Read Aloud Thursday

First off we must start with both of our favorite book from this past library haul. This was actually a book I had seen before (in an aquarium book store) and had almost picked up. Now I rather regret that I didn't and might need to rectify the situation. Over in the Ocean in a Coral Reef, by Marianne Berkes is read with the same rhythm as "Over in the Meadow", of course. Except in this book we're talking about animals who live in a coral reef and it even has an octopus! AWESOME, awesome book. The rhymes work very well together and almost even more outstanding (to mommy) is the way this book is brought to life!

Illustrated by Jeanette Canyon, the pictures in the book were shaped completely from polymer clay. At the end of the story there is a page from the author and the illustrator, each offering their young reader "tips" as to how they can create and illustrate stories. The tips and information that Canyon gives in explanation as to how she created the artwork in this book was fascinating to me.

We absolutely loved this book. No doubt about it! If you can find a copy - DO! It's amazing.

If you like the above book, then you'll also be inclined towards Over in the Arctic, also by Marianne Berkes (with illustrations by Jill Dubin). For snowy white owl, wolverine and seal pup lovers, this book will be a real treat. (There is also a beluga whale in it so it goes without saying that we liked it also. But I'll say it anyway, of course, of course!)


I was delighted to find a copy of God Bless America, words and music by Irving Berlin and illustrations by Lynn Munsinger.

We discovered at Christmas time that we absolutely love books that we can sing our way through so we were quite the fan of this version of God Bless America. This book takes you through the first verse of the song and the illustrations are of a bear family which are touring the United States. They are watching a parade go by with some of America's finest heroes (fireman and police officers), then they appear before the Lincoln Memorial and finally wave good-bye from their "home sweet home." This was a GREAT book by which I could introduce this song to my son. It was perfect for his age level and a true delight.

At the back of the book was some information I did not realize. Irving Berlin established the "God Bless America Fund" to benefit American youth once he started making money off of this particular song. Most of the earnings that have come from this song's royalities have gone to two organizations in particular: The Girl Scouts of America and the Boy Scouts of America. I think that's pretty cool. As for this particular book, should you decide to purchase it, a portion of the funds will go to the God Bless America Fund. Apparently it also comes with a CD of Barbara Streisand singing the song. Our library copy didn't happen to have the CD with the book. Some of you may take that for a loss, and others not! At any rate, we liked this one quite a bit!

So what have you been reading with your kiddos lately? Care to join in on Read Aloud Thursday and share?Hope you will!

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On a final note - we've also been spending some time with Oceans: The Ultimate Guide to Marine Life. I reviewed Oceans over at Reading to Know and I also have TWO copies to give away! If you'd like to enter the contest - CLICK HERE.

Visiting Our Library

Early on in this Reading My Library challenge, a few of you asked if I could share pictures from our library to give you a better idea of what I'm trying to accomplish when I say I'm "reading through the children's picture book section."

This past weekend our local library kindly allowed us to come in a little earlier and take a few snapshots before opening. Here are a few of the pictures we grabbed showing the children's picture book section. There are also some pics of my kiddos, Bookworms 1 & 2 enjoying some books while we were there!



This is the "pirate cat" if you were wondering. Or, at least, that's what we call him! He is esteemed and admired and there is a strong desire to touch and hug him (which we have to take care for) whenever we go:



Guess what Bookworm1 found right away!?

At our library they have a separate room available for story time. The room is brightly painted with a jungle mural and that is what my boys are sitting on front in the picture below. This room is Bookworm1's favorite. Of course, he has kind of grown up in it, my having taken him to the infant reading time! With two kids at different ages and stages for development, I've discovered its a little bit more difficult to make it to those story times, but we go when we get the opportunity.


I was also able to talk to one of the children's librarians for a bit while we were there and I plan to share some of my conversation with her next week. She gave me a lot of food for thought and I'm still processing some of the information so stay tuned!

In the meantime, you'll notice that there is a button my sidebar here for my local library. If you want to explore the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, you can just click on the button and follow the link!

I am so excited to be able to share more about where I'm going and what I'm doing. Thanks for following along on this journey!

Bad Hair Day?

In How Emily Blair God Her Fabulous Hair, by Susan Garrison, we meet young Emily who likes playing with hair. She particularly enjoys playing with her friend, Pamela Pain's, hair. Pamela's hair is beautifully curly. It can be styled in so many gorgeous ways! Pamela seemed to have no trouble looking like a princess or a mysterious movie star with her gorgeous golden curls.

Emily, on the other hand, has the straightest hair known to woman! She can't get a curl out of it to save her life! Frustration sets in, disgruntlement, and envy of Pamela's locks (does this sound a bit familiar to any of you gals out there, or are you perfectly content with your hair?!) Finally, Pamela tells her friend and hairstylist that she would like to try something new with Emily's hair.

It turns out, of course, that straight hair is best for braiding! Pamela's hair doesn't braid very well and so Emily is delighted to discover that her hair is uniquely beautiful in its own right.

My hair can't seem to decide if it wants to be curly or straight and so I sympathize with both of these young girls and particularly with Emily, who fusses and frets because her hair NEVER does what she wants it to!

I didn't even bother reading this one to Bookworm1. I'm not so sure that man at any age can really understand this dilemma we girls have taming our hair! Instead, I enjoyed this one alone and snickered to myself. And, having just been referred to a new hair stylist, wondered when I should give them a call.

Library School anyone? Sure sounds fun!

Recently it dawned on me that I actually have a blogging friend who was a former librarian and thought to myself that she would be a good person to ask some library-ish questions of.

Enter: Amy at Hope is in the Word. If you haven't yet visited Hope is in the Word, I'd encourage you to do so. Amy is very much into children's picture books (considering that she has few kids of her own to share them with!) She also hosts Read Aloud Thursday which I like to participate in (and hope you will consider it, if you aren't already.)

Amy was one of the inspirations for the Reading My Library challenge in the first place! I had rather fallen out of the habit of going to the library and her Read Aloud Thursday posts nudged me back in.

Anyway, I just had a few questions for Amy and she kindly obliged me by answering them. Here they are, as follows:

1. What drew you to the idea of becoming a librarian?

I've always loved reading, and after I had taught public high school for a few years, I knew that I really didn't want to keep doing that forever. I also wanted to further my education. When I was considering my graduate school options, very few graduate degrees in the field of education appealed to me except becoming a school media specialist, so that's what I did. I had worked as a public library aide for five years while I was in undergraduate school, so it was something I was already familiar and comfortable with. I worked in a small library that grew a good bit while I worked there, so I learned how to do everything from cataloging books to weeding shelves.

2. How long did it take you to complete the educational requirements to become one?

It took me about two years to complete my degree and my state certification as a school media specialist. This included doing a semester-long school internship.

3. What was, as you call it "library school" (is that really what it is called?) like? (Tell us about your favorite teacher.)

The official name for my particular school is the School of Library Information Studies (SLIS), but I just called it "library school." Come to think of it, I don't know if this is something I did or if it's something we all did. ;-)

I LOVED library school! It was a good time in our lives since we had the freedom for me to pursue this. The school I attended is about three hours from my home, and most of my classes were held on the weekends since most of the students in the classes were full time teachers, etc. Steady Eddie, my husband, and I would leave early Friday afternoon and I would attend school that night, we would spend the night in a hotel, and I would attend school all day on Saturday. Steady Eddie became very familiar with the college town and he got a lot of reading done, too. :-) I definitely would never have done it without his support! Not every class I took was on that university's campus, though--I had several distance learning classes that took place on two other college campuses (including one inside a private college's BEAUTIFUL library!) and at the satellite branch of my university. We got to do a lot of traveling and become familiar with several different schools.

Since I was in school media (as opposed to public libraries, academic libraries, corporate/law/medical, etc.), I was able to take several children's and YA literature classes, and those were obviously my favorites. In fact, I would take them again today just for fun! Hands down my favorite teacher was Dr. Joan Atkinson, who has since retired from that university. I understand that Dr. Atkinson is well-known in children's and YA literature circles, and her knowledge of and love for those genres really shines through. In addition to all of that, she is a phenomenal teacher, and just an all-around kind person. I want to be like her when I grow up! :-)

4. What was your favorite part about the job?

My favorite part of being a school media specialist (I was an elementary librarian for 2 years before Lulu, my daughter, was born) was definitely sharing the books with the students. It was very gratifying to share a new story with them and see their faces light up, or to recommend a book to a student and have that student return it and tell me that he or she really enjoyed it. Of course, in my state there are a lot of other things that a school media specialist is responsible for, but simply sharing the books was the best part.

5. I've noticed on your site that you first and foremost promote the idea of one using their library. As a book blogger, I've had the impression that the best way to support the book industry is to purchase the books for one's self. How should we reconcile the idea of supporting the book industry and the local library (putting aside arguments of personal budgets, of course)?

That's a real tough one for me and I'm wondering if I just don't get 'how it all works' or something. I'm very curious for the perspective on a librarian (past or present!) on that particular question. You know, this is something I've honestly never thought about. My own blog just blossomed into a book blog--to begin with I didn't have a "niche." My blog truly is a reflection of what we do in our home, so I focus on library books because that's mainly what we read on a day-to-day basis. We do purchase a fair number of books, but there's no way we could keep up with our reading appetites on our budget (or likely anyone else's, for that matter). Since I worked in a public library, I was aware of all the resources public libraries have that are often untapped. I still like to think that I'm supporting authors and the book industry simply by keeping their books in circulation.

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Thanks, Amy for your time!

Again, if you haven't checked out Hope is in the Word or participated in Read Aloud Thursday, follow the links to learn more!

Well, that was nice...

Well, obviously I was very quiet this week. Thanks for your patience with me! The thing that I like about this challenge is that I know it's not going to be wrapped up quickly and I'm giving myself the permission to go at the pace which my family life allows. This past week it was better not to try to cram in a library visit so we didn't make it there.

That said, I went to the library this past weekend and not only did I walk away with a new stack of fun books to talk about, but I have a few other things to share also.

Stay tuned! I'm excited about what's coming up!

Links of Note

In light of recent world events (i.e., the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile), during the entire month of March Sylvan Dell would like to offer their Panda's Earthquake Escape for free in eBook form. This book will be available on their website. You can view the book by CLICKING HERE.

Sylvan Dell, if you haven't caught on, is one of my favorite children's book publishers and this particular title offers parents and teachers a great way to approach the topic of these earthquakes with younger children.

Check out Pandas' Earthquake Escape.

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Booking Mama hosts a weekly carnival called the Kid Konnection wherein you can link up your personal children's book reviews that you have written over the course of the past week. For more information, visit Booking Mama's site.

This is a great opportunity to focus on children's literature and I've learned about some new titles by participating in this carnival.

Thanks, Booking Mama!

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Zoe at Playing By the Book wrote up a perfectly awesome post on Putting Images to Sound which she linked up to Read Aloud Thursday yesterday. If you missed it, go take a peek! It's awesome! (But then, most of her ideas are.)

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Lastly, if you are curious about librarians, you might be interested in checking out a copy of This Book is Overdue which I reviewed over at 5 Minutes for Books. We also have a copy to giveaway if you are interested.


Lastly, you've asked to see pictures of my local library? Stay tuned. I'm looking forward to making the introduction!

Read Aloud Thursday

This week we've been reading books from around our house, as well as quite a few review copies that have been landing in our mailbox. We haven't made it back to the library for another load, due to colds and, well, life. Hope to do that in the next day or so. In the meantime, we thought we'd share books from our own bookshelf that are pulled down for frequent reads.

Oh. And I'm not going to talk about any that involve sea creatures, just to give you all a break from the topic! ;) It'll also be interesting for me to see what we read that is a break from our usual subject matter!

Kind of in honor of Read Across America (but not really, if the truth were told), we read Dr. Seuss' ABC's. I tried mixing up the words and substituting other items to represent the alphabet letters just for fun. (For example, the letter which starts off Bookworm1's (real) name I tried to personalize.) He was more interested in the silly words. This book has rhythm! We like it.

I've already reviewed Fool Moon Rising (click on the title to see the link) but this is one we pulled back out again here this past week. The moon in this book is such a character, and seeing that we've been enjoying a full moon the last night or so, made this book fun to re-read.

I still love the illustrations in this book and it makes me smile every time I open the front cover! I'm sure we'll spend many years and cozy reads with this one!

Ok, seriously, I started writing this post thinking it would be easy to create a list of books that we read which do NOT involve sea creatures. This is turning out to be the most impossible post I might have ever written! Every single book that is spread all over our house, features octopuses, whales, sea otters, or dolphins. We DID read The Friendly Book which was gifted to Bookworm1 on his first birthday, but one of the reasons he loves it so much is because there is a page with underwater animals.

"Fish. I like fish."

Apparently this is our lives right now but hopefully this provides a little bit of variety. (Well, the moon was done at any rate!)

Back to The Friendly Book - if you haven't seen it before, it is written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams of Little House fame which makes it the truest of classics, right? It really is quite an awesome book and even before our ocean days, it was well-received and very much enjoyed.

Ok, whew! I think I'd better call it quits for today, folks. The challenge is too much! So what are you up to? I'm off to find out!