2012-2013 SISD Book of the Month Booklist
August // Enemy Pie
by Derek Munson
TumbleBook Library
Storyline Online
Discovery Education
Have You Filled a Bucket Today?
by Carol McCloud
Interview with author
/ It was the perfect summer. That is, until Jeremy Ross moved into the house down the street and became Enemy Number One. Luckily, Dad has a surefire way to get rid of enemies – Enemy Pie. But one of the secret ingredients is spending an entire day with the enemy! In this funny yet endearing story, one little boy learns an effective recipe for turning a best enemy into a best friend. With charming illustrations that bring to life the difficulties and ultimate rewards of making new friends, Enemy Pie serves up a sweet lesson in friendship.
Through simple prose and vivid illustrations, this heartwarming book encourages positive behavior as children see how rewarding it is to express daily kindness, appreciation, and love. Bucket filling and dipping are effective metaphors for understanding the effects of our actions and words on the well-being of others and ourselves.
September /
/ Abuela
by Arthur Dorros
You Tube (puppet show presentation)
Knots on a Counting Rope
by Bill Martin Jr.
Discovery Education
You Tube
Storyline Online
/ In this tasty trip, Rosalba is "always going places" with her grandmother--abuela . During one of their bird-feeding outings to the park, Rosalba wonders aloud, "What if I could fly?" Thus begins an excursion through the girl's imagination as she soars high above the tall buildings and buses of Manhattan, over the docks and around the Statue of Liberty with Abuela in tow. Each stop of the glorious journey evokes a vivid memory for Rosalba's grandmother and reveals a new glimpse of the woman's colorful ethnic origins. Dorros's text seamlessly weaves Spanish words and phrases into the English narrative, retaining a dramatic quality rarely found in bilingual picture books. Rosalba's language is simple and melodic, suggesting the graceful images of flight found on each page. Kleven's mixed-media collages are vibrantly hued and intricately detailed, the various blended textures reminiscent of folk art forms. Those searching for solid multicultural material would be well advised to embark: Vamos!
Gathered near a campfire under a canopy of stars, a Navaho Indian boy hears the tale of his birth from his grandfather. Born on a windy night, the child was weak and frail. In the early morning, Grandfather brought him out to meet the morning. Two blue horses galloped by, stopped and looked at him; the baby raised his arms to them. Grandfather said, "This boy child will not die. The great blue horses have given him the strength to live." Named Boy-Strength-of-Blue-Horses, the child later needs that well of strength to deal with the fact that he is blind. Rand's atmospheric, vivid paintings evoke the tale's sensibility as they move it along. The beauty and vastness of the Western sky and the intimacy of two loving figures by a campfire are portrayed with equal fluidity. A rich tale of intergenerational love and respect, this is bittersweet and unsentimental. It is a moving collaborative effort that reverberates long after the book is closed.
October /
/ The Gruffalo
by Julia Donalson
YouTube
Clever Trevor
by Sarah Albee
TumbleBook Library
/ A mouse is taking a stroll through the deep, dark wood when along comes a hungry fox, then an owl, and then a snake. The mouse is good enough to eat but smart enough to know this, so he invents . . . the gruffalo! As Mouse explains, the gruffalo is a creature with terrible claws, and terrible tusks in its terrible jaws, and knobbly knees and turned-out toes, and a poisonous wart at the end of its nose. But Mouse has no worry to show. After all, there’s no such thing as a gruffalo. .
In an attempt to reclaim the playground, Trevor figures out how to use an uneven seesaw to teach Buzz and his bully buddies a lesson.Show More
Show Less
November /
/ So You Want to be a President?
by Judith St. George
Discovery Education
Tops and Bottoms
by Janet Stevens
TumbleBook Library
/ Tired of books about the presidency that present themselves as history books? Author Judith St. George has created a book about the presidency that's serious fun. The basic theme is that anyone can be president: a fat man (William Howard Taft) or a tiny man (James Madison), a relative youngster (Teddy Roosevelt at 42) or oldster (Ronald Reagan at 69). Presidential hobbies, sports, virtues, and vices all get a tongue-in-cheek airing, perfectly matched by Small's political-cartoon style of caricature painting. It's fun, but the underlying purpose is clearly serious: to remind kids that the American presidents have been a motley group of individuals, not a row of marble busts. Ironically, that message makes the presidency far more interesting (and appealing) than it seems in some of the more traditional books. There's a factual addendum at the back giving all the dates and names, with a one-line bio for each past-president.
Hare solves his family’s problems by tricking rich and lazy Bear in this funny, energetic version of an old slave story. With roots in American slave tales, Tops & Bottoms celebrates the trickster tradition of using one’s wits to overcome hardship. “As usual, Stevens’ animal characters, bold and colorful, are delightful. . . . It’s all wonderful fun, and the book opens, fittingly, from top to bottom instead of from side to side, making it perfect for story-time sharing.”
December /
/ Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
by Susan Wojciechowski
Olive, the Other Reindeer
by Vivian Walsh
TumbleBook Library
/ This story focuses on Jonathan Toomey who is the best woodcarver in the valley. But he bears a secret sorrow, and never smiles or laughs. When the widow McDowell and her son ask him to carve a creche in time for Christmas, their quiet request leads to a joyful miracle, as they heal the woodcarver's heart and restore his faith.
You won't understand the premise of this book if you've never sung "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," so let's start there. The carol begins, "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer / had a very shiny nose / and if you ever saw it, / You would even say it glows / All of the other reindeer / used to laugh and call him names / They never let poor Rudolph / join in any reindeer games." If you notice that "all of the other reindeer" sounds suspiciously like "Olive, the other reindeer," you've discovered the source of Olive's adventures! Olive is a dog. But when she hears this holiday tune, a bit of an identity crisis sets in. She decides she must be a reindeer and heads to the North Pole to see if she can join Santa's reindeer team. Olive gets to the North Pole just in time. Comet (the biggest reindeer) uses a piece of extra ribbon to tie Olive to the reindeers' elaborate harness system. As the sleigh rose high in the sky, "Olive was surprised it was so easy to fly." (The sight of a dog dangling beneath Santa's sleigh will reduce readers to charmed giggles.) Despite Olive's lack of flying ability and the unfortunate mishap caused by the reindeers' distraction, she, in her inherent dogginess, proves to be useful as both a flute retriever and a cookie smeller.
January /
/ My Dream of Martin Luther King
by Faith Ringgold
50 Below Zero
by Robert Munsch
TumbleBook Library
You Tube (read by Robert Munsch)
Ruby Bridges (Author)
›Visit Amazon's Ruby Bridges Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central / Faith Ringgold had a dream about Martin Luther King. Simply narrated in her own voice, Ringgold paints a vivid, powerful picture of King's childhood and strong family life, along with glimpses of prejudice, segregation, and protest. Her vision blurs dreamily into King's adult life--from his family, to protests of Rosa Parks's arrest, even to his assassination: "This time we had come to mourn Martin Luther King's death by trading in bags containing our prejudice, hate, ignorance, violence, and fear for the slain hero's dream. We emptied the bags onto a great pile, and as the last bag was dumped, the pile exploded into a fire so bright that it lit up the whole world. There, emblazoned across the sky, were the words: EVERY GOOD THING STARTS WITH A DREAM."
Jason is awakened by the sounds of his father's sleepwalking and finds him asleep on top of the refrigerator. After returning him to bed, he is later awakened to find father asleep in the bathtub and later on top of the car in the garage. The fourth time it is footprints in the snow that lead him to a stiff father who must be thawed in the bathtub. He then ties one end of a piece of rope to his father's toe and another to his bed to limit the walks. It is his mother who is awakened in the final picture to find Jason asleep on top of the refrigerator and father asleep midstep with a toe tied to a piece of rope. What starts off as a humorous idea is run into the ground with repetition in the text so that even the humor of the final picture is lost in the stupidity of the story.
February /
/ Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch
by Eileen Spinelli
Storyline Online
I Love You the Purplest
by Barbara M. Joosee
You Tube (read by an adult)
/ One wintry day, a postman delivers a mysterious package with a big pink bow to a lonely man named Mr. Hatch.
"Somebody loves you," the note says. "Somebody loves me!" Mr. Hatch sings as he dusts his living room. "Somebody loves me!" Mr. Hatch whistles as he does his errands in town. "But who," Mr. Hatch wonders, "could that somebody be?" After some time, Mr. Hatch discovers just who his secret admirer is and, in doing so, enjoys the biggest surprise of his life!
A perfect book for Mom to read to her children on Valentine's day. Every child wants to be loved the best. The Mom in this book figures out a way to answer her sons where they feel loved the best without sibling rivalry. The mother uses colors to describe the love for her sons - each color describing part of their personality. The illustrations are colorful and visually demonstrate how the mother feels towards her children.
March /
/ There Is a Bird on Your Head
by Mo Willems
You Tube (read by children)
ish
by Peter Reynolds
TumbleBook Library
Bruce Lansky (Editor)
›Visit Amazon's Bruce Lansky Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central / Gerald is careful. Piggie is not.
Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can.
Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to.
Gerald and Piggie are best friends. In There Is a Bird On My Head!, Gerald discovers that there is something worse than a bird on your head—two birds on your head! Can Piggie help her best friend?
Ramon loved to draw. Anytime. Anything. Anywhere. Drawing is what Ramon does. It¹s what makes him happy. But in one split second, all that changes. A single reckless remark by Ramon's older brother, Leon, turns Ramon's carefree sketches into joyless struggles. Luckily for Ramon, though, his little sister, Marisol, sees the world differently. She opens his eyes to something a lot more valuable than getting things just "right." Combining the spareness of fable with the potency of parable, Peter Reynolds shines a bright beam of light on the need to kindle and tend our creative flames with care.
April /
/
Kids Pick the Funniest Poems
by Bruce LanskyThe Librarian of Basra
by Jeanette Winter
TumbleBook Library
You Tube
/ A collection of humorous poems selected by a panel of children, featuring an all-star cast of poets from Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein to Judith Viorst and Jack Prelutsky. Includes new poems and humor pieces from relative unknowns that kids liked as well as--or better than--the more famous entries.
When war seemed imminent, Alia Muhammad Baker, chief librarian of Basra's Central Library, was determined to protect the library's holdings. In spite of the government's refusal to help, she moved the books into a nearby restaurant only nine days before the library burned to the ground. When the fighting moved on, this courageous woman transferred the 30,000 volumes to her and her friends' homes to await peace and the rebuilding of a new library. In telling this story, first reported in the New York Timeson July 27, 2003, by Shaila K. Dewan, Winter artfully achieves a fine balance between honestly describing the casualties of war and not making the story too frightening for young children. The text is spare and matter-of-fact. It is in the illustrations, executed in acrylic and ink in her signature style, that Winter suggests the impending horror. The artist uses color to evoke mood, moving from a yellow sky to orange, to deep maroon during the bombing, and then blues and pinks with doves flying aloft as the librarian hopes for a brighter future. Palm trees, architecture, dress, and Arabic writing on the flag convey a sense of place and culture. Although the invading country is never mentioned, this is an important story that puts a human face on the victims of war and demonstrates that a love of books and learning is a value that unites people everywhere.
May /
/ Thank You, Mr. Falker
by Patricia Polacco
Storyline Online
You Tube
Love you Forever
by Robert Munsch
You Tube
/ Polacco shares her childhood triumph over dyslexia and discovery of reading in an inspiring if slightly formulaic story. Young Trisha is eager to taste the "sweetness of knowledge" that her grandfather has always revered (here symbolized by drizzling honey onto a book and tasting it, which harkens back to Polacco's earlier The Bee Tree). But when she looks at words and numbers, everything is a jumble. Trisha endures the cruel taunts of classmates who call her "dumb," and falls behind in her studies. But finally the encouragement and efforts of a new fifth grade teacher, Mr. Falker, trigger a monumental turning point in Trisha's life. She begins to blossom and develop all of her talents, including reading. Polacco's tale is all the more heartfelt because of its personal nature. Young readers struggling with learning difficulties will identify with Trisha's situation and find reassurance in her success.
The mother sings to her sleeping baby: "I'll love you forever / I'll love you for always / As long as I'm living / My baby you'll be." She still sings the same song when her baby has turned into a fractious 2-year-old, a slovenly 9-year-old, and then a raucous teen. So far so ordinary--but this is one persistent lady. When her son grows up and leaves home, she takes to driving across town with a ladder on the car roof, climbing through her grown son's window, and rocking the sleeping man in the same way. Then, inevitably, the day comes when she's too old and sick to hold him, and the roles are at last reversed.