Books, books, books...

Children’s books. I love them. Probably more than almost anything else in the world. Well, except for Karen Kingsbury books. And my friends and family. And music… definitely music. I love to go to Books-A-Million and spend hours just looking through the rows and rows of children’s books – baby books, story books, intermediate fiction, teen fiction, etc. Come to think of it, I don’t think I can ever recall just roaming the rows of adult fiction or bestsellers or self-help books. I may go to BAM to purchase a specific book for my own personal reading, but I almost always end up in the children’s section looking for books for my students.

I am constantly buying picture books to read to my students in class. They eat it up! They absolutely LOVE being read to. Sometimes, they even want to sit on the floor like they did in Kindergarten for “Circle Time” while I read to them. I read books like Chrysanthemum (Kevin Henkes), Amazing Grace (Mary Hoffman), Stellaluna (Janell Cannon), The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein), Animalia (Graeme Base), Fancy Nancy (Jane O’Connor), Rapunzel (Paul O. Zelinsky), The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle), and more! And the cool thing??? I use them to teach! I’ve talked about word choice and variation after reading Fancy Nancy to my students. I’ve used Animalia to teach alliteration. The Giving Tree is a favorite of mine to introduce personification. I’ve used Chrysanthemum to begin discussions on conflict. Rapunzel and other fairy tales are my favorite way to teach plot structure. Students are familiar with these stories, and fairy tales almost always follow the general plot structure. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is great to use to introduce the reading structure of logical order… there are several examples in the book. Seriously – give me a book, and I can find just about any way to incorporate it into my teaching. Which is why I’m broke a good bit of the time – I’m constantly buying books.

Children's Books I Love:

• Love You Forever
• Lyle, Lyle Crocodile
• Where The Wild Things Are
• Miss Nelson is Missing
• Amelia Bedelia
• The Little Engine That Could
• Fancy Nancy books
• All the –licious books: Pinkalicious, Purplicious, Goldilicious
• Goodnight Moon
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
• The Pokey Little Puppy
• Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (and all the other cow/duck books!)
• Moo, Baa, La, La, La
• Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears