Random Reading: Today's Picture Books

Occasionally I just get a stack of picture books that I've collected form the library and we sit and read through them. They might be all of a theme or quite random. Today, after finishing our chapter read-aloud book, I read three picture books that all three kids LOVED:

• The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown (illustrated by Leonard Weisgard) – here’s one I’d never heard of by the author of the well-known Goodnight Moon. This is a very cute book about important things – spoons, daisies, snow, etc – and the most important being “you”!
• Nature’s Paintbox: a seasonal gallery of art and verse by Patricia Thomas (illustrated by Craig Orback) – would be a fabulous book for a seasons unit or an art unit or just a wonderful book to sit, listen and enjoy! Starting with pen and ink drawings of winter, the author than describes spring as being like chalk pastels, summer as being bright and clean as watercolors, and autumn as colorful as oils. What a great way to try different art media!
• Babar’s World Tour by Laurent de Brunhoff is one of the Babar books I had never seen before. I love Babar – we used to have to read his books in French class when I was in elementary school and I STILL loved the adventures in Celesteville! This one would be great for kicking off a continent unit or just having a bit of fun with geography – and you’ll learn a few vocabulary words in different languages too!

These kind of days (particularly on a blustery, snowy off-and-on kind of day like today) are always such fun. I just never know where we'll go with books like these ... atlases were pulled out to find the various locations mentioned in the Babar book, we have decided to try different art media based on the Paintbox book and the Margaret Wise Brown book was just a wonderfully gentle book to cuddle with!

So what books would you recommend I collect for our next Random Reading day?

Books: Another Random Reading Day selections

We had such fun during yesterday morning's Random Reading day that the kids and I decided to do another, shorter one today. Here are the books we got through this morning:

The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup by Rosemary Sutcliff and illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark – is a great story about the relationship between a person and his pet. In this case, the pet is a dragon pup that only knows the minstrel and the minstrel’s kindness. A villain (the illustration is even VERY sneaky, skunky looking) steals the pup and sets in motion many events.

Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe by Vera B. Williams – is a wonderful overview of a family’s trip in a newly purchased, used red canoe. The narrator writes in her journal from the moment she sees the canoe for sale, through the preparations for getting the boat and themselves sea-worthy, on the river for three days and then back home again. The cover even looks like a child’s composition book. This is definitely a read for getting the kiddoes rather for summertime fun!

Stringbean’s Trip to the Shining Sea by Vera B. Williams and Jennifer Williams – is about a trip from Kansas to the Pacific ocean. The neat thing is that the story is told through a series of “postcards” from Stringbean and his brother Fred back to their Ma, Pa and Grandpa. It’s a great overview of the geography and history between Kansas and the Ocean, with lots of nice side-notes on brotherly love and brotherly spats.

The Train of States written and illustrated by Peter Sis – is a lovely tribute to the 50 states as well as the Nation’s Capitol! Peter Sis is an immigrant from the Czech Republic and has really embraced his new homeland. This book is a lovely tribute to each of the 50 states – each state is its own train car with details of state nicknames, state flower, state tree, fun fact and other information packed into each train car illustration. The cars are in order of statehood. This is one of those “gaze at the picture for an hour and find more and more interesting things” kind of books. The pictures are fun – almost cartoony – but never lose sight of the respect Sis has for each state and America. The last page shows all the train cars gathered together and it’s fun to pick out the different states by their “symbols”. This is a great way to introduce American geography and state-history to children!