat busy this evening and despite the fact that I enjoy blogging, patrons take priority. So, for a quick posting, just to try and stay regular, I thought I might share my first Top Ten list. I was inspired the other day when I heard about this fun blog called The Broke and the Bookish. They do a cool thing called Top Ten Tuesdays where they choose a different theme every Tuesday and then fill out the list with items that fit the theme (all book related of course). The coolest part is that they invite other bloggers to join in the fun and post their lists to the site. This week, just to get a list out there on this site, I won’t be participating in their theme. Instead, I’ll simply post my Top Ten Picture books, since that fits the more

Music in the Shelves

Sometimes I think that as librarians, one of the things we truly love are shelves. This seems like a silly concept, of course, but stay with me a moment. Books are great, stories are great, sharing with others is a great thing; these three things combined are probably, in fact, three of the main reasons that all of us out there who pursue this noble profession decided to do so. But once inside, we find other little pleasures that we can’t help but fall in love with. For me (and, I think, for all of you probably) among these things, these pleasures of the job, are the shelves in the library. Now of course, there is the physical aspect of the shelves, which, honestly speaking, are not always the most attractive in terms of outright beauty. At least in a regular library. Most of us are used to

A Great Bedtime Story for both Fish and Kids

Clara and Asha by Eric Rohmann

The synopsis from Macmillan: “In Clara and Asha — as in Eric Rohmann’s Caldecott Medal-winning My Friend Rabbit–a simple storyline becomes the basis for fun and sophistication. Clara’s friend Asha is an enormous fish, which means that hide-and-seek, Halloween, snow days, and afternoons in the park offer surprising opportunities for adventure. With oil paintings that playfully suggest stories within stories and convey great emotional range, this is a captivating book about the special world of a child’s imagination–where a giant fish might come to visit, and the things you do and the things you feel with an imaginary friend are intensely real.”

This one’s been out since 2005 and I’ve used it for story time quite a bit over the years. I’m the only one here at the library who does so though as, similar to Extra Yarn, it doesn’t present itself as a story time book right off the bat.

An Original Yarn

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett; illustrated by Jon Klassen

The synopsis from Amazon: “A monochrome town gets a change of color and attitude with the help of a box of yarn and a girl named Annabelle. From the seemingly endless box of Extra Yarn Annabelle knits clothing for everyone around her, tempering the ill-tempered, and creating beautifully patterned warmth for people, animals, and objects, alike.”

Truth be told, I was nervous about sharing this book for story time at first. Despite loving it personally, it seemed to be a bit of a ‘quiet’ book. I wasn’t too sure how well it would go over, if it would keep the kids enthralled long enough to be effective. So I waited on it. Then, the other day I saw it sitting on the returns shelf, picked it up, read it again, loved it still, and decided to take a chance on it.

Snip Snapped

Snip Snap: What’s That? by Mara Bergman; illustrated by Nick Maland

Due to different schedules and July 4^th, I haven’t had to do my regular Wednesday story time in a couple weeks, which means I haven’t been able to try out anything new recently. So today, I’ll talk about an oldie but a goodie. And ‘oldie’ isn’t really fair, since this was published only seven years ago and in the scheme of children’s publishing that could almost be considered hot off the press. But still, when everyone is so obsessed with what’s new, some titles get left behind if they fly under the radar, as this one does. Which is too bad really, because, in my opinion, this is one of the best story time books ever.

Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop

Charlie Parker Played Be Bop by Chris Raschka

This week’s selection is not one that I have ever read aloud for story time but there aren’t enough fingers in my whole family to count the number of times that I’ve shared this one with my two-year-old son. I actually checked it out on the recommendation of a patron. This person is also amidst the challenge of raising a two-year-old and shared the secret of this book’s power with me. Now I am passing it along to you:

Toddlers LOVE this book. Period.

(You can tell I’m being serious because, as you can plainly see, there are three periods in that statement.)

I don’t know what the magic is behind it, but I can promise you it’s there. As soon as you get through the first two pages, the previous squalling that your littl’un was holding your ears prisoner with ceases. Then the rhythm of the book (be bop, fisk fisk, lollipop, boomba boomba, bus stop, zznn zznn) carries them through to the end, where they will most likely ask you to start over.