Wednesday, November 01, 2006

More Sheep-ish Books for our Wool Unit

Here's some sheep, wool and knitting books we read through yesterday(between costume try-ons, quick sewing and other Halloween-time fun and adventures)....

What a fun unit this is!

Beskow, Elsa – Pelle’s New Suit
This is a classic from Swedish author/illustrator Elsa Beskow about a shepherd who keeps growing out of his clothes and his lamb that helps clothe him. The pictures are beautiful and very European-looking. I love this book (as I do most of Beskow’s other books).

Shaw, Nancy (illustrated by Margot Apple) – the Sheep series are wonderful stories about a family of sheep and their various antics. Told in rhyme, these stories are fun (and easy) to read while the illustrations are gorgeously done in colored pencil. This is a wonderful series of books.
Sheep in a Jeep
Sheep on a Ship
Sheep in a Shop
Sheep Out to Eat
Sheep Take a Hike
Sheep Trick or Treat

Oughton, Jerrie – The Magic Weaver of Rugs: A Tale of the Navajo
This is a lovely rendition of the folk tale about how the Navajo first learned to weave rugs. Two women, tired of seeing their people starve and freeze, go off to find how to solve this problem. They meet Spider Woman who teaches them to weave and dye the wool from the sheep.

Bryant, Megan E. – Knit Now
Simple and cool patterns abound in this kid-friendly how-to knit book. The projects include ipod covers, cell phone cases and cool snakes. The book also is able to clearly describe and illustrate how to knit. The spiral binding makes it easy to have the book open while working on these projects.

Clewer, Carolyn – Kids Can Knit: Fun and Easy Projects for Your Small Knitter
Another how-to-knit book, this one has lots of fun projects (including the cover project of a “Peruvian Pom-pom Hat”). “Small knitter” means for those around 10 or so, but you can certainly teach younger kids to knit using this book. The illustrations and directions are pretty good and the projects would be fun to do – a pom-pom spider with knitted legs, poncho, knitted flowers, etc. Clewer definitely wrote this one with kids in mind.

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