What The Kids Are Reading: July 2014

I used to do this snapshot of kids / family reading material posts from time to time, and looking back, they're quite a good record of the shifting sands of our reading lives. So I thought, why not.

July has been a reading-heavy month in my family - well, even more than usual, I mean - with school holidays / work leave and our trip to Queensland, which provided many an opportunity for lolling about with books.

My about-to-be-11-year-old, A, is very deeply entranced with Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus books at present.

She's read all the Percy ones at least three times each, and is now working her way avidly through the Olympus books. She read at cafes, walking on the street, lying in bed, on the beach, by the pool ... from when she acquired the book pictured (on day 5 of our holiday) until she had read it cover to cover TWICE, she was not super interested in doing anything else! Thankfully, that only took her about 48 hours all told.

She's also gotten into a new series called The Luck Uglies (the book is, apparently, going to be the first of a trilogy). Her taste for fantasy, especially dark, tricksy fantasy, is very pronounced at the moment, and it's provoking some interesting discussions.

Next down is the 9 year old, E, whose obsession and delight right now is the Harry Potter books. She's rounding the corner towards the finish-line on book 6 and takes great delight in reading lengthy passages aloud to demonstrate to me (I am, granted, not a Potter fan myself) how incredible they are. We had a few reservations about her reading the later Potter books - she is, after all, only 9 - but she is coping with the darker themes well and after all, it would've felt rather mean to let her get engaged in the story and then make her wait years to see it end.

In a perhaps not unrelated development, E is also greatly enjoying Enid Blyton's school stories at the moment - particularly the St Clares books and the Malory Towers books.  She herself not infrequently notes similarity in underlying themes or treatments between Blyton's old-skool schools and Hogwarts; it's interesting to see her make these connections and enjoy the resonances that Rowling uses to enhance the Potter stories. I've hunted up my old Chalet School books for her to try; I think she's probably ready to enjoy them too.

Even though both A and E are extremely competent readers, we still do read-alouds of chapter books. I enjoy reading to them, the time together and the conversations it starts. They like the cuddly together time and the feeling that we are all sharing in a journey together. At the moment, I am reading them Susan Cooper's inimitable Dark is Rising series; we are in the fifth and final book, Silver on the Tree. Next up we are going to do Diana Wynne Jones's Power of Three because I loved it sincerely when I was 12 and I want to read it again :-)

My 5 year old, C, is just starting to crack the code of reading herself, and is very, very interested in having books read to her that either use pattern and rhyme, or contain lots of words she can recognise or clear visual cues for words. However, she doesn't like really "babyish" (her word) or reader-style books - she wants plot! She wants entertainment!

To that end, we've been revisiting lots of Dr Seuss at bedtime - she is especially fond of The Sneetches and Other Stories, The Lorax, The Cat in the Hat and Daisy-Head Mayzie. She is also super keen on her Charlie and Lola books again - I have only realised now, watching her interact with them, just how well Lauren Childs wrote those books to be not just funny and appealing, but accessible to new readers. There is a preponderence of word choices that support reading development and promote success, and I love that about them.

One thing that isn't so much in this category, but that C is adoring (and I am adoring reading to her), is Elisabeth Beresford's classic The Wombles. I myself first became acquainted with The Wombles in childhood via the BBC TV show, but the book itself as an untrammeled pleasure, and reading it to C is lovely.

We're back into school and work now, which can mean that reading slows a little, but I expect we'll still find lots of corners of time that a book is the best way to fill!

Reading Notes: Bud and Roo's Spectacular Adventures - The Beach

Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of Bud and Roo's Spectacular Adventures: The Beach for review purposes by Bugle Boy Publishing. No financial incentive was offered or accepted for this post, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Jessica Valentine, the author of this sweet little picture book, contacted me on Twitter a while back and asked if I might be interested in reviewing Bud and Roo. I am usually up for a picture book offer, so I said sure, and soon enough an exciting international post envelope turned up for me from the UK.

The first thing to be said about this book is that it is very visually appealing. The illustrations look (according to my 7 year old, and I agree) like they have been drawn with textas, which creates a friendly, home-made feel to it all. The two dog main characters, Bud and Roo, are cute, although one small criticism I would make is that is is not clear which dog is which, a fact that bothered my 4 year old immensely. The oft-used "This is Bud. This is Roo" device doesn't appear, and to be honest, it's a classic for a reason - it lets kids quickly identify characters with their pictures, and this helps with story recognition later on.

In all other ways, though, the book is charming, simple and well crafted. I think it would best suit early readers or pre-readers - it's got a few words per page, a nice linear story with plenty of visual cues and repetitions, and a clear large font. It's not as quirky or complex as some of our favourite read-alouds, but for those very reasons, I've put it in the self-reading shelf along with the Spot the Dog and Scooby Doo early readers for 4 year old C to pick up. It'll suit her well as she starts to crack the code of written language.

This book retails in the UK for £5.99/$10.99 at Waterstones, WH Smith, Barnes & Noble, and independent booksellers. The ebook edition is available from Amazon.

Reading Notes: Three picture books

All my kids are big consumers of picture books, even now that the elder two are avid readers of chapter books as well. A well-crafted picture book will still engage them, and I frequently discover the 6 year old, in particular, snuggled up with a pile of stories and a blanket. (Often to the great indignation of the 3 year old, who labours under the belief that each and every picture book in the house is "MINE! MIIIIIIIINE! FOR MEEEEEEEEEE!")

We've been lucky recently to acquire three very different but very engaging new picture books - Nick Ward's The Naughty Fairy's Naughty Surprise, which was a birthday present for C back in February; Karen Andrews' Surprise!, which was a charming ... surprise ... in the conference pack at DPCCON12; and Jan Ormerod and Freya Blackwood's gentle and beautiful Maudie and Bear.

The Naughty Fairy's Naughty Surprise is a genuinely funny little book, with a premise that was at first hard for C to follow, but that she picked up after a few readings and now delights in. In essence, it follows the trajectory of the life changes of a tadpole, all the way from frog to hero to king to DADDY!, and, in parallel, the journey of the naughty fairy who starts it all off. The book is simply but attractively drawn and the tone is light and bantering, which C enjoys. It's a fun book for adults to read aloud as well - always a big plus.

Surprise! is a picture book of which I'd heard much but had never seen. Written by the inimitable MiscMum, this is just a delightful little book. C likes the illustrations, but it's 6 year old E who's really fallen in love, mostly because of the surprise at the end (and the way it allows her to engage her other favourite creative activity). It's hard to say much more without giving away the ending, but really, if you haven't come across this book yet - make its acquaintance. It's well worth it!

Maudie and Bear is a beautifully drawn book that fits loosely into that genre of children's picture books that I describe as Child Or Child Equivalent Being Demanding / Tyrannical But Cute and Indulged by Saintly Patient Adult Figure. (Alright, that's not terribly snappy, but you know what I mean).

C really loves this book, even though, for me as an adult reader, it's hard to grasp what makes it so great. Maudie is cute enough, and Bear engaging enough, but the story doesn't really go anywhere. This not only doesn't bother C - it's one of the things she loves the most about it. The writers have captured perfectly that sense of preschooler dreaminess and whimsy, that sense of stories that wander and lilt but do not end. C responds wholeheartedly to this skillful and delicately achieved text.

All in all, we'd recommend these three books. They're not at all similar, but all are well worth while and will lend themselves to multiple re-readings.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of Maudie and Bear for review purposes courtesy of Hardie Grant Egmont. I also received a complimentary copy of Surprise! as part of my conference attendance pack at the Digital Parents Conference. No financial payment was offered nor accepted for this post. All opinions expressed are purely my own.

Reading Notes: 5 Christmas picture books

Last year I posted about 5 of our favourite Christmas picture books. With the season almost upon us again, I thought I might offer 5 different books that we're already enjoying in this pre-festive warm-up period :-)

1. The Twelve Dogs of Christmas by Kevin Whitlark
This hilarious remake of the Twelve Days of Christmas features, among other things, three French poodles, six pooches playing, ten labs a'licking, eleven puppies pooping, and a fat cat in a fur tree. The kids like it because it's amusing. I like it because I can SING it, and, tunelessness notwithstanding, I do love to sing.

Apparently there is a companion volume, The Twelve Cats of Christmas, and I'm on the hunt for it now.

2. On This Special Night by Claire Freedman and Simon Mendez
Choosing one animals'-eye nativity story out of the bunch is always tricky, as there is such a plethora of titles in this sub-genre. This one, which uses a little grey kitten's learning about the meaning of the special night as its central device, is very appealing, though, firstly because it is beautifully, almost photographically illustrated, and secondly because of the oddly touching detail of the empty manger in the final illustration, leaving the child's mind to supply the image of the infant Jesus, being gazed on by the animals.

(As with all nativity stories, I have to set aside the historical and biblical inaccuracies that go with the territory. My 2 year old really doesn't need to hear me explain that the wise men didn't visit Jesus until he was almost 2, according to the Bible, or that if there were shepherds and flocks on the hills, it sure as sugar wasn't December - midwinter - when he was born. Well, at least not EVERY time :-)

3. Zelda & Ivy: One Christmas
This extremely appealing three-part tale of the Fox sisters' preparations for Christmas has been on our bookshelf for years, but it's this year that it's really come into its own. C, my 2 year old, and E, my 6 year old, have adopted this one as a sister-story, and E's been reading it aloud to C most days. They are particularly enamoured of Chapter Three, where the girls finally get their Christmas gifts, and deliver a very special one to their widowed neighbour.

4. Magical Christmas
This is a strange little book in some ways, combining quite a teacherly-earnest tone in some parts (and useful information about various Christmas traditions around the world) with a very tongue-in-cheek manner at others.

My 6 year old adores it for the way it seems to invite the child reader into the joke, but there's also plenty of sly humour for the adults, with phrases like, "Always show letters for Santa to your parents before sending - it really helps" and "Don't open all the windows at once or the grown-ups will be cross and it is essential not to make grown-ups cross before Christmas."

5. Aussie Jingle Bells
Colin Buchanan's version of Jingle Bells for an Australian audience is famous - probably infamous - now, and needs no introduction. It's another one I can sing, too!

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. 22 down, 8 to go!

Reading Notes - Eddie's Kitchen (and How to Make Good Things to Eat)

One of the things I like most about being regular library visitors is the sense of discovery, of hidden treasures lying in wait just on the next shelf. All three of my girls love the ritual of choosing new books; from a young age, I've simply left it to them to select their titles, setting only a numerical limit (more for the sake of my poor groaning back than anything else). Sometimes the things they find are delightful surprises - like one of the 2 year old's current selections, Sarah Garland's Eddie's Kitchen and How to Make Good Things to Eat.

This 2007 storybook is apparently the second in a series featuring main protagonist Eddie (a boy of 7 or 8, or thereabouts), his little sister Lily (a preschooler), and their Mum. C, my 2 year old, was attracted to it by the warm and inviting picture on the cover, the fat ginger cat, and the fact that Eddie is in the act of cracking an egg into a mixing bowl (a skill that C has recently mastered and is thrilled to practice each week on our baking day).

There's such a lot we all like about this story. The gentle, soft-edged pencil illustrations, of course - C has a definite preference for softness and watery colours in book art. The characters of Eddie and Lily are nicely fleshed out; C finds Lily's antics particularly amusing. The sequencing of the plot is a familiar and tried-and-true one for picture books (Event - Minor Crisis - Resolution - Humour), and Garland carries it off with a practised flourish.

What I like most of all, though, and what's attracted my two older kids to sneaking reads of this book (and reading aloud to the toddler), is the way that Garland creates a natural, human and extremely enticing portrait of a family making food together. The discovery that they need to prepare food for Grandpa's party, forgotten about but due to start in a matter of hours, promotes a flurry of bread-making, pasta-sauce-creation, apple-stuffing, orange-cake-baking, dip-mixing and salad-preparing.

Mum, while the overseer and director of the works, doesn't do all or even most of the actual food handling - Eddie, and playful Lily, have hands in every stage of the process. Indeed, they are integral to its success, finding apples (under the apple tree), eggs (in the henhouse and the doll's pram), mixing cake and kneading bread and creating pasta sauce. They are, in age-appropriate ways, co-workers in the kitchen, and Mum not only lets them be so, she *needs* them to be so. This is a very enticing vision of shared household work commingled with teaching and fun and love.

My kids are particularly enchanted by the way that Mum, while obviously a bit harried by the demands of last-minute party prep, still makes time to admire a neighbour's new baby, to extract a thorn from an old lady's finger, to talk to a friend on the phone who's having a hard time. Mum comes through in the book as a very caring, very warm person, and her hospitality is of the very best kind - not fussy, not fancy, not concerned with appearances, but embracing with affection and good hearty food and community.

All in all, we really love this picture book, and I'm on the hunt for its prequel, Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow.

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. 2 down, 28 to go!

Reading Notes - Zoe and Beans: The Magic Hoop!

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes courtesy of Pan Macmillan Australia. No financial payment was offered nor accepted for this post. All opinions expressed are purely my own.

Chloe and Mick Inkpen's new picture book in the Zoe and Beans series arrived in our letterbox last week, and it was an instant hit with the toddler, charming her out of an overtired strop almost instantaneously. (I could stop this review *right there* and parents of toddlers would still be motivated to buy it ;-)

We'd come in the door from shopping, C in full cranky mode, me balancing parcels and muddy shoes and plastic bags. As soon as I'd thrown the cold & frozen groceries into their places, I sat C down as we opened the Pan Macmillan parcel, talking it up as I did so. "Look, C! It's a BOOK! A NEW BOOK! For you!"

C, who loves books generally, at first was not having a bar of it. "NOOOOO! I wan' to run around!" But as she caught sight of the appealing cover, with its soft-edged, pastel look, she became interested, and came to sit down with me and listen.

This is our first experience with Zoe and Beans, and we were both charmed. The text is simple enough to engage a toddler but genuinely funny enough to be enjoyable for older children and adults (my 8 year old is particularly tickled by the tiny rabbit poos - so much easier to clean up than doggy poos!)

It's a straightforward tale - Zoe finds a magic hoop, and induces her dog Beans to jump through it by dint of throwing his favorite treat (Choccy Bears) on the other side. The hoop has transformative qualities, as Zoe and Beans quickly discover. The appeal lies in the beautiful artwork and gentle humour - not that I would have expected less of a Mick Inkpen book of Wibbly Pig fame - and in the building to a conclusion that all good children's picture books must accomplish if they are to become regular reads.

This book has been on more-than-daily rotation ever since it arrived, and I've already got the forthcoming Christmas title in the series, Zoe's Christmas List, on my radar as a new holiday title for C. I highly recommend it for children over 2.

Reading Notes - Toddler's Top 20 for May / June 2011

(Earlier posts in this series are here: February, March and April 2011).

Having just realised that I missed doing a Toddler's Top 20 for May, and it's now close to the end of June (ooooops ;-), I thought I'd do a combined May-June list of the titles the 28-month-old is enjoying.

The last 4-5 weeks have seen a reduction in the number of different books read on each day, and the emergence of the craving for repetition. C has never been fixated in the past on having the same book read and re-read and re-read again in one sitting, but she is definitely showing this tendency now, especially with the simpler titles she's enjoying.

The reason, I think, is that she is starting to associate the shape of letters and words with the sound they make. She will point at a word, and, using her memory of how the story goes, half-queryingly attempt it: "On? Mama, it is ON?" It is very exciting to me to see her trying to work out the connection between the sound and the shape of the word on the page. The day she pointed to the word "On" in an unfamiliar book and proudly proclaimed "IT IS SAY ON!" was a brilliant one for both of us.

This pre-reading phase is connected, in her as it was in her 6 year old sister before her at about this age, with a desire to "practice" her understanding on familiar titles, and ones without too many words to a page. With a few notable exceptions, therefore, this month's Top 20 veers towards the linguistically simple.

So here is her list:

1. Grug

2. Grug learns to read

3. Grug at the zoo

4. Grug learns to dance

5. Grug learns to cook

Ted Prior's wonderful Grug books somehow managed to pass us by when my elder two kids were toddlers. C discovered Grug at the library and instantly fell in love, and we've since acquired quite a few of the titles in the series. There's an interesting interview with Ted Prior here for fans of the books.

6. On Your Potty!

7. Eat Your Dinner!

8. Get Into Bed!

These three George and Bartholomew books by Virginia Miller were given to my second girl when she was a toddler, and man did she love them. C finds them hilarious, and with the low number of words on each page, she loves to sit "reading" them by herself, turning the pages as she burbles the story off from memory.

9. Look, There's a Hippopotamus in the Playground Eating Cake

10. Guess What? There's a Hippopotamus on the Hospital Roof Eating Cake

11. My Hippopotamus is on Our Caravan Roof Getting Sunburnt

Hazel Edwards' Hippopotamus series have always appealed strongly to us here, but C has really started to cotton on to them in the past few weeks. Her favourite is the playground one - she loves any and all books about school at the moment.

12. Meet Strawberry Shortcake (Justine Fontes)

Yes, yes, I realise it's commercialised and so forth, but C, like her big sister A (who's now nearly 8), has always liked Strawberry Shortcake dollies to play with, and enjoyed the cartoon when it pops up in their viewing time. This book is an "origin story" of sorts, as it's where Strawberry first meets all the friends that become her posse in later adventures. C loves it, and requests it several times a day.

13. Little Baa (Kim Lewis)

14. Goodnight Harry (Kim Lewis)

15. Hooray for Harry! (Kim Lewis)

Two of these are retained from last month, and with a new adventure of Harry's added in for good measure. These gentle, beautiful, watercolour-art, soft-feeling books are just like a warm cuddly blanket, and that's how C likes to use them, requesting them often before her nap or before bed, or when she's in the mood for a quiet cuddle.


16. Inside, Outside, Upside Down (Stan & Jan Berenstain)

This Berenstain Bears book is an example of the simple-language repetitive-text that C is favouring as she gets the hang of squiggles on a page representing words. I don't really like the Berenstain Bears books much myself, but clearly I am not the target audience, and there's no denying they work for toddlers!

17. Wombat Divine (Mem Fox)

C discovered this lovely, lovely Christmas story on the shelf and, with a toddler's fine disregard for seasonality, has put it into regular rotation, along with her Wiggles Christmas DVD. (Christmas in June indeed ;-)

18. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Eric Carle)

C likes all the Eric Carle books on our shelf, but this one, with its colour / animal / word repetition nexus, is her current favourite.

19. Olivia (Ian Falconer)

The original book about one of children's fiction's charming pigs. C loves it.

20. Little Tiger's Big Surprise (Julie Sykes)

C has become very attached to this story about a tiger cub getting used to the idea of having a baby brother or sister around - hopefully she's not thinking of new cubs at her house though! (Hint - It. Ain't. Happening ;-)

Reading Notes - Toddler's Top 20 for April 2011

(Earlier posts in this series are here - February's books - and here - March's books).

Continuing on my monthly wrap-up of toddler's top-rotating picture books, the past month or six weeks has seen a transition towards longer titles on the whole, with one or two exceptions. At almost 27 months, C's sense of humour is burgeoning, as is her ability to predict narratives and rhymes. This has led to the retention of two of last month's favourites in this month's list - they have remained stalwart on daily rotation because of their humour (in the case of Too Many Pears) and rhythm (Where is the Green Sheep).

C is also engaging with more complex stories and characters, and her lengthening attention span is showing in her capacity to follow plot points across an entire book. Her narrative sense is emerging and, like her sisters, she's part of a storytelling and story-hearing clan, and she's drinking it up. We were born for the tale, all of us ;-)

This month, daily books on most days have included at least half of this list. We've been reading, on average, 25 books a day - C is in a very beautiful phase with books at the moment, of wanting to sit down with me for extended reading sessions and cuddle and explore the text. I remember this stage with delight from my older two and I'm very much soaking up having it back again. Unfolding the written word to a beloved child must be one of the purest pleasures in parenting, I think.

So this month, the top reads have been:

1. Good Night, Little Bear (Patsy Scarry)
All of my children have enjoyed this one. We have it in a Golden Book form.

2. The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse (Miriam Norton)
This is a classic and another Golden Book - ah, how I love the Golden Books! Mickey Miggs is one of C's favourite fictional characters of all time.

3. Piglet and Mama (Margaret Wild)

Hey, lookit - another charming pig in children's fiction! Piglet and Mama is very sweet, and very much part of the repeating-pattern little-lost-animal school of picture book (as are both Little Baa and Little Lamb, listed below).

4. Little Baa (Kim Lewis)

5. Goodnight Harry (Kim Lewis)
Kim Lewis is a particular favourite of mine in the children's picture book arena. Her soft watercolour illustrations team perfectly with the themes of her stories, and the countryside is like another character in the books, always waiting just outside the window. C loves Harry deeply; this is probably one of her two or three absolute favourites at the moment.

6. Little Lamb (Piers Harper)

7. I Know a Rhino (Charles Fuge)

8. The Poky Little Puppy (Janette Sebring Lowrey)

9. The Saggy Baggy Elephant (K & B Jackson)
Both The Poky Little Puppy and The Saggy Baggy Elephant have emerged from the Golden Book section of our library this month in triumph. Our own dog is called Pokey (named after both this book and the Hokey Pokey) so C finds that an endless source of mirth.

10. Ten Apples Up On Top (Theo LeSieg)
Is there a better early-counting book than this classic?

11. A Fish Out of Water (Helen Palmer)
This was my husband's earliest memory of being read to - an early school teacher reading A Fish Out of Water to the class. He picked up this copy in a secondhand bookshop in Echuca last year and it was instantly adopted as a favorite by the older two girls. C is just ready for it now.

12. Charlie and Lola - I really, really need actual ice skates (Lauren Child)

13. Charlie and Lola - I will be especially very careful (Lauren Child)
Yes, we're back to Charlie & Lola again. She spotted these two titles at the library and nothing would do but that we should borrow them and read them, many, many times. Le sigh.

14. Too Many Pears (Jackie French)

15. Where is the Green Sheep? (Mem Fox)

16. Hop on Pop (Dr Seuss)

17. Cuthbert's Babies (Pamela Allen)
I love this Pamela Allen story of Cuthbert and his quintuplet baby sisters, and so, it seems, does Miss C.

18. Are You My Mother? (P D Eastman)

19. The Sea Mice and the Stars (Kenneth C Steven)
This is a very appealing little book indeed, and while I would have thought it was too old for C, she listens intently and devotedly to the story of Ashenteen and Willaby gathering the fallen stars to light up the mouse village. A lovely story to read over and over, too - it has adult appeal.

20. The Wish Cat (Ragnhild Scammell)
This is such a favourite of mine! It's the story of Tom, the beaten-up, scruffy but endlessly good-natured stray who is definitely *not* the answer Holly expected to her shooting-star wish for a sweet, fluffy little kitten.

Reading Notes - Toddler's Top 20 for March 2011

Following on from last month's stroll down picture-book lane, here are 20 titles that are capturing the imagination of my 25-month-old at the moment.

Of last month's list the only ones to drop out of regular reading are the toddler lift-the-flap books - C seems to feel herself a bit beyond them now, and enjoys listening to an actual narrative in her stories. All the rest are still in high rotation!

1. Owl Babies (Martin Waddell)

2. Can't You Sleep, Little Bear? (Martin Waddell)

3. Snow Bears (Martin Waddell)

All of my children have loved Martin Waddell's gentle, whimsical stories as toddlers. C, like her big sister E before her, is especially enchanted with Owl Babies, Waddell's endearing little tale about three baby owls waiting for their mother to come home from hunting. C always sighs at the end and, echoing the story, turns to me to say, "I love my Mummy!"

4. Where is the Green Sheep? (Mem Fox)

5. Koala Lou (Mem Fox)

I doubt there would be a single month in the past 7 years (since I first started reading picture books to my eldest child) that at least one Mem Fox book hasn't been in the 'favourites' pile.

C is currently close to obsessed with Where is Green Sheep - she likes to say all of the sheep activities herself, and is never content with less than three readings in a sitting of this book.

She is also very attached to Koala Lou, the story of a little koala who wants to be reassured of her mother's love, little knowing that her mother loves her all the time. (I would definitely list Koala Lou as among my own top 3 Mem Fox books, so reading it over and over is no chore to me ;-)

6. Down the Back of the Chair (Margaret Mahy)

This is an absolute hoot of a book. If you don't know this brilliant, classic children's poem, or haven't seen it with Polly Dunbar's terrific illustrations, I'd urge you to make its acquaintance.

This is one of the books on toddler's playlist, along with Fiona the Pig, the Little Miss books, and The Magic Beach, that inevitably draws the big kids in to listen, too - none of can resist its absurdity, powerful driving rhyme, and zest. (After all, we've all lost things in our time ... down the back of the chair!)

7. Little Miss Tiny (Roger Hargreaves)

8. Little Miss Sunshine (Roger Hargreaves)

9. Little Miss Bossy (Roger Hargreaves)

10. Little Miss Wise (Roger Hargreaves)

All three of my girls like the Mr Men and Little Miss books, although I'd say C has cottoned to them a bit younger than A and E did (probably a function of the fact that A, the 7.5 year old, enjoys these stories so she will happily read 3 or 4 of them in a row out to C!) I picked out these four titles fairly randomly, although Little Miss Tiny is undoubtedly her favourite ("MY Miss Tiny!" she exclaims, clutching it to her chest). In reality, she has enjoyed many more books in the series than this.

As an aside, while I think these books are mostly fun and visually appealing, I've never been able to set aside my faint crankiness that Hargreaves felt the need to call them LITTLE Miss books. Mr Men, so why LITTLE Miss? Why not just "Miss"? Why infantalise the female characters in the nomenclature, when they are not actually children any more than the male characters are? A minor quibble perhaps, but it does irritate me.

11. The Ravenous Beast (Niamh Sharkey)

Now THAT'S what I call hungry! Very amusing book.

12. Pumpkin Soup (Helen Cooper)

13. Delicious! (Helen Cooper)

We have long been fans of Helen Cooper in this household, and her wonderful Pumpkin Soup series are probably our favourites of all. C loves the gorgeous illustrations, and adores the Duck with a fervent, unshakeable devotion. I imagine she's going to enjoy helping when we road-test the soup recipe from this book soon!

14. Fiona the Pig (Leigh Hobbs)

15. Fiona the Pig's Big Day (Leigh Hobbs)

There are some pretty charming pigs in kids' fiction - Olivia and Wilbur (Charlotte's Web) spring immediately to mind, as does TV's rather oddly drawn Peppa Pig - but I think Fiona would have to one of the sweetest and funniest of all. C loves her blonde ringlets in particular!

16. Go, Dog, Go! (P D Eastman)

I have written before about our love of P D Eastman's works, and C has put the bright and cheery Go, Dog, Go! back on the frequent list this month.

17. Too Many Pears! (Jackie French)

I love this book to bits, partly for its artwork but mostly for its humour and ability to engage a toddler's brain.

C thinks Pamela the cow is just the funniest thing she ever saw, and she ooohs and ahhhhs every time at the amount of pears that Pamela eats. Often she exhorts her, "No, Pam'la! You will be SO SICK, Pam'la!"

18. The Magic Beach (Alison Lester)

My older kids still adore this wonderful book, and C is just in the last week coming to an appreciation of it. I think it is probably still a stretch for her but the lovely, evocative pictures help get her there.

19. Put Me in the Zoo (Robert Lopshire)

I remember having this book read to me as a child, and all of my girls have liked it. C enjoys pointing out the colour changes with the spots (having recently fully mastered her colours, she likes deploying her skills at every opportunity).

20. Sleepy Dog (Harriet Ziefert)

This one is much more linguistically simple that the narrative stories listed above, represented in short disconnected phrases ("Sleepy, sleepy, up to bed / Head on pillow. Nose under covers. Cat on bed") rather than full sentences or paragraphs. C likes it when she's feeling tired or when she's looking at books by herself, pointing at pictures and phrases and repeating them (from memory, one assumes - 2 is a little early for pre-reading!)

Anyone else have any thoughts on these books, or other toddler favourites?

Reading Notes - This month's Top 20

The big girls are into all sorts of books, and so is the toddler. At 2, naturally, she loves repetition, so although her exposure to different texts is very broad over time, within any given month we might read the same 20 or 30 books over and over again, rather than reading 100 different books (as would be truer of the picture-book habits of the 5-year-old).

It's interesting to me to see where her tastes lie as time progresses, and as I am One of Those Evil People Who Writes About The Mundanity of Their Entirely Uninteresting Life, Thereby Clearly Forcing Others to Read It, As They Are Incapable of Simply Looking Away, I thought, what the heck, I'll do a monthly Top 20 for toddler, as a record for me and her.

And if you don't have a toddler and / or are uninterested in children's picture books, move on. Nothing to see here.

So, Toddler's Top 20 for the month of February 2011:

1. Hairy Maclary, Sit! (Lynley Dodd)

2. Hairy Maclary and Zachary Quack (Lynley Dodd)

3. Schnitzel von Krumm's Basketwork (Lynley Dodd)

4. Slinky Malinki's Catflaps (Lynley Dodd)

5. Hairy Maclary, Shoo! (Lynley Dodd)

The top 5 positions all belong to Lynley Dodd and her wonderful, toddler-pleasing Hairy Maclary books. We've got about 15 of these books in total, but these five in particular are very dear to my 2-year-old's heart. She loves the rhyme and rhythm of the stories, the vibrant artwork, and the antics of Hairy and his posse so much.

6. The Willy-Willy and the Ant (Retold by Cecelia Egan)

7. Tiddalik, Or the Frog Who Wouldn't Laugh (Retold by Cecelia Egan)

The toddler is also very enamored at the moment of these two retellings of Aboriginal dreamtime stories - one about the whirlwind (willy willy), one about Tiddalik, the giant frog who swallowed all the fresh water in the world.

8. Mr Pusskins (A Love Story) (Sam Lloyd)

This is a total charmer of a book, featuring a very catly cat (ungrateful, disdainful and offhand, at least at the beginning). I can never read it without being reminded of the old axiom that while dogs have masters, cats have staff ;-)

9. My Many-Coloured Days (Dr Seuss)

Some days as yellow, some days are blue ... On different days I'm different too. The toddler, like both her sisters before her, is enchanted with this gentle riff on moods.

10. Peek-a-Baby! (Karen Katz)

11. Where Is Baby's Mommy? (Karen Katz)

C likes a good old lift-the-flap book as much as any self-respecting toddler, and Karen Katz's simple and colourful illustrations make these ones particular favourites.

12. Charlie & Lola - I am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go to Bed (Lauren Child)

13. Charlie & Lola - I Will Not Ever, Never Eat a Tomato (Lauren Child)

14. Charlie & Lola - This is Actually My Party (Lauren Child)

Now, Charlie and Lola are an interesting phenomenon to me. All three of my kids have adored them in turn, although C has developed her attachment the earliest (she really seems to keep pace with the stories too, amazingly), but none of them have been too bothered about the TV series, and the elder two now are quite disinterested in the books. It also hasn't translated into any taste for Lauren Child's older offerings - my 7 year old tried, and disliked, one of her Clarice Bean books (it is one of the few things she's ever taken back to the library half-read).

For me, I find these books just a little grating after repeated readings. Charlie is just a bit *too* patient and mature, Lola a bit *too* predictably inconsiderate and childish (as opposed to childlike, which is a different trait and one that I highly value in storybook characters). Still, I know many adults who rave about them, so to each their own.

15. Doggies! (Sandra Boynton)

Well, Sandra Boynton is a classic of the preschool set, after all.

16. Bertie and the Bear (Pamela Allen)

The variety of noises that accompany this story make it a great read for toddlers, and, I have discovered, a great engager for multi-age playgroup storytime as well.

17. We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Michael Rosen)

C likes to do the action to this classic story - "Froo the grass! Swishy-swashy, Swishy-swashy!" she calls excitedly. I love that this is a story that can be played as much as read.

18. How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You? (Mark Teague / Jane Yolen)

We have several of the excellent How Do Dinosaurs series, but this one is C's favourite of them all. She kisses the dinosaurs on each page ;-)

19. Time for Bed (Mem Fox)

C has this as a bedtime story, firmly choosing it over the toddler-night-routine tales of the older girls (my 7 year old was a Goodnight Moon kid, while the 5 year old was all about Owl Babies and nursery rhymes as bedtime). Like most Mem Fox books, it is beautiful.


20. Olga the Brolga (Rod Clement)

Again I think rhyme is the key to the engagement of this story - that and the beautiful illustrations. It's a fun one to read aloud too - even repetitively!

If you have toddlers, what books do yours go for? Does it change much month to month?

Christmas picture books

When I came to write this post about favourite Christmas stories, I found myself stymied by a couple of things. Firstly, there are such a lot of Christmas stories around, selecting a few seemed impossible, especially given how many my kids and I read each year. That was a problem in and of itself; how to select when the field is so wide?

Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, it struck me that Christmas stories come in many different shades and hues. There's the nativity stories, with varying degrees of overt Christian sensibility. There's the "true meaning of Christmas" stories, with their generosity / family / love / sharing / giving themes. There's the Santa stories (the significant sub-genre of Rudolph stories fit in here too). There's the offbeat stories, that pick up festive moods or ideas without really being straight Christmas stories at all. What a field, and each kind of story has some strong contenders for favourites (and also, let it be said, some duds too).

So in the end, I have listed 5 Christmas stories that are very different from each other, but all have been enjoyed by my kids and all, I think, are very good of their kind. I don't think I'd even say they are our all-time top 5 (although the #1 on the list is probably our all-time #1). They are, however, a good selection covering a lot of Christmas ground.

I'd be interested to hear of any others people are attached to!

1. The Jolly Christmas Postman

Janet and Allen Ahlberg are geniuses in my opinion (and I will devote a later post to exactly why I think so) and this Christmas story is pure delight. The combination of beautifully detailed illustration, gentle and funny rhyming story, the use of fairytale and nursery rhyme characters, and the interactivity of the book is just magic. Each page features a letter or card for a different fairytale recipient, all inserted into envelopes on the backs of pages, and there is twice as much reading in the inserted bits as in the storyline itself. Highly recommended for 2.5 years and up (younger ones will enjoy the pictures but probably rip the letter / card inserts).

2. Twas the night before Christmas

Sometimes you just can't go past the classics, and this well-known Christmas poem, which was read to me every Christmas Eve as a child, remains dear to my seasonal heart.


My 5-year-old is the biggest fan of it from my three kids this year; she's enjoying it as much, I think, for the curious and (to her) archaic language as for the lovely illustrations.

3. The Fox's Tale

I could have picked lots of nativity stories, but this one is one our favourites. Written by Nick Butterworth, it tells the story of the nativity from the perspective of a fox who observes the shephereds and angels on the hillside, then follows them to the stable to see the infant Jesus. It is a pretty straight-up nativity story, couched in terms that toddlers can absorb easily.

4. The Polar Express

I think most people come across this Christmas phenomenon at some point, if only because of the movie it produced. (We haven't seen the movie as yet, but may do so this Christmas). It is a beautiful, lyrical story about the polar express, an imaginary train that takes children to the North Pole on Christmas Eve to see Santa on his way. It is magnificently illustrated and has a simple and charming message. My kids all love it.

5. Wombat Divine

As an Australian, finding stories about our Christmas (the hot, dusty, non-snowy kind, with non-reindeer type animals) isn't always easy.


Mem Fox, well-known Australian author, delivers a very sweet, accessible one in Wombat Divine, the tale of a bunch of Australian animals putting on a nativity play, and the dumpy, childlike, sweet as sugar wombat who struggles to find his place.

Reading Notes - Jethro Byrde, Fairy Child

Great picture books for 3-6 year olds are plentiful in the world, much to my delight. I never expected to have so much fun discovering new authors and titles for kids, nor indeed in rediscovering favourites from my own childhood. There really is a magical and vast universe out there to explore in junior kidlit, and I've vastly enjoyed sailing on that ocean over the past five years or so.

Even in a generally strong field, though, there are stand-out titles, books that really grab children and adults alike with the freshness of their voice and the richness of their vision. One such title in our house is Bob Graham's 2003 story, Jethro Byrde, Fairy Child.



Jethro Byrde is based on the simple and often-used conceit that only children (and the child-like at heart) can see fairies, who might be anywhere at all. What sets this book apart is that the little girl who sees the fairies, Annabelle, spots them amongst the weeds and concrete in an inner-city neighbourhood, rather than the traditional woodlands-and-tinkling-waterfalls setting; and, more, the nature of the fairies themselves. For Jethro Byrde, fairy child, and his family (father Offin, mother Lily, baby Cecily, and Grandma) are Fairy Travellers, on their way to the Fairy Traveller's picnic in their roadside hot dog van. In his jeans and backwards baseball cap, Jethro doesn't look like a conventional fairy, but it's soon clear that he and his family are going to bring some wonder and delight into Annabelle's concrete world.

There is so much to like about this story - the illustrations are beautiful, the rhythm is just right, the characters are enormously appealing, and the themes are so gentle and lovely. My girls have always had an especial fondness for the ending, where Annabelle falls asleep clutching Jethro's fairy watch and listening to the stream of fairy travellers in the sky outside her window. On that last page, "long after she fell asleep, their busy chattering and the buzzing of their wings and their faraway music filled her dreams."

Fairies can be anywhere, in any shape or size, in any guise, if your mind's eye is open to them. This charming book is a favourite for speaking this so clearly to my little girls.

Reading Notes - Toddler books

As I have referred to before, I have three daughters at very different stages on their literacy journey. I have a fluently-reading almost 7 year old, a pre-reading 5-year-old with very sophisticated taste in story, and a 16-month-old who's just beginning to love books. Reading to, with and for toddlers is a really different experience to reading with older children, and it's both enjoyable and at times a trifle disconcerting to switch between the two modes several times daily. As I often write about the things I'm reading with and for the elder kids, I thought it was time to swivel the spotlight onto the toddler's reading habits for once and see what she's up to.

My youngest daughter is 16 months old now and, like her sisters before her, has entered a phase of great interest in books, especially certain kinds of books. Typically for the age, she loves to be read her favourite texts over and over; custom does not stale their infinite variety for her.

She also loves engaging with the books on her own, sitting with a small heap of brightly coloured texts on her lap and perusing the pages, making noises or pronouncements when she recognises a picture or remembers the accompanying words ("Upple!" as she sees an apple, "Bow wow wow!" at the appropriate juncture in Sandra Boynton's Doggies, and so forth). I see this introduction to texts as the building blocks of future literacy; certainly it's about familiarising children with the shapes and sounds of words, conventions of the book and the cadence of story, but it's also about communicating the magic of the written word and a sense of delight in it. I have seen this fascination with books grow in each of my girls from toddlerdom onwards and it is a positive joy to witness.

Each of my girls has had different favourite titles in the 12 month - 2 year age bracket, but there are commonalities that seem to me to be quite striking. All my young toddlers have loved:

- Books that engage more than one sense
Lift-the-flap books, sliding-door books, touchy-feely books, sniffy books, books with sound effects ... all are highly popular.

The 16 month old's favourites are the Who is Hiding books - little hand-sized lift-the-flap books where a variety of animals are sought in a variety of scenarios; That's Not my Princess and That's Not my Puppy from the Usborne books collection; and the Eric Carle classic, The Very Quiet Cricket (the edition we have chirps on the final page).

- Books that feature rhyme and repetition.
The 16-month-old is very heavily into nursery rhymes at the moment. Our beloved and very worn copy of Mother Goose is trotted out daily, with the toddler moving us directly along to her favourites ("Hummy Dumpy!" followed by a clicking noise with her tongue as she speeds along to the page featuring Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross and Horsey Horsey Don't You Stop). We have the Iona Opie edition and it's a treasure.

Sandra Boynton's books are popular in this category, getting a guernsey under the animal heading too.

- Books that feature animals
Most toddlers love books featuring animals, and mine have been no exception. Each had their foibles - my eldest was obsessive about ducks, cats and cows, while the middle liked exotics (especially, and overwhelmingly elephants, - my copy of The Saggy Baggy Elephant actually fell apart when she was 3), and the youngest is all about the dogs, horses, and, for some strange reason, owls. My girls have all liked to identify animals wherever they can, usually by an approximation of sound (although all three not not deign to attempt to cheep, saying "burr" for "bird" from about 15 months onwards).

The 16-month-old has a lot of favourite animal books, but I'd say the stand-out is Sandra Boynton's Doggies. (It is a charming book, as indeed are most of Boynton's). She also enjoys Lynley Dodd's Hairy Maclary books, but rarely sits still for the entire narrative (it's a little long for her), preferring instead to interject with energetic and lifelike dog noises and move the text along to her favourite pictures.

- Books that show lots of common objects / items with their names.
This is definitely an area where the pre-reading foundation that toddlers are laying down is displayed. All the toddler wants to do sometimes is to get one of her (many) books that feature pages of pictures with labels and go through them, pointing out things to me and having me (or her elder sister, often) read unfamiliar labels to her.

She particularly likes the Hinkler Books First series in this area, largely because they're a good size for her to handle, I think. "Upple!" she proclaims proudly as she grabs First Nature, firmly poking at the pictured fruit on the cover. "Burr!" as she points to the parrot. Then, "Mummy ... peese?" as she climbs up with the book for me to read her. It is rare for me to say no!


So, those with toddlers past or present, what do you think? What have your toddlers enjoyed?

Reading Notes - Pamela Allen

New Zealand picture book author-illustrator, Pamela Allen, has written 30-some picture books for toddlers, and they are, in Australia at least, ubiquitous - most people who read to their kids at all have heard of Allen, and have sampled at least some of her books.

Our first exposure to this children's publishing lion was in the form of one of her less salubrious efforts (to my mind, anyway) - Daisy All-Sorts, the story of a dog whose owner acquires a bicycle and thus changes her daily walk routine to a daily-chase-along-behind-a-bike routine. All becomes well in Daisy's world, however, when a kindly neighbour provides her with an incentive to keep up - licorice all-sorts. We had the book from the library when my oldest child was about 20 months old or so, and while she liked it, she didn't love it, and I found the story a bit ho-hum.

However, I quickly discovered that a) Pamela Allen is an acquired taste (the illustrative style and language use does grow on you) and b) This is by no means her best book. For Daughter #1's second birthday, we were given the much more charming Cuthbert's Babies, the story of a little boy, Cuthbert, struggling to adapt to the arrival of a set of quintuplets in his house through the use of imaginary friends and controlled naughtiness. We really liked this one, especially as Daughter #1's life had been interrupted only 3 months earlier by the arrival of Daughter #2. I thought the choice of quintuplets was a quirky and interesting take on the usual "new sibling in the house" story, and Cuthbert's story was funny, whimsical and enjoyable.

From Cuthbert's Babies, our Pamela Allen habit grew in leaps and bounds. Brown Bread and Honey, a Christmas present in 2007, is a very endearing and amusing story about how a gluttonous and rude king learns to appreciate the simple things in life (and on the table). Bertie and the Bear, first borrowed from the library but later purchased, is a fantastic cacophony of sound and motion, very rhythmic, and enjoyed by younger children than some of the others (my youngest daughter, now 15 months old, loves this one). Who Sank the Boat?,
possibly her best-known title, is a wonderful, funny, and narratively deceptively simple mystery story of toddlers, and it's fun to read, there is scope to do a lot with it (voices and so on).

Still, I had some reservations. The Mr McGee books, of which there are 6, still struck me as a bit too odd, even for children's books (who IS this character who lives under a tree?) My oldest daughter was lukewarm on Share Said the Rooster, borrowed from the library, and none of us really went for Alexander's Outing.

However, Pamela Allen's place in the pantheon of our literary house was established beyond doubt in June 2006, when I took my oldest child to see a production by Patch Theatre Company of Who Sank the Boat?, a children's performance based on 8 of Allen's stories. The production was wonderful - lyrical, funny, engaging, odd moments of sadness and darkness, many moments of hilarity and colour and light. My then-almost-3-year-old was transfixed for the entire hour. And the play introduced us to two Allen titles we hadn't encountered until then - Black Dog and Herbert & Harry.

Both of these books are sad and quite challenging in a way for toddlers, carrying themes of loss and the consequences of poor (in particular, callous) choices. My older daughter is still, 4 years later, attached to these stories in ways that don't seem quite explicable only by their familiar illustrative style and typically musical use of language. She likes to think about them and talk about them, often at moments when she herself is feeling a bit sad or reflective.

So, unusual drawing style, mixed themes and all, we are definitely a Pamela Allen fanhousehold. (Within limitation). I would highly recommend her books for toddlers aged 2 and up, with a caution that the beautiful and thought-provoking Black Dog be introduced only at a time when one is ready to field questions.