Stargazing with Children

by Katrina Morse
for Family Reading Partnership

What do your children see in the night sky? The moon, stars, and planets? A fish, a bear, or even a lion? The night sky has been a source of wonder and inspiration for people since we first looked up! Science researchers and explorers have provided us with facts about the vast universe of celestial bodies and phenomena, and they are still discovering more. And before we knew the science of the skies, people were seeing shapes in the stars and creating stories to explain the world they knew.

Plan a midnight star gazing with your children and they will never forget time spent looking at the sky when normally they would be asleep. Right now in the Northern Hemisphere you can see the Perseid Meteor Showers, which peak this year around August 11 and taper off 2 weeks later. The meteors are made of grains of dust and ice left behind by the Comet Swift-Tuttle. As the debris hits the Earth’s atmosphere it burns and creates shooting stars.

The shooting stars seem to originate around the area of the ancient Greek constellation of Perseus in our northeastern sky, and so are named after that mythical figure. Cultures across the Earth have seen many figures in the sky based on the animals, people, and life that they lived.

For a taste of the variety in constellation myths, the picture book “Star Stories from Around the World” by Anita Ganeri and illustrated by Andy Wilx tells twenty-three sky legends accompanied by beautiful artwork.

Weaving science and storytelling into one children’s book is “What We See in the Stars: An Illustrated Tour of the Night Sky” written and illustrated by Kelsey Oseid. Learn about the Northern Lights, planets, deep space, and constellation myths from other cultures.

“They Dance in the Sky: Native American Star Myths” by Ray A. Williamson, illustrated by Edgar Stewart tells about the night sky with stories from many of the native North American tribes.

“Follow the Drinking Gourd” by Jeanette Winter is a picture book recounting a song passed on by African-American slaves who used the Big Dipper constellation as a guide to travel north to escape slavery.

“50 Things to See in the Sky” by Sarah Barker, illustrated by Maria Nilsson is a non-fiction book that will give your family facts about more than just stars and planets.

“2020 Guide to the Night Sky: A Month-by Month Guide to Exploring the Skies Above North America,” by Storm Dunlop and Will Tirion can be read over time as you explore the sky each month.

Look, learn, and imagine the sky you see and how others saw the sky long ago. You’ll see the night sky in a new way, and maybe be inspired to create some personal family constellations and stories in the stars!

Summertime Read Aloud!

by Katrina Morse for Family Reading Partnership

What are your family’s favorite summer activities? Picking and eating fresh strawberries, open ended fun at the playground, or cooling off with a swim? Bring along books to read aloud wherever you go and you’ll have a ready-made way to take a break from your action-packed day.

By reading books aloud to your children – even after they can read on their own – you’ll be introducing them to new words and ideas, sparking their imagination and curiosity. Here are some summer-themed books to enjoy with your family:

“I See Summer” by Charles Ghigna, illustrated by Agnieszka Malgorzata Jatkowska. Bright and colorful illustrations depict cheerful summer scenes from sailboats to gardens. This is a great point and say book. Ask your 2-3 year old where things are that you name on each page or count the objects together. You can extend the book experience after reading by continuing the book’s phrase, “I see…”, and filling in what you see around you in real life.

“Gorilla Loves Vanilla” by Chae Strathie, illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne. This book will tickle the funny bone of your 3-5 year old. Stinky blue cheese ice cream? Squirmy wormy ice cream? Ice cream flavored with mud? Who eats all these unusual flavors and what will Gorilla choose as his favorite?

“Jabari Jumps” by Gaia Cornwall. This is a story about a boy who is working on being brave. Jabari would like to jump off the high dive at the community pool, but when he looks at the long ladder to the board, he sees that it’s mighty high up. Told in a playful, yet emotionally sensitive way, the story describes Jabari’s determination to overcome his fears. The longer text of this book, with sounds effects, repetition, and rhythm, will engage 4-7 year olds.

“Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH” by Robert C. O’Brien, illustrated by Zena Bernstein. Published in 1971, this chapter book still remains a favorite with its themes of self-sufficiency, ingenuity, and “doing the right thing.” This is a fantasy story set the in the summer months, featuring the mysterious Rats of NIMH. Read this book aloud, a few chapters at a time, to your 6-10 year old. Or, you could take turns and your child could read to you. Suspenseful and heroic, this will be a story your family will remember.

Summertime Fun!

Katrina Morse for Family Reading Partnership

Summertime is here! Enjoy the sun, the warmth, and all the family fun that summer brings. Are you planning a vacation? Will you be spending some time at the pool? Are you looking forward to some backyard exploration? Whatever you do this summer, there are many books to read with your young children to enrich experiences and give your family ideas for summer activities. Here are a few favorites:

“LaRue Across America: Postcards from the Vacation,” written and illustrated by Mark Teague. Told from the perspective of Mrs. LaRue’s dog, Ike, you can follow their road trip across the country visiting landmarks, cities, and small towns. It would be a much better vacation for Ike if they didn’t have the neighbor’s cats along with them in the car!

“Summer Days and Nights,” written and illustrated by Wong Herbert Yee. A celebration of the simple pleasures of summer, this story features a little girl’s adventures in one day, sun-up to sun-down. Butterflies, lemonade, picnics, and swimming during the day and owls, frogs, and sounds to explore in the night. This book will inspire your family to head outside and appreciate the natural world.

“Frog and Friends: The Best Summer Ever,” by Eve Bunting, illustrated by José Masse. This beginning reader book is written in 3 short stories. In each, Frog interacts with his friends and learns about accepting differences, compromising, and being generous, with summertime as a backdrop for the tales.

“Hello Ocean,” by Pam Munoz Ryan, illustrated by Mark Astrella. This poem will bring you right to the ocean with rich language that evokes the feel, sights, sounds, smell, and even the taste of the ocean. Squishy sand between the toes and salt spray on the face are also depicted in the realistic illustrations.

“Maisy Learns to Swim,” written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins. With a little trepidation, Maisy goes to her first swim lesson and step-by-step we see what she learns from kicking, floating, and blowing bubbles. Maisy is cold getting out of the pool, but gets dressed, and has a snack. The story covers all the nuances of learning to swim.

“Bailey Goes Camping,” written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes. Bailey, the rabbit, wants to go camping with his older brother and sister, but they tell him he is too little to go. Mother finds a way for Bailey to camp out right at home. This is one of the author’s first books and has become a summertime classic.

Reading On the Run

by Melissa Perry, Program Coordinator, Family Reading Partnership

With many families taking some sort of vacation this summer, there will be a lot of time spent on the road travelling with children. While traveling can be an exciting adventure, with opportunities to explore the world, experience new things, and create family memories, the reality is that it can also be stressful- especially when taking road trips with children. Fortunately, travel time is the perfect opportunity for children to enjoy the pleasure of reading! Not only is it a fun, quiet activity that can fill long stretches of time, it also lends itself to the discovery of far off lands and incredible people. (All of this to say nothing about the importance of reading to fend off summer learning loss!)

It’s simple to outfit a vehicle with a variety of literacy material within easy reach of your children, keeping them occupied to read to themselves, or read to you, the driver! Stash some books in the seat pockets or buckle in a milk crate or a backpack in the center seat and fill with books. It’s fun to bring along a few favorites and add some books related to your destination or journey along the way. Learning about the states or big cities you plan to travel through, the vehicles seen on the roads, or activities you may be doing on your trip, such as fishing, camping, or visiting Grandma. There is an abundance of books that can capture the attention of your young travelers. Books are the perfect travel companions because they can be read again and again and children can read them to each other. Bring along small clip-on book lights for nighttime reading. Don’t forget that comic books, joke books, I spy books, magazines, and graphic novels count, too!

Another great way to weave literacy into your car trip is to borrow a few recorded books to enjoy while traveling. There are many options at your local library and it’s something the whole family can enjoy together, naturally encouraging conversations about predicting what may happen next, what each character could have done differently in the story, or what may have happened with the characters before the story began. Adults can also check out a few recorded books of their own and pop those in while the kids are asleep.

With over two-thirds of the population of young children in the US having regular access to an e-reader or tablet of some sort, it may seem logical to leave the printed books and recorded books at home, opting instead for the electronic versions of books. However, if your intention is to encourage your children to read while on the road, it’s useful to know that only about half the number of children using an electronic device use it for reading. And even at that rate, electronic devices only hold a reader’s attention for five minutes per day; compared to 30 minutes per day a child will read printed books. That’s a significant difference!

So, as you pack the car for your next family adventure, be sure to include reading material for every member of the clan, including the adults to model reading as a pleasurable, relaxing, and valuable activity. You can even create simple activity kits that relate to the books you have decided to bring along that extend the experience for little ones and keep them occupied just that much longer. Consider small toys such as finger puppets, small animal figurines, or, my favorite, a notebook and crayons. A theme-based snack can be a fun addition, too!

Some fun travel themed books to check out include:

“Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go”
“Our 50 States” by Lynne Cheney
“Road Trip” by Roger Eschbacher
“Swimmy” by Leo Lionni
“S is for S’mores: A Camping Alphabet” by Helen Foster James
“Mister Seahorse” by Eric Carle
“Planes” by Byron Barton
“Dear Zoo” by Rod Campbell
“Next Stop Grand Central” by Maira Kalman
“A Bear Called Paddington” by Michael Bond
“Wabi Sabi” by Mark Reibstein
“Fly High, Fly Lo” by Don Freeman

For older readers:

“The Magic Tree House” series by Mary Pop Osborne
“From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” by E.L. Konigsburg
“The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick
“The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Perilous Journey” by Trenton Lee Stewart

 

Happy reading on the run!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading Fits into the Flow of Summer

How is your summer going? What have the kids been doing to keep busy? Running, jumping, swimming, exploring, and hopefully some relaxing have all been part of your family’s summer fun.

Summer reading fits right into the flow. Read a book aloud with your children for some quiet time and then get up and go with a related activity to make the book come alive! Here are some suggestions:

• Read “The Salamander Room” by Anne Mazer, then go on a walk in your neighborhood and look under rocks, in streams, and in trees for creatures you may not usually notice.
• Read “The Doorbell Rang” by Pat Hutchins, then bake some cookies and count them. If you eat 2 cookies, how many are left? What kind of cookies did you make? Did you follow a recipe in a cookbook?
• Read “How Rocket Learned to Read” by Tad Hills, then write an alphabet letter in mud with a stick or in sand with your finger. A good letter for any child to learn is the first letter of his or her name.
• Read “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” by Mo Willems, then take a bus ride. Where did you go on the bus? Who did you see? Who drove the bus?
• Read “Feast for Ten” by Cathryn Falwell, then go grocery shopping together. Make a list of what you need for the day. Check off each item on your list as you find it and put it in your cart.
• Read “Aunt Flossie’s Hats (and Crab Cakes Later)” by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard, then try on all the hats you have at home. What shapes, colors, and sizes of hats does your family wear?
• Read “Feathers for Lunch” by Lois Ehlert, then go on a walk to look for birds. You’ll find out the names of some local birds, what they look like, and what their call sounds like in this book. Can you spot any near where you live?
• Read “A Splendid Friend, Indeed” by Suzanne Bloom and ask a friend to come over and share a snack. Or you could ask your friend to play a game or draw a picture. What do you like to do with your friends?

Have a great summer!

Summer Fun Inspired by Books

Pieces of chalk and a driveway, a cardboard box in the grass, flour and sugar in the kitchen, or a stick on a sandy beach–children only need common, every day items, a long summer day, and your encouragement, to have fun. Jumpstart their imaginations by reading children’s books about picnics, swimming, berry picking, exploring and other summer activities, and then do them! You’ll be making children’s books “come alive” and giving your child the connection between new words and what they mean, while creating colorful childhood memories.

Did you ever make chalk drawings, hopscotch games, or start lines for races on the sidewalk or driveway when you were young? Give your children the same experience. With a few colored sticks of chalk a child can draw all day. The next rain will wash away the chalk to make a “blank slate” for another time. “A Piece of Chalk” by Jennifer Ericsson, illustrations by Michelle Shapiro, follows a little girl as she creates a chalk drawing the width of her driveway. The book names many colors and playfully relates the colors to the objects in the girl’s yard.

Are you going to spend some time at the ocean while the weather is warm? Read “Beach Day” by Karen Roosa, illustrated by Maggie Smith, and learn about the simple pleasures provided by a shovel and a pail. If you are staying closer to home and visiting a lake, compare the animals and activities in this book to the experience at the lake. What is the same; what is different? Younger children will have fun with the rhyming text.

“One, two, three. Ready or not, here I come!” Hide and seek has been a favorite game of children for generations. The book “Gotcha, Louie!” by H.M. Ehrlich, illustrated by Emily Bolam, is a simple book about a small boy and his family playing hide and seek on vacation. Who will find Louie in the tall grass?

Yum! Homemade cake! “What’s Cookin’?” by Nancy Coffelt is a counting and baking book. On each turn of the page there is a “knock, knock, knock,” and someone else comes into the kitchen with another ingredient to add to the mixing bowl. The delightful illustrations continue onto pages at the back of the book that give ideas of activities to do while baking and a recipe for “Cousin Alice’s Easy Layer Cake” and “Quick Chocolate Frosting.”

Secret hiding places, magic houses, even entire pretend towns are part of childhood. “Roxaboxen” by Alice McLerran, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, is about a special place called Roxaboxen that comes to life with the imagination of the children in this Arizona landscape. With little, white stones, wooden crates and items found in the sand, the children create streets and houses. When the children grow up, they come back and find the traces of Roxaboxen still there.

Choose a Book by Its Publisher

Now that it’s summer, there’s more time to read together with your young children. At least we can try to slow down the pace of family life and have more quiet reading time.

You can relax and read at bedtime with the summer breeze blowing in the window. Slow down and read at the park after the kids have worn themselves out on the playground. Read at length in the car as you travel to your vacation destination. Have grandma, grandpa and other special people in your family’s life snuggle up and read to your children too.

Now you just need some good books to explore! One way to choose books for your family is by the publisher. If your child especially likes one book, you can get a few more books by the same author. But if you look into who published the book you will find a multitude of books with the same “personality.”

To find out who published a book, look on the copyright page or back cover of the book. Once you find a publisher that you really like, look them up online and see all the other books they print. You can then find those titles by author’s last name in the library.

You’ll find that publishers have a focus or a mission to provide books to the public that fit their mission and philosophy (and that sell well!). Large publishers like Random House and Harcourt, often create divisions that are particular to a type of book.

Here are a few favorite publishers you may not know and a sample of their books.

Barefoot Books (www.barefootbooks.com) has a knack for publishing books representing many different cultures and finds illustrators who use unique media to create their images. They’ve published the Cleo series for toddlers about an orange tabby cat, by Caroline Mockford, “We All Go Traveling By” by Stella Blackstone, illustrated with fabric art by Siobhan Bell, and “I Wish I Were Pilot” by Max Grover.

Boyds Mills Press (www.boydsmillspress.com) publishes “Highlights” and “Cricket” magazines and many engaging children’s books. They are the publisher for local authors Suzanne Bloom, who wrote and illustrated “A Splendid Friend, Indeed” and Gail Jarrow, who wrote “The Printer’s Trial.”

Candlewick (www.candlewick.com) was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1991, as a branch of a British/Australian publisher, Walker Books. They publish adult non-fiction and high quality children’s books such as “Owl Babies” by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Patrick Benson, “Guess How Much I Love You” by Sam McBratney, illustrated by Anita Jeram, and 2013 Caldecott winner “This is Not My Hat” by Jon Klassen.

Child’s Play (www.childs-play.com) says on their website: “Books play a vital role in building the foundations for learning, and exposure to quality books from an early age helps to develop an enquiring mind and a lifelong love of reading.” Child’s Play publishes many board books for very young children such as the classic finger play “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” illustrated by Annie Kubler, and picture books including “Quick as a Cricket” and “The Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear, both by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood.

Usborne Children’s Books (www.usborne.com) started with mainly non-fiction books for young children, many using photographs to illustrate text, as well as touch and feel books. The company has expanded to include activity books and beginning reader books.

Explore Summer with Books

Help your children discover the wonder and magic of the outside world this summer with some choice children’s books. You’ll be satisfying their curiosity and giving them experiences that will be happy summertime memories for years to come. You can explore your own backyard, the beautiful night sky, or your vacation spot on the ocean with field guides written especially for young children.

• The “Take Along Guide” collection is a wonderful series of non-fiction books. Learn about seashells, crabs, and sea stars, caterpillars and butterflies, eggs and nests, trees, leaves, and bark, and more!

• “Once Upon a Starry Night: a Book of Constellations” by Jacqueline Mitton and illustrated by Christina Balit brings the sky to life with animals and people that emerge in the glowing patterns of stars.

• “Pop! A Book About Bubbles” is one book in the “Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out-Science” series that features photographs of children on each topic. How fun to blow bubbles, send them off into the warm summer sky, and then learn how and why they work!

There are also plenty of stories about summertime activities that feature children on adventures picking berries or chasing after butterflies.

• “Blueberries for Sal” by Robert McClosky is a classic written in 1949 that young children today will still find fascinating. As a mother and daughter set off to pick blueberries so they will have some fruit to can for the winter, a mother bear and her cub set off to find blueberries to eat on the same hillside. As the story unfolds, we see how both mothers and the two children have more in common than just loving blueberries.

• “Summer Days and Nights” by Wong Herbert Yee was just published in 2012. This is a delightful story of a little girl enjoying a beautiful summer day from sun-up to bedtime. Told in gently rhyming verse the author describes the delights of daytime and nighttime summer fun, which will give you and your child many ideas for things to do and explore.

• “Beach Day” by Karen Roosa, illustrated by Maggie Smith, is a favorite of very young children. Two-year-olds will love the sandy beach images and the sing-song text. “Waves roar, rush and soar! Rolling, crashing to the shore.” From water-skiers to picnic blankets, this book encompasses an entire joy-filled day at the ocean.

After you read a new book together, you will most likely learn some new words that you can put right to use as you enjoy time as a family. Happy summer reading!