Piggies by Audrey Wood and Don Wood

This is a another great book by Audrey Wood who I did my author study on. This is a great book to read to children around bedtime because the ending of the story talks about how the "little piggies" on each finger of the child finally go to bed. This book doesn't have much text so it is great for young children who are just learning how to read. It would be easy for children to read the text, but also great for them to look at the pictures and analyze what is going on in the illistrations. Each page adds one piggy on each finger and then in the end we see the piggies giving a good night kiss to the piggie on the same finger on the other hand. It also shows the piggies in different situations such as in the bathtub, in the cold, in a mess, etc. The piggies are dressed up in creative outfits that are funny for children to look at!

Letter to the Lake by Susan Marie Swanson ande Peter Catalonotto

I love going to the lake in the summer and have always been around the water every summer. The beginning of the book is a letter from a little girl saying how much she misses the lake and how what she remembers about it. The little girl goes on to say that she misses the summer now because it is winter and very cold. This reminds me of harsh Iowan winters and how much I look forward to the summer during these times. She notices that he mother is stressed out because her buttons are crooked and this is a great example of how observant children are. The illistrations in the book are very creative such as when the illistrator shows the little girl eating her breakfast and her mother in the background stressing out about a bill in the reflection of the toaster. Another example of this creativity is when the illistrator shows the little girl smiling at her mother in the car through in the reflection of the car window.

Making Plum Jam by John Warren Stewig and Kevin O'Malley

I connected with the book immediately when I began reading it because the little boy didn't want to go to her great aunt's house for the week. I used to have to spend a week at one of my great aunt's house in the summer and I would become so bored. Immediately when he gets to the house her aunt asks her what she learned at school that year. That is a universal question that I think every adult ask children when to begin conversation. I further connected with the book when the little boy talks about how his aunt doesn't have electricity. My family went to visit an Amish family when I was younger and I didn't understand why they didn't have lights and in place of them they used candles. I found it cute that the little boy wouldn't eat the bacon at breakfast because the big used to be his friend.
It was funny that the aunts were stealing plums from the neighbor farmer in front of their nephew. The little boy was suprised of their misbehaving! The little boy takes jars of jam back to the farmer with a thank you note that night.

The Disappearing Island by Corinne Demas

I enjoyed reading this book. The illistrations by Ted Lewin were very detailed and went along with the text very well. This book was about a real island off the shore of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, which I found out by reading the author's note at the end of the book. The book went into detail about the ocean and the boat that the little girl and her grandma ride on. This book would be great to use in a unit about the ocean or other topics concerning the coast. I liked how the illistrations were different in the story when the little girl was daydreaming. The illistrations were all in shades of orange and yellow to portray her sight from behind her eyes under the sun! This book was very helpful in explaining how the tides of the ocean work and why this particular island is slowly disappearing in the middle of the ocean.

The Bunyan's by Audrey Wood

This story begins with an author’s note explaining the background behind the story of Paul Bunyan. Audrey continues by saying that this is the true story and that Paul was married with two children. Carrie, his wife, and he were both giants decided to get married and share Paul’s wishbone after Carrie had lost hers. This story is great for learning American geography because of the analogies using American landscape. It also gives a unrealistic way of how certain landscapes came to be, but could spark interest in children for how they really did come to be! This is one book not illustrated by Don Wood, but instead by David Shannon. His illustrations work well with the story Audrey has written. Many of the images show how large the characters are by showing them in relation to wagons and houses that are very small. One illustration also shows bears crawling in “Teeny's” hair after a silo of syrup has spilled in it preceding an illustration of her showering in Niagara Falls!

King Bidgood's in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood

This is another book that is illustrated Don Wood. This book is great for showing children what a King’s palace would look like and how they would dress. The illustrations are very detailed and make the pages come alive. The king will not get out of the bathtub so each of the characters in the book try to get him out by telling him there are important things going on in the community which he needs to attend to. He tells them that their problems will have to come to him because he is not getting out of the bathtub today. They battle, eat, fish, and dance in the tub while none of them are able to get him out of the tub. Finally the page shows he knows how to get the King out of the tub by pulling the plug. If you re-read this book you notice that the page has been in all the illustrations and has shown his annoyance that the king will not get out of the tub! The illustrations could spark conversation with children that would last for a long time!

The Napping House By Audrey Wood

This book is illustrated by Audrey's husband, Don Wood. The story begins with the exterior of this “Napping House” and we see that it is raining. Right away the reader gets the motivation for taking a nap on such a dreary day! We see that everyone in this house is napping in their cozy beds. This is a book that begins to repeat the last sentence as the story moves along. For example, “and on that granny there is a child, a dreaming child, on a snoring granny, on a cozy bed, in a napping house, where everyone is sleeping.” This is a great book to use with children who are just beginning to read. They begin to pick up on the repetition and it makes them feel confident about their reading! The story moves along and we see a cat, dog and a flea appear on the bed until the flea bites the cat and alarms everyone until they get off of the bed. As each disappears we see the sun coming out in the window behind the bed. On the last page we see the exterior of the house with a rainbow behind it with the sunshine!