by Nancy Pearl
Try these winners as well: The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams (perfect for reading aloud all year round); Julius’s Candy Corn by the always-worth-reading Kevin Henkes; Dav Pilkey’s Dragon’s Halloween; It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall; Scary, Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting; Rosemary Wells’s The Halloween Parade; The Perfectly Horrible Halloween by Nancy Poydar; Trick or Treat Countdown by Patricia Hubbard (which doubles as a counting book as well); Gus and Grandpa and the Halloween Costume by Claudia Mills; Elizabeth Winthrop’s Halloween Hats (children will never want to go bare-headed again); Felicia Bond’s The Halloween Play; Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet by Diane de Groat; and Halloween Is . . . , a sound nonfiction introduction to the holiday’s history and practices by Gail Gibbons (with a book by Gibbons you are always assured of top-notch illustrations).
And there’s no better time than Halloween to meet the eponymous ghostly hero of Robert Bright’s Georgie, who has delighted readers for more than half a century.
BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS
What better way to introduce young children to the joys of books and reading than by sharing picture books on that very topic with them.Take a look at these:
In Deborah Bruss’s Book! Book! Book! the whimsical illustrations by Tiphanie Beeke provide a perfect complement to this story of a group of bored animals who go to the library to check out some books to read and find it difficult to make the (human) librarian understand their wishes, until it’s the hen’s turn to ask. There’s a chucklesome surprise at the end, too.
Alexander Stadler’s Beverly Billingsly Borrows a Book features a plot that will be all too familiar to most adult readers—the heroine loves a book so much that she forgets to return it to the library on time. Luckily, the librarian is—of course—very understanding!
Sarah Stewart’s The Library is one of my favorite books—it’s the story of a young woman (an ancestor of the author’s, in fact) who loved to read more than anything else. (I can identify with that.)
The cumulative story told in Stella Louella’s Runaway Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst will please listeners of almost all ages, and is also a good choice for story hours and other read-aloud times.
A chimpanzee expresses his love for books of all kinds in Anthony Browne’s I Like Books, while Meena, the main character in The Girl Who Hated Books by Manjusha Pawagi, has the opposite reaction, at least until she learns the delights they hold. Another non-fan of reading is Beatrice, a young shaggy basset hound, whose experience in the library is recounted in Laura Numeroff’s Beatrice Doesn’t Want To.
SuzanneWilliams’s Library Lil, as illustrated by Steven Kellogg, decides that she’s going to get Bust-’em-up Bill and his fellow motorcycle gang members to start coming to the library—or else! (Beverly Cleary fans will be delighted to note that the gang members fight over being the first to check out The Mouse and the Motorcycle.)
And many adults as well as kids will be able to relate to Remy Charlip’s slyly enchanting Why I Will Never Ever Ever Ever Have Enough Time to Read This Book, in which a little girl demonstrates (in great pictures by Jon J Muth) all she has to do during the day besides read.
Other bookishly wonderful titles include Judy Sierra’s Wild About Books, with its appropriately wild illustrations by Marc Brown; Pat Mora’s Tomás and the Library Lady (based on the life of a young migrant worker who grows up to be chancellor of the University of California at Riverside, all through his love of reading); The Library Dragon by Carmen Agra Deedy, with chortle-inducing illustrations by Michael P. White); Clara and the Bookwagon by Nancy Smiler Levinson; Marc Brown’s D. W.’s Library Card; Goin’ Someplace Special by Patricia C. McKissack (the time is the 1950s, and the someplace special is a library in Nashville, Tennessee); The World That Loved Books by Stephen Parlato, which is filled with gloriously detailed illustrations; Cari Meister’s Tiny Goes to the Library; The Red Book, Barbara Lehman’s wordless and magical story of the power of books; and Eileen Christelow’s interesting and informative What Do Illustrators Do? and What Do Authors Do?
THE CAT’S MEOW
Cats and children’s books seem to fit together in wonderful and inventive ways, as can be seen in these treasures:
One of the earliest Little Golden Books to be produced, and still popular today, is The Color Kittens, written by Margaret Wise Brown and charmingly illustrated by Martin and Alice Provensen. It tells the story of Brush and Hush, who create every color in the world. Brown, who surely must have been a cat lover, also wrote A Pussycat’s Christmas, with pictures by Anne Mortimer.
There are only 220 words in Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat, but together they make up one of the best known children’s books of all.
Caramba, by Marie-Louise Gay, is a cat who—unlike all the other cats in the world—can’t fly (the text and pictures describing his attempts are very funny), but he does discover that he can do something none of the other cats can . . .
The Cat Who Walked Across France by Kate Banks (with illustrations by Georg Hallensleben), a tale of a homeless cat who’s trying to find a new place to live, has one of the most satisfying endings of any book I’ve read.
Chato is one cool East L.A. cat, and he’s just thrilled to learn that his new neighbors are a family of mice. So why not invite them over for dinner—and I (and Chato) do mean for dinner? But the mice have a surprise of their own, as Gary Soto (with the assistance of some adorable illustrations by Susan Guevara) describes in Chato’s Kitchen. His adventures with his best friend, Novio, continue in Chato Goes Cruisin’.
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág is the delightful story of a search for the prettiest cat of all—with surprising results.
David Almond and Stephen Lambert’s Kate, the Cat and the Moon is the haunting tale of a nighttime adventure, undertaken by the light of the moon and the stars that “glittered in the endless sky . . .”
Any book by Ezra Jack Keats is worth treasuring, and Hi, Cat! is no exception. Archie (who appears in Keats’s Peter’s Chair and A Letter to Amy as well) has a great day planned, until a stray cat decides to adopt him.
Mary Calhoun’s done a whole series of books about Henry, a peripatetic Siamese cat, all with pictures by Erick Ingraham. My favorite is the first, Hot-Air Henry, but there’s also Henry the Christmas Cat, Cross-Country Cat, and Henry the Sailor Cat to be enjoyed.
Judith Kerr’s delightfully warm stories of Mog are also well worth reading to your preschooler, beginning with Mog the Forgetful Cat.
Does the full moon look like a bowl of milk? Kitten, the main character in Kevin Henkes’s Kitten’s First Full Moon, certainly thinks so, and she goes to a lot of trouble to get it.
Paul Galdone does a delightful job of illustrating that familiar verse about those kittens who lost their gloves—I mean mittens—in Three Little Kittens. This is a good choice for story hours for the very youngest children.
A picture book that will appeal to budding Charles Addams fans is Frank Asch’s Mr. Maxwell’s Mouse, with elaborately detailed and somewhat spooky illustrations by his son, Devin Asch. It’s the ultimate cat-and-mouse story, with a snooty cat getting ready to dine on his favorite dish—a rodent, who happens to possess some brains of his own. But is he smart enough to outwit Mr. Maxwell and save himself from being the main course at dinner?
Joan Sweeney’s Bijou, Bonbon and Beau: The Kittens Who Danced for Degas combines the world of ballet and art, from the point of view of a stray cat and her kittens who wander into the theater where artist Edgar Degas is busily painting some ballerinas. Just as they make their way onto the stage (to the annoyance of the director), they’ll edge their way into your child’s heart, courtesy of Leslie Wu’s illustrations.
Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner is a rollicking story of the eponymous hero, a Siamese cat convinced that he’s a Chihuahua named El Skippito—a sword-fighter so extraordinaire that he’s surely destined to rescue a group of Mexican Chihuahuas from an enormous bumblebeeto who’s menacing them. Holy frijoles, as El Skippi
to would say, this is one fun book.As is the sequel, Skippyjon Jones in the Dog-House.
Cynthia Rylant has written a whole series of books about Mr. Putter and his cat, Tabby, that are just perfect for kids beginning to read by themselves.They can be read in any order, but I found one of the funniest to be Mr. Putter and Tabby Feed the Fish, in which Tabby discovers that fish (even in a fishbowl) make him go bananas, or, as Rylant puts it, “all twitchy and batty.”
A British storybook series begins with Orlando the Marmalade Cat: A Camping Holiday, featuring Orlando, whose eyes looked like “twin green gooseberries.” This oddly enthralling series by Kathleen Hale has been recently reissued.
You won’t want the young children in your life to miss out on a chance to meet Kitty, the sometimes naughty, sometimes nice heroine of Nick Bruel’s hilarious Bad Kitty. Use this as you’re introducing kids to the letters of the alphabet, too, if you can stop them (and you) from giggling too much along the way.
What’s a stray dog to do when he decides he wants to live in a house that’s inhabited solely by cats? Why, pretend to be a feline, of course, until it becomes clear that sometimes a dog’s gotta be a dog, no matter what.You’ll get the engaging picture in Widget, written by Lyn Rossiter McFarland and illustrated by Jim McFarland.
CHAPTER ONE: GOOD BOOKS FOR THE YOUNGEST READERS
When a child is past the age of picture books and wants something a little more substantial, but still not too hard, with interesting characters, plots that move right along, and a lot of humor in the mix as well, these are great choices. They’re also good for read-alouds.
I still remember when Miss Glenn, the librarian at Hally Elementary School in Detroit, Michigan, took me to the shelves and gave me a copy of My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett to read. (Actually, I still remember exactly where in the library the book was shelved—I could take you there today, more than fifty years later.) This tale of young Elmer Elevator who goes to Wild Island to free a young dragon from captivity is as enthralling today as it was when it was published in 1948.
Nate the Great by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat is the first in a perennially popular series starring an intrepid boy detective. These are prime starter books that just may lead readers to the Hardy Boys series, and then on to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.
Arnold Lobel’s Small Pig finds that there’s a great difference between the mud he loves and the tar he ends up in when he runs off to the city in search of adventure.
Three children have to cope with a seemingly bad-humored, even dangerous, dog—until, much to their surprise, they learn what he’s really like, in Patricia C. McKissack’s Tippy Lemmey.
Thinking about the antics of Amelia Bedelia, a housekeeper who takes everything quite literally, still makes me laugh even now, years after I read the books with my two daughters. Read the early ones in Peggy Parish’s series, beginning with Amelia Bedelia and Come Back, Amelia Bedelia.
A blue-eyed frog asking him to rescue her in the time-honored way (a kiss!) from a spell delivered by an evil wizard is not an everyday occurrence, so Davey has a lot of thinking to do before he can decide how to handle the situation, in Patricia Harrison Easton’s engaging Davey’s Blue-Eyed Frog.
Else Holmelund Minarik introduced Little Bear and his family in 1957, and generations of readers since have been captivated by these warmly humorous tales of family life. And with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, you simply can’t go wrong.
Every day when he comes home from school, his brothers and sisters ask Charley if he got to carry the flag in school—but as Rebecca Caudill shows in her long-popular Did You Carry the Flag Today, Charley?, it’s tough on a mischievous little boy to be good all day. Set in Appalachia, and originally published in 1966, this engaging story will appeal to both boys and girls.
Marjorie Flack’s Walter the Lazy Mouse is a cautionary tale of a young mouse who moves ver-r-r-y slowly, is always daydreaming (both at home and at school), and is invariably late for everything. It takes a somewhat traumatic experience, three forgetful frogs (Leander, Lulu, and Percy), and a turtle to teach Walter to pay attention and be on time.
Four resourceful and orphaned brothers and sisters set out to make a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in order to escape from the clutches of their evil (or so they think) grandfather in The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner.
Lois Lowry’s Gooney Bird Greene and Gooney Bird and the Room Mother are laugh-aloud books about a second-grader who has something to say about every subject, as well as a definite sense of fashion. She’s a delight.
Ramona Quimby, the young heroine of several amusing books by Beverly Cleary, has a lot in common with Gooney Bird, except that Gooney Bird doesn’t have to cope with an older sister named Beezus, and Ramona is definitely not into fashion. Do try them all: Ramona the Pest; Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Ramona and Her Mother; Ramona and Her Father; Ramona Forever; and Ramona the Brave.
Other exceptional beginning chapter books include Holding onto Sunday by Kathryn O. Galbraith (and her other books like Roommates and its sequels);Ellen Conford’s Annabel the Actress Starring in Gorilla My Dreams; From Slave to Soldier by Deborah Hopkinson, based on the life of a young slave who runs away to join the Union Army during the Civil War; and The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill, set in 1948 in a small village in Alaska.
CHRISTMAS IS COMING!
Of course, the best-known holiday tale is Clement Moore’s poem The Night Before Christmas, which is available in gazillions of editions (with slight variations) by various illustrators. Among my favorites are those by Mary Engelbreit, Lisbeth Zwerger, Anita Lobel, and Jan Brett.
Allen Say describes in both words and exquisitely detailed illustrations his memories of a Christmas when he was a little boy growing up in Japan, in Tree of Cranes.
From the moment it arrived on library and bookstore shelves, Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express had “classic” written all over it. Forget the film and check out this book.
Robert Sabuda has made a career of producing remarkable pop-up books, including The Twelve Days of Christmas and The Night Before Christmas. (But don’t miss sharing with your slightly older children his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or indeed any of the books he’s done.)
In The Twelve Days of Christmas, Ilse Plume takes the classic carol and transforms it into an exquisite illuminated manuscript like those from the Middle Ages. (Other excellent versions of the song include those illustrated by the incomparable Brian Wildsmith, Hilary Knight, and Jan Brett; and Twelve Lizards Leaping by Jan Romero Stevens, illustrated by Christine Mau, which includes horned toads, tamales, and piñatas, as befits a Southwestern version of the song.)
Tomie dePaola’s Four Friends at Christmas is the story of Mister Frog, who decides not to sleep through winter (which is what frogs usually do) in order to share the Christmas festivities with his friends.
Trina Schart Hyman beautifully illustrates Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, his memoir of growing up in the first years of the twentieth century.
Other splendid Christmas books for this age group include Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree by Robert Barry; Raymond Briggs’s Father Christmas (you’ll want to check out Santa’s reactions to snow, rain, fog, and other bad weather as he makes his rounds); and Bear Noel by Oliver Dunrea, a lovely story of animals in the north woods awaiting the arrival of Christmas and Bear Noel.
D IS FOR DINOSAURS
Jane Yolen and Mark Teague’s How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? tells the story of a dinosaur with a cold—the perfect book to read to the sneezy little Brachiosaurus fan in your house, not just because of the cheerful rhyming story, but also because each illustration features a different type of dinosaur, all depicted in miniature on the endpapers. I love the Dilophosaurus with his colorful quilt and his thermometer, the Euoplocephalus reclining in bed with a wastebasket full of used tissu
es next to him, and the Gallimimus with his tiny head, using the sick time to good advantage by reading a book in bed. If your child enjoys this (and what child wouldn’t?) the same author and illustrator collaborated on How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? and How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?
A little boy imagines all the exciting things that could happen if a certain group of extinct animals returns, in Bernard Most’s If the Dinosaurs Came Back. Great fun.
In The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, Barbara Kerley tells the true story of a Victorian artist whose interest in dinosaurs led to a career creating reproductions of them for the public to enjoy. In 1868, after achieving fame in England,Waterhouse Hawkins was invited to New York to create dinosaurs for future display at a new planned museum in Central Park. But when Hawkins ran afoul of the notorious Boss Tweed, nothing could go forward as planned. This charming and informative book, with its large and colorful illustrations by Brian Selznick, brings to light a little-known event in history.
And if your dinosaur lover wants more, try these: Carol Diggory Shields’s Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp and Dad’s Dinosaur Day by Diane Dawson Hearn.
