And we’re back with more books I recently borrowed from the library! Honestly, if you have access to a public library, I highly recommend checking it out – picture books are expensive as all anything, and if you can borrow them for free, why not save yourself some money? Here’s what we’ve been reading recently:
MRS. PEANUCKLE’S TREE ALPHABET
The toddler is obsessed with letters and can identify every single one of them (though his pronunciation is adorably not quite perfect). Alphabet books are usually a big hit at our house. We have the vegetable book in this series, and when I saw this tree-themed edition, I had to pick it up. The toddler loves it! I might have to buy a copy for our home library, so it’s not missed when I eventually run out of renewals. I love the illustrations in this series, they’re very charming. The toddler loves birds, too, so I think I’ll have to hunt for a copy of the bird-themed entry in the series.
Trains! Birds! Numbers! A bouncy, repetitive, rhyming refrain! What more could you ask for in a toddler book? This is a real read-aloud winner, and if you do circle times or story times, you’ll definitely want to check this one out. Actually, anything by Emma Garcia is a safe bet for your storytime crowd – she’s a real author/illustrator to watch.
This one wasn’t a huge hit with anyone in the family. The toddler LOVES to sing The Wheels on the Bus, so I thought he might enjoy this illustrated version. He wasn’t particularly drawn to the strange bobble-headed babies that are Katz’s signature, and for his part Daddy found them deeply unsettling, ha.
THIS bus-themed picture book, on the other hand, is an absolute riot, and I plan to keep renewing it until I can’t renew it anymore. The text is minimal, but it’s the wacky illustrations that really steal the show. Every spread is just jam-packed with action and movement and hilarious absurdity as a pack of goofy rabbits steal an empty bus and go on a wild adventure through town. While the simple rhyming text screams read-aloud, I don’t know that this would work as well as a storytime book because of the level of detail in the illustrations, though maybe if you had an e-copy that you could project onto a screen it could work. It’s just so wild and wacky and exuberant, and yes, bunnies shouldn’t steal public buses, but they also can’t drive, so I wouldn’t worry too much about the moral ambiguity.
So, have you read anything good this week?