More Books We Love

While searching for something else on a library site, one of the results that popped up was this gorgeous (visually, lyrically, and spiritually) book we'd read together a few times in the Spring. All The World by Liz Garton Scanlon with mesmerizing illustrations (it did win a Caldecott Honor) by Marla Frazee is one of those really great books that we didn't even realize would touch us so deeply. And it's one I'd love to come back to time and again. In fact, I will check it out again this month to add to our celebration of the International Day of Peace which is September 21.

Another book we've checked out a couple of times now is Here Comes the Garbage Barge by Jonah Winter and Red Nose Studios. It creatively conveys the story (with a few embellishments) of the real-life events of 1987 wherein a Long Island town ran out of landfill space and loaded its garbage onto a barge which roamed the Atlantic and Gulf coasts for months looking for a place to dump it. I remembered the story from the news when I was a kid & was eager to share the surreality with my kids. Enter Red Nose Studio's captivating illustrations using a stop-motion-like photography* of handmade materials, and this book breathes new life into this green morality tale. The writing is good, too--and lends itself to accents (and you all know how I love to read in accents!). We most recently checked this book out because I was blending two units together--one on boats and one on household waste--and there was nothing more perfect than a boat with waste! We may check it out again for Earth Day (which was the first occasion we found it, thanks to a library display).

*Check out the Amazon page for an incredible look at the creative process from the author/illustrator. My kids were amazed at how the illustrations were created.

Children's Books We Love, Pt 3

I've been meaning to pass along some of our all-time favorite books...and some of the gems we've come across at our libraries.

One of the latter is Henry and the Crazed Chicken Pirates by Carolyn Crimi, illustrated by John Manders.



I hesitantly picked this book when my 3yo was wandering around our local library branch, collecting books featuring rabbits on the covers. I acquiesced because we were also picking up the next chapter book I've been reading my 6yo before bed, How to be a Pirate (the 2nd in the "How to Train Your Dragon" series). I'm so glad I did--it's no award-winner, but it is a FUN book to read, to listen to, and to look at. The watercolor illustrations are bright, colorful, and engaging. If you do voice variation when you read, it's fun for that, too. (There are pirates, after all!) My 6yo requested I read this twice in a row one night--which he almost never does anymore--and then once AGAIN the following night. He loved it so much that he insisted I "write about it on the internet." Wish granted, Bubba.