Category — Book Recommendations

Did you know that reading good quality children’s literature with your newborn or your infant child every single day builds their emergent literacy skills? Many parents fail to realize the impact that book sharing has on the brain development of their precious baby. But research shows time and again that reading for short bits of time every day with your baby gives them a tremendous developmental advantage!

Of course, this leads us to a very good question. What makes for a good baby book? Well, babies need bright pictures, thick sturdy covers that they can hold or chew, simple geometric shapes, few words and lots of rhymes. When looking at a potential purchase or library checkout for your baby, try to find a book that has many or all of these qualities. A great example that I use with my own baby, Allison, and toddler, Ella, is board book version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Penguin Books publishes a very sturdy and small version of this book just for babies and young toddlers. They’ll delight when you read to them about the dining adventures of the little caterpillar as he grows and grows. Point to the pictures and talk about the shapes and colors and things you see there, even though you may feel silly doing so with your newborn or older baby. This helps them to develop both their receptive and expressive language and stimulates their love for learning. You are your child’s first and greatest teacher!

I could not resist including this funny, nostalgic and compelling argument for why Encyclopedia Brown books are still relevant, fun and engaging for the older reader! I just read through the first two Encyclopedia Brown books with our school age classroom, the Arborists, over the summer!  They loved them. For any of you who may not have read these books as a child, Encyclopedia Brown is the son of a police chief who helps his father and the little town of Idaville solve crimes, often over the course of only a few pages. Encyclopedia Brown books contain several short mysteries and invite you, the reader, to offer your thoughts on “who done it” before the culprit is revealed. I love them because they offer clues to the careful reader, stimulate kids’ minds, make book sharing an engaging back-and-forth time for parent and child and are very entertaining! Enjoy Kate’s blog on the pint-sized detective!

From “Kate’s Book Blog“

I’ve just reread the first of Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, and it is readily apparent to me why I loved these books as a kid, and why kids today continue to embrace them. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Ten-year-old Encyclopedia Brown is an irresistible character. Sobol introduces him thus: “Leroy Brown’s head was like an encyclopedia. It was filled with facts he had learned from books. He was like a complete library walking around in sneakers.” People are always asking him questions. For example, old ladies stop him in the street to ask his assistance with crossword clues. He always knows the answer, but he pauses a moment before offering it up because he’s afraid people won’t like him if he comes off as too smart. When Encyclopedia uses logic to help his Police Chief father to solve a case for the first time, his mother suggests that he could be a detective when he grows up. But Encyclopedia figures there’s no time like the present and he puts out his shingle immediately. He sets up the Brown Detective Agency in his family’s garage, offering his services for 25 cents a day “plus expenses.” Just like that, he transforms what could be a social liability: his intelligence and his bookishness into a source of power, not just for himself, but also in service of other kids who are the targets of local bullies Bugs Meaney and his gang.

2. I don’t like Bug Meaney(he’s a nasty piece of work) but I do like his name, and I like that Encyclopedia has an archenemy with whom he does battle.

3. When you make a habit of besting the biggest bully in town, you need protection, so Encyclopedia acquires as a bodyguard the strongest person in Idaville below the age of twelve. That person? Sally Kimball. But brawny though she is, she’s no bully. She too uses her powers for good, protecting younger, smaller kids from Bugs Meaney, and also, together with a team of fifth-grade girls, devastating Bugs and his gang in a girls-against-the-boys game of softball. And besides her physical toughness and athletic prowess, Sally is also pretty and smart (almost, but not quite smart enough to stump Encyclopedia with a logical puzzle of her own devising). So she becomes not just Encyclopedia’s bodyguard, but also his partner in the detective agency. That’s a lot of stereotypes about girls and their capabilities sent tumbling via the character of Sally Kimball, particularly in 1963 when the book was first published.

4. But the greatest pleasure of the book is, just as I recalled in my previous post, the opportunity to follow the clues and solve the cases (10 contained in each book) alongside Encyclopedia. When his mother asks him, after his first success, how he went about it, he explains: “I got it from a book I read about a great detective and his methods of observation.” This is a nod to Sherlock Holmes, I think. In any event, a combination of close observation and deductive reasoning is certainly the secret of Encyclopedia’s success, and the key to the same for the reader who aspires to solve the cases him or herself before flipping to the back of the book where the solutions are revealed. Some of you know that I’m a lawyer and a law professor. Much is made of the mystical process by which students learn in first year law school how to “think like a lawyer.” On reflection it occurs to me, with apologies to my first year law professors, that I may in fact have received my earliest lessons in how to think like a lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown. At the time I couldn’t have connected Encyclopedia’s brand of logic with the work that lawyers do (I think I may have to credit Nancy Drew with making that connection explicit for me(another current reread). But in all likelihood it would have been in the solving of those puzzles that I first developed the taste and talent for logical reasoning that ultimately led me to pursue a legal career.

I’ll stop there, but stay tuned for a follow up post on Nancy Drew, and possibly a forthcoming law review article: “Learning to Think Like a Lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew”. . .

Just a few weeks ago we began a new Lunch and Learn training series from the American Library Association called “Every Child Ready To Read.” It equips teachers from the Infants, Toddlers, Twos and multi-age preschool program with resources and ideas for equipping even our youngest infants with the Six Skills to Get Ready To Read.

There are many things you can do as a parent to help equip your child. You are their greatest teacher! Today, I would like to talk about the first of those Six Skills to Get Ready to Read. It’s called Print Motivation. Print Motivation is a child’s interest in and enjoyment of books. This is a gateway skill. Enjoying and valuing reading books opens children up to a more successful acquisition of the other five reading skills.

I believe that no one left to his own nature, is born disliking books and book sharing. They are “taught” to dislike reading and sharing books by poor modeling and negative experiences with books as children. That’s why it is so important to avoid expecting or asking children to “sit still and listen” when sharing a book with them. It’s crucial to make book sharing fun for both parent and child so that your child is more responsive and attentive and develops a lifelong love of reading.

What else can you do to help develop Print Motivation in your child? Read often and make it fun. Make sure that you and your child are in good moods, so the experience is enjoyable. Stop reading when your child becomes tired or loses interest so that reading does not become tedious or punitive for your child. Choose a book you like and read it in an enthusiastic manner!

Our next book will be about the Second Skill to Get Ready to Read: Vocabulary! We’ll have some more good tips for building this with your child.

For more information please visit www.ala.org/everychild

In this first installment of age appropriate reading lists by age, we will share 10 books for ages 2, 3, and 4.  Check back often for more recommendations!

Milk and Cookes - Asch, Frank
Boats - Baron, Byron
Planes - Baron, Byron
Bow Wow!  Meow! A First Book of Sounds - Bellah, Melanie
Barney’s Big Balloon - Bernthal, Mark
The Runaway Bunny - Brown, Margaret Wise
Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me - Carle, Eric
Freight Train - Crew, Donald
Jamberry - Degen, Bruce
Go, Dog, Go! - Eastman, P.D.

In this first installment of age appropriate reading lists by age, we will share 10 books for ages 2, 3, and 4.  Check back often for more recommendations!

Quick! Quack! Quick - Arnold, Marsha
Country Crossing - Aylesworth, Jim
Animals Should Definitely Not wear Clothing - Barrett, Judi
The Berenstain’s B Book - Berenstain, Stan & Jan
Old Hat New Hat - Berenstain, Stan & Jan
The Velveteen Rabbit - Bianco, Margery Williams
Gingerbread Baby - Brett, Jan
The Mitten - Brett, Jan
Wings on Things - Brown, Marc
Goodnight Moon - Brown, Margaret Wise

In this first installment of age appropriate reading lists by age, we will share 10 books for ages 2, 3, and 4.  Check back often for more recommendations!

Milks and Cookies - Asch, Frank
What Spot? - Bronsall, Crosby
Goldilocks and the Three Bears - Brett, Jan
Choo Choo - Burton, Virginia Lee
Two Dog Biscuits - Clearly, Beverly
Empty Pot - Demi
Are You My Mother? - Eastman, P.D.
The Best Nest - Eastman, P.D.
Flap Your Wings - Eastman, P.D.
Go, Dog, Go! - Eastman, P.D.