This week I’m your happy rounder-upper for the “What My Children Are Reading” meme, hosted by the Well-Read Child.  Leave me your link in the comments, and I’ll post it right at the top here.

At Brimful Curiosities, they have books and art about ghosts this week.

At Fantastic Find, they have some silly animal books.

In the comments, Jeff at Out with the Kids writes:

The Mouse (2.5 yr old) is currently in love with It’s the Bear by Jez Alborough and William’s Doll by Charlotte Zolotow. The Bear (5.5 yrs old) and I just finished Ivy & Bean Doomed to Dance.”

And Vanessa from Silly Eagle Books writes:

We checked out songbooks at the library this week. Juliet (almost 3 years) really loved Frog Went A-Courtin’ by John Langstaff and Bake You a Pie by Ellen Olson-Brown and Brian Claflin.

As for us…

Graves girls read! No. 12 / Process art storytime! No. 8

I’m completely convinced that my neighborhood has the best foliage in Manchester.  Within half a square mile, there is a surprising amount of variety in the size, shape, and color of leaves, and they’ve all turned brightly this year.  I’ve been playing the part of the curious two year old, drawing the girls’ attention to the trees and their leaves while driving past, marveling at nature.  I’ve also used this as an opportunity to model pursuit of one’s interests through literature—an important life skill.  Fortunately, I had already picked out two relevant books for my October process art storytime:  Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert, and It’s Fall by Linda Glaser.

Leaf Man is an extraordinary book about a seemingly random arrangement of leaves shaped to resemble a person.  The wind carries Leaf Man off, and the remainder of the book ambles along the path of a breeze, perhaps even the same breeze that carries Leaf Man.

Ehlert used color copies of an impressive variety of leaves for the illustrations.  Most of the illustrations were arranged very deliberately, much more than when we first met Leaf Man.  Mostly we see animals, from chickens to cows to fish.  It was really fun to read this with the girls (and my storytime kids), taking the time to examine the details of each illustration, although all the stopping made the spare, run-on text seem choppy.  I found myself adding words to form whole sentences, just to maintain the flow of the story.

It’s Fall is a simple celebration of the season:  leaves falling, weather changes, migration, hibernation, and other related subjects.  The text is a pleasant read, but the illustrations are what make this a great book.  The artist, Susan Swan, used layers of cut paper and shadow to create a three-dimensional appearance that almost threatens to jump off the page.

This pairing of books begs to be followed up with a nature collage, so that’s what we did.  In storytime we used gobs of glue, but it turned out that we don’t have glue at home (?!) so we used double-sided tape.  Fine for leaves and pine needles, but completely inadequate for any other type of nature.  The girls had fun making their collages anyway:

[ Posted in » Book Review Channel :: Picture Book Reviews ]