Blue Hat, Green Hat

Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton
1984

     I was talking to a good friend today and she asked if I had included any board books in my blog.  I realized that, after months of blogging, I had failed to include a single board book so I'm doing it today.  Blue Hat, Green Hat was one of my son's favorite board books.  He's four now, and still gets a kick out of it.  An elephant, a moose, a bear, and a turkey are getting dressed. Somehow though, the turkey always manages to mess it up.  The elephant puts on a blue hat, the moose a green hat, and the bear a red hat, but the turkey puts the hat on his feet. The text is simple since much of the story is told through the illustrations: "red shirt, blue shirt, yellow shirt, oops."  The oops is always the turkey (who in this case tried to wear the shirt as pants).  The repetition reinforces the knowledge of colors and clothing and kids memorize it quickly and will start reading it aloud to you soon.  By the way,  we have every Boynton board book at home, and we go back to them all the time...my four year old now "reads" them to his younger sister.

The Prince's Bedtime

The Prince's Bedtime by Joanne Oppenheim
Illustrated by Miriam Latimer
2007

     The Prince can't fall asleep.  Well, it's not that he can't, he just won't go to sleep. The Queen and King are at their wits's ends trying to find a way to get their prince to go bed. "If anyone knows how to make the prince rest, please come at once to the royal address!"  And so begins the parade: a  bearded physician with sleep medicine, a troupe of dancers, a mustached magician, a peasant carrying a stuffed quilt, jesters, jugglers, cooks...all trying to help the prince to fall asleep, but to no avail.  Then, an old woman came to the palace and the King asked "And what can you do? Do you dance? Can you sing? What's in your bag? What did you bring?"  The woman reached inside her bag, pulled out a book and told the prince "I'll read while you look."  "But where are the pictures?" "You'll see them if you just close your eyes."  And he did, and "he fell asleep for the night."
     The Prince's Bedtime is a great read aloud, and a fun bedtime story.  The illustrations are beautiful and the rhymes flow and never seem forced.  I love a good rhyming story! There is something intrinsically cool about reading a bedtime story about reading a bedtime story...kind of meta, right?

Vagabonding

Vagabonding by Audra George
2006

     A girl looks out her window and sees a caravan of vagabonds.  Her imagination kicks in and she wonders what it would be like to trade places with one of them and travel around the world.  "A traveler, a vagabond, is all I want to be." "Without looking back, and shedding no tears, I'll trek around the globe, with golden hoops in my ears."  She imagines biking through Holland, dancing in Hawaii, meditating  with Buddha, painting in Paris, visiting the Taj Mahal, the pyramids, and the British Parliament.   But after all the daydreaming, she realizes she's not quite ready to leave home for that long. "A traveler, a vagabond! To wander and to roam, for maybe oh...and hour or so..."
     Vagabonding encourages kids to think about the world as a place full of places to explore.  It's a cute book to introduce them to major world cities and landmarks.  The illustrations are enjoyable and I like the fact that the people drawn, including the main character who's African American, are quite diverse.  The text is a bit awkward, especially since the rhyming seemed to come in and out throughout the book.  It's a good tale about travelling and a story for students to mirror using their own summer/travel experiences.

My Side of the Car

My Side of the Car by Kate Feiffer
Illustrated by Jules Feiffer
2011

     Sadie has been wanting to go the zoo since forever.  Every time they had plans to go the zoo, something would come up:  her mom tripped over a toy fire engine and they ended up at the hospital,  her dog got lost and they spent the whole day looking for him, and her grandparents showed up unannounced and they went to the museum instead of the zoo.  But not today, nothing was going to stop Sadie and her dad from making it to the zoo.  Sadie sits in the back of the car looking out the passenger side.  "We're finally on our way. We're having the best time ever. Until my dad says to me, 'Sadie, it's raining.'"  The thing is, Sadie looks out her window and it's not raining on her side of the car.  Sadie's father patiently reiterates that it is raining, actually pouring on his side of the window.  He keeps asking her "is it raining on your side of the car yet?"  But out Sadie's window all she sees are people "putting on their sunglasses and heading to zoos all over the world on my side of the car."
     My Side of the Car is perfect.  The rhythm and pace, the spot-on illustrations, the dialogue and humor, the story...all perfect.  This is a book to own and read, and re-read.  The father's sweet and patient disposition and Sadie's positive thinking and imagination are endearing.  The fact that the writer and illustrator are also a daughter and father team, and that it's based on an actual trip to a nature preserve when Kate Feiffer was young, make it even more special.  One to add to my favorites bookshelf.

The Carrot Seed

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
Illustrated by Crockett Johnson
1945

     If you have been reading my blog, you know that the books I tend to write about are all fairly recent publications, 10 years old at most.  Today is different.  When I was trying to decide what book to blog about, my eyes kept going back to my little board book edition of The Carrot Seed.  As old as this book is, (first edition dates back to 1945) I only read it for the first time two years ago and it's been a family favorite ever since (I grew up abroad, so some of the books that everybody grew up with in the US, I have never read...and vice versa).
     "A little boy planted a carrot seed."  His mom, dad and brother keep tell him that nothing is going to come up, that the seed won't germinate.  But still, the boy tends to the patch were he planted the seed.  He waters it, weeds it and waits, and waits.  Still nothing comes up and his family insists that nothing will ever come up.  But the boy believes and eventually, a carrot came up "just as the little boy had known it would."  He never gave up, even when nobody else believed.  That's perseverance and dedication right there.  Aside from the story, I love the illustrations by Crocket Johnson (of Harold and the Purple Crayon fame).  The drawings all have a kind of sepia, mustard and rust tone to it, except for the carrot tree which comes up shooting straight to the sky with a bright green, and the gigantic carrot the boy is able to harvest which is a bold orange color.
     I will try to include from now on, those classic books that I get to rediscover.

The Book with a Hole

The Book with a Hole by Herve Tullet
2011

    Not to be redundant, but The Book with a Hole is exactly that, a book with a hole.  The mouth you see on the cover is the hole, so as you open the book, there is a gigantic circle missing, a hole you can see through.  As you begin to flip the pages of this imaginative and clever book, Tullet incorporates the hole into different drawings.  The hole becomes a plate set at the table, "What are you going to eat now?"; the mouth of  a monster, "What are you going to feed it?"; the face of a king, the center of a flower...Along the way, Tullet is always interacting with the reader, asking him direct questions and giving him direct instructions (just as he does in he wonderful book Press Here).  One of my favorites includes a page where he has drawn a city skyline and asks you to find something around you that could be placed through the hole to make the tallest building.  There are also built in boardgames, mazes and visual tricks spread throughout The Book with a Hole.
     The Book with a Hole is definitely a book out of the ordinary. It's interactive, creative and very entertaining.  It encourages kids and adults to think outside the book, through the hole.  As Tullet tells us at the end his book: "I'm sure you'll think of some other ideas too..."

Baby Brains and Robomom

Baby Brains and RoboMom by Simon James
2008

     Mr. and Mrs. Brains "were hoping for a clever baby." So while she was pregnant, Mrs. Brains did everything to help the cause: she ate lots of fish and nuts, placed headphones around her belly and played foreign languages for the baby.  When Baby Brains was born, he turned out to be smarter than they thought possible.  He loved playing on the computer and doing experiments. But "most of all, he loved designing new inventions."  He invented the first remote-controlled self-rocking cradle and a motorized stroller.  But even with all those inventions, his parents were still exhausted.  "Once, his mom even fell asleep during his bedtime story." -which just happened to be Hamlet.  Baby Brains decided to invent RoboMom to take care of the household chores.  At first, it looked like a great idea but when RoboMom starts acting strange and overworked and ends up washing the baby with the dirty dishes and hanging him out to dry on the clothesline, Baby Brain's had enough and cries for his mom.  She rescues him just before RoboMom explodes!
     Baby Brains and RoboMom is a entertaining tale.  The kids will enjoy the hilarious situations and the parents will enjoy the sense of humor and the exhausting reality of having a baby at home -genius or not! The watercolor illustrations are witty and full of interesting details that really add to story.  I wouldn't mind a version of RoboMom like the one Baby Brains designs at the end of the book.