Books to remember

I took the recent batch of books back to the library, so it's time for another installment of "Books to Remember."

This is a great alphabet book where each page has the dinosaur eating a letter of the alphabet surrounded by items that started with that letter.

 Alice LOVED this book.  It's about a girl who is mocked by her older sisters for choosing a bumpy pumpkin from the pumpkin patch, but with the help of her friends (bear cub, deer, hare, and some birds) she makes a jack-o-lantern anyway.  When she returns home with it, her mother praises her and reminds the older siblings that all their jack-o-lanterns are beautiful in their own way.  Alice is still fixated on jack-o-lanterns from Halloween several months ago.

 Alice was obsessed with this book during the snow days, so I often ended up reading it to her twice a day: before nap and before bed.  It's about a bear, a moose, and a beaver who take a canoe trip down the river and argue a lot about everything, such as who gets to steer, which side to paddle on, and how to get over the beaver dam.  Eventually, they must work together to run the rapids.  In the end, they all agree to walk back rather than face the river again.  I liked it because it used real words like "stern", "port side" and "portage."  It also taught practical canoeing skills like the importance of paddling on different sides of the canoe to prevent going in circles.

 This is a great book for Alice at this time in her life, when she's becoming aware of her past and her future.  It's very multicultural with kids of different races and genders pointing out how they did things as a baby ("When I was a baby, I ate with my fingers") then contrasting those with what they do now that they're bigger ("Now I'm big!  I eat with a spoon and a fork.")  In the last part of the book, a girl has a baby sister and helps her do things that she now knows how to do herself.  This book was useful in helping Alice learn about how she used to be a baby like Simon.

 In this book, a bunch of piggies make a surprise birthday cake for their mother while she is out.  During their messy cooking, they keep thinking they hear their mother coming home, so they hurry to hide their mess, only to look out the window and realize it's another animal coming by.  At the end, they've inexplicably made a cake, a pie, and some muffins.  Their mom comes home and they surprise her with a birthday cake and candles (which Alice loved.)  Alice also liked the line "Stir to the beat" for some reason.

 Poor Mr. Gilbert!  He gets a guinea pig as a class pet, but his pupils beg him to get another one, so he does, and then there are a lot of babies. At the end, he gets the students to adopt all the guinea pigs, and he gets one rabbit instead.  The rabbit turns out to be pregnant and the book ends with baby bunnies everywhere.  The story is geared towards helping kids learn to count, but I was also impressed by the cleverness put into each illustration.  The classroom really came to life as the illustrator showed the poems the kids were writing about the pets, the bulletin board with the science activities centered on the guinea pigs, the votes for what name to give the pets, etc.  Alice liked one of the baby guinea pigs named Pickles the best.

Mr. Bird loves his nest, but Mrs. Bird is dissatisfied with it.  She causes them to embark on a journey looking for the perfect nest.  She finds a perfect spot in a tower, and after building the nest, Mr. Bird goes out to proclaim how happy he is once again.  Just then, the bell that they have unwittingly built their nest upon is run, and Mrs. Bird flees.  When Mr. Bird returns, the nest is dischevelled, his wife is gone, and he fears she has been eaten by a cat.  He's flying in the pouring rain, in complete despair, when he smashes into a wall, which turns out to be their old nest.  Mrs. Bird is inside, and has realized it was really the perfect nest all along.  And, surprise, she has laid an egg and they have a baby.

 A family of pigs share a small shed, and the runt is always squished.  One by one, he gets all his family members out of the bed, only to realize at the end that he is lonely and wants them to all come back.  Zac enjoyed reading this book in a southern accent.

 This book depicted a bunch of farm animals that did not do what they were supposed to do, and so the farm was really weird.  They all redeemed themselves at night though, because they always slept through the night without making any noise.

 This was a ridiculous book.  These pirates love underpants and wear them on the outside of their clothes.  They go on a journey in search of the golden underpants, and have to trick some other pirates in order to get it.  It had a lot of word play, using all the synonyms and euphemisms for underwear, but Alice didn't get any of that.  I'm not sure why she liked it so much.

This is a book I fondly remember from my childhood, so I was happy that Alice also enjoyed it.  A greedy troll wants to eat each billy goat as it crosses his bridge, but he each goat promises a bigger one is coming, so the troll lets him pass.  When the third goat comes, he is so large that he kicks the troll into the river, then goes and joins the others in the meadow where they eat and eat and eat and get fat.

This was another counting book, depicting groups of animals doing zany things in the zoo before it opens in the morning.