It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly blog hop co-hosted by Unleashing Readers and Teach Mentor Texts which focuses on sharing books marketed for children and young adults. It offers opportunities to share and recommend books with each other.
Here are some books I read this week!
Kit and Kaboodle Take The Train
My son loves the Kit and Kaboodle “Puzzle Readers” from Highlights. Solving the “puzzle” means finding all the objects cleverly hidden within the illustrations. We spend ages pouring over the pictures, he just adores the challenge of spotting each and every item. We’ve read three of them so far, and I’ve just requested a bunch more from the library, so he’ll be a happy camper!
The kiddo is learning to read, so we’re borrowing a lot of readers. Trees are a big topic of discussion in our home, since we live right across the street from a forest, and the kiddo has been attending an outdoor nature school there since he was 2.5. Not too much I can say about this one, the photos are great, as you would expect from a DK book. I mean, I learned some interesting facts about trees, and the kiddo enjoyed it, but it’s not exactly the kind of book you read again and again.
We do love trucks around these parts, so I read a lot more truck-themed books than I ever thought I would. Melvin the cement mixer is a worrier and doesn’t want to participate in his friends’ dangerous activities, but when his friend falls into a hole and needs his help, Melvin comes to her rescue. One of the things I actually really liked about this story, as a life-long grade-A worrier myself, is that at the end of the story, after he’s rescued his friend, Melvin the cement mixer is still a worrier. He doesn’t miraculously change into an entirely different individual in the blink of an eye (which I’ve maddeningly seen in other stories). That’s what life is like as an anxious person – we can get stuff done when the situation calls for it, but we’re still going to worry before, during, and after the event. 😉
A Hungry Lion, or A Dwindling Assortment of Animals
I know I’ve mentioned this book before, but I read it with a school group recently, and it just reminded me how much I love subversive picture books. It’s so much fun to pull out a picture book with some older kids (in this case grade 4s, who are much too grown up for picture books) and watch them roll their eyes, before proceeding to horrify and amaze them with a story as delectable as this. No, dear readers, the animals do not all become friends by the end of the book.
I should note that I would hesitate to read this picture book with younger kiddos – I have a very sensitive child, and I can assure you he would be a sobbing mess by the end of it. But with the right audience, it’s a darkly humorous delight.
Have another wonderful week of reading!