Storybook Sunday | School Library Selections

This past week my kiddos made their first visit of the school year to the school library. You can probably tell a lot about my children as readers based on their selections.



My Kindergartener loves to read. His selection was Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

We are big fans of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? at our house. We've never read this follow up so it was a perfect choice!

What will you hear when you read this book to a preschool child?

Lots of noise!

Children will chant the rhythmic words. They'll make the sounds the animals make. And they'll pretend to be the zoo animals featured in the book-- look at the last page!

Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle are two of the most respected names in children's education and children's illustrations. This collaboration, their first since the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (published more than thirty years ago and still a best-seller) shows two masters at their best.

A Redbook Children's Picture Book Award winner

The rollicking companion to Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

I've got to say - I didn't like Polar Bear, Polar Bear much at all. I loved the excitement and glee my son had as he started reading it to me: "Polar bear, polar bear, what do you hear? I hear a lion roaring in my ear." I think those might be the only pages he could fully read, though. The animals and their sounds were kind of weird. I'm not sure what a fluting flamingo or a yelping peacock really sound like. The hippopotamus was exciting. Both the word and the picture, but since the format of these books require you to read the animal name and the sound it makes before seeing the picture of the animal, there is no visual clue to help early readers.  We weren't near as excited by the end of the book. The illustrations were as wonderful as Brown Bear, but the words - not so much.

My oldest son (7), on the other hand, is not a fan of reading. He loves to be read to, but he doesn't like to read. This week he continued a trend he started at the end of the last school year and brought home a joke book: Laughs for a Living: Jokes about Doctors, Teachers, Firefighters, and Other People Who Work.

He's having a good time reading the riddles and the jokes out loud to us, but honestly, the jokes are way over his head. Adult workplace humor is a terrible idea for a kid's joke book, but it's colorful and illustrated, and at least I make a good audience.



We continued on our Magic Tree House journey this week by reading Vacation Under the Volcano. We are also in the middle of reading Day of the Dragon King. These two MTH books are better than the ones we read last week thank goodness. I was getting worried.

I was hoping I could start reading the Goosebumps books to my kids soon so I read the first one Welcome to Dead House just to see how scary it was.

Amanda and Josh Benson move into a new house in Dark Falls, where the residents are all zombies who have died while living in the same house and are preparing to make the Benson family one of them, as they need blood to survive.

This was a really great book, and I absolutely will not be reading it to my kids anytime soon. They would never sleep in their own beds again. Welcome to the Dead House was seriously a beginning horror book. Great job, R.L. Stine, for sure, but I value our sleep. I hope someday - several years from now - I will be able to read these with them. I was too old for these books when they were released so they will be new to me, as well.

Other children's books we read this past week:

100 Book Club Total: 20/100

Did you read any children's books this week? I'd love to hear what you are reading. Let me know in the comments or leave me a link.

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This post is being shared as part of Teach Mentor Text's It's Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA.