MONDAY FUNDAY – Oct 10, 2016

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date, and adapted by Kellee at Unleashing Readers and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts with a children’s/YA focus. The Sunday Post is hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. These weekly roundups are a great way to discover new blogs and bloggers, share titles, and add to your ever-growing to-read list.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends and honorary Canadian friends!!

I’ve got a bumper crop of books to share this week, so let’s dive right in.

Mr. King’s Machine by Genevieve Cote

Mr. King is a merry old crown-wearing feline king who loves pretty things and machines. When a caterpillar mars a pretty thing – a flower – Mr. King turns to his second love – machines – for revenge. He creates a mechanical butterfly catching machine not unlike an orange tank, and races around the land in pursuit of the offending butterfly. Unbeknownst to Mr. King, though, his machine is filling the air with terrible pollution, and his friends are most displeased with him. To set things straight, Mr. King uses his mechanical know-how to create something beautiful and practical!

A fun, sweet story from a Canadian author/illustrator and publisher – how cool is that? And how can you resist that charming face?! It’s definitely worth checking out this third adventure featuring the delightful feline, Mr. King.

Pigs and a Blanket by James Burks

Two little pigs share a much beloved blanket. Each likes to have fun with the blanket in their own way – making movies, playing with trucks, reading or dancing. When the two little pigs each decide they want the blanket for themselves, they quickly realize that sometimes sharing something with someone you love is actually a million times more rewarding than having that something all to yourself.

Anyone with siblings or multiple children will immediately recognize these dear little piggies, and it’s a lot of fun for story times. Pigs and a Blanket is a great little story about sharing and caring with text that’s simple and approachable enough for even the youngest readers.

Hoot and Peep

Big brother owl Hoot is thrilled that his little sister Peep is finally old enough to come outside on the rooftop with him at night. He can’t wait to teach her all his owl wisdom. But little Peep just doesn’t seem to understand what being an owl is all about! Instead of saying hoo! like a normal owl, she wants to sing! Could it be that the unconventional Peep actually has her own owl wisdom after all?

Hoot and Peep is a beautifully illustrated story about finding your own song, and about having the courage to dance to the beat of your own drummer, no matter what anyone else has to say about it.

Blocks

As anyone who’s ever worked with or raised young children can tell you, sharing can be a difficult concept to grasp and master. Giving something away to someone else, with no guarantee that you’ll ever get it again, isn’t necessarily intuitive! It can be hard enough for us grown ups to share, so imagine how difficult it must be for little ones.

In this colourful picture book from author/illustrator Irene Dickson, a little girl named Ruby plays happily with her red blocks, while a little boy named Benji plays with blue blocks. But when Benji snatches away one of Ruby’s red blocks, and Ruby decides to take it back, they bring both of their block sculptures tumbling down. When Ruby and Benji learn to share, they realize that by combining their block collections they can open up an entirely new world of building ideas and creations!

Like Pigs and a Blanket, Blocks is a great story about sharing and caring, and is a great starting point for conversations about collaboration, sharing and team work. It’s also super cute!

So many sweet and wonderful picture books, so little time! Hopefully you can get your hands on copies of all these books – they’re all great reads in their different ways.

Have a great reading week, everyone!