Staff Favorites Books - Page 3

10 Minutes till Bedtime

Peggy Rathmann

Amazon Price: $12.23 List Price: $17.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Putnam Juvenile Amazon Marketplace: 64 new & used starting at $0.21

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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> Staff Favorites

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

controlled (and giggly) chaos! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The brilliance of this book lies in the tiny details and the chaotic, then calm, nature of bedtime.
As the hamsters accompany the child on his bedtime routine, brushing teeth, pajamas, some are imitating our spiky haired hero, watch for one hamster with similar spiky hair parroting the movements of the child, and some are into a little mischief. Each page is packed with activity, and a parent can ask the open ended question, "what do you see" to dramatic effect. I read one review of a parent with an 18 month old who did not seem to `get' the book. He noted that all he could do was to point and say, "this one is brushing his teeth" etc. but I argue that the teaching aspect of this work lies not in the parent's view, but in the child's. Rather than telling the child what is on the page, ask an open-ended question. "which hamster is your favorite? "what do you see? What is happening on this page?" True, there is some effect of a "Where's Waldo" nature in that the page is absolutely packed with details. But, my 5 year old delights in these details, shouting, "look at this one. No...no...no.. look at this one". Each pose, each activity, adds to the bedlam and the giggle factor at my house. Cries of "don't turn the page yet!" are heard with some regularity as reading uncovers something new. It should be noted that by the book's end, the chaos has diminished so much so that the child of the book, and possibly your own child, are ready for bedtime at last. The mental equivalent of running around the yard prior to a nap to tire the child. 5 stars!

Editorial Review:

At One Hoppin' Place, the countdown to bedtime is about to begin when a family of hamsters--a mother and father with nine kids and a baby all wearing numbered striped jerseys--arrives at the front door.

Eloise (Eloise Series)

Kay Thompson

Amazon Price: $12.24 List Price: $18.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 187 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 113 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

ooh I just love Eloise! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Awesome book! Totally loved it--my three year old finds her fascinating. "Why does she want to pour a pitcher of water down the mail chute, mommy?" She's a naughty girl but such a wonderfully creative and self reliant one! I think she is a great role model for my little girls!

not what I want my child to emulate. 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 4 people found this review helpful.

interesting to read as an adult. Wouldn't want to read to a young child.

My little ones found it disturbing 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

My 6 year old received this as a birthday gift. I thought: wow, great, very nostalgic. After reading it to her, she gave me a funny look and said "I didn't like that". While it does have some charming moments, she seemed to us to be a sad and lonely little girl. Her fantasy about her doll getting in an accident and gushing blood and being sawn in pieces was really too graphic for my children, even though they knew it was being made up. Just found it sort of depressing. Where are the parents?

Editorial Review:

Eloise is a little girl who lives at The Plaza Hotel in New York. She is not yet pretty but she is already a Person.

Henry James would want to study her.

Queen Victoria would recognize her as an Equal.

The New York Jets would want to have her on their side.

Lewis Carroll would love her (once he got over the initial shock).

She knows everything about The Plaza. She is interested in people when they are not boring.

She has Inner Resources.

If you take her home with you, you will always be glad you did.

The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh

A. A. Milne

Amazon Price: $25.20 List Price: $40.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dutton Juvenile Amazon Marketplace: 102 new & used starting at $4.67

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 61 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Horrible! Where is the History!? 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Okay, first I'm a huge fan of Winnies Hollywood career and I also thought his apperance in the movie Top Gun as Tom Cruise's stunt double was amazing! Also playing Elizabeth Turner in the popular TV series, Pirates of the Mediterranean, was an astonishing role. But was that ever mentioned in the book? No! And that is what makes me lie awake in bed at night, hoping to one day claim vengeance on the editor and publisher. If you like this book, I will hunt you down and make you throw the book into a fire, do the tango, sing zip-a-dee-doo-da-zippada-da, then force you to alphabetize my sock drawer! So beware, and always know, I, Fartsy Magee, am always watching you. Right now your scrating your butt like a madman. I'm watching. Watching. Watching. Still watching. Okay, anyway I'm watching you every day. And I'm watching you like a blind man watching his glasses. BEWARE!!!!!!!!! BEWARE!!!!!!!!
But otherwise a great book and the author deserves a lot of credit.

Editorial Review:

Presents a comprehensive, unabridged collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories, accompanied by Shepard's original full-color illustrations, as well as headbands and ribbon markers, colorful bookplate, and biographies of the author and illustrator.

Blueberries for Sal

Robert McCloskey

List Price: $16.99 By: Viking Juvenile Amazon Marketplace: 15 new & used starting at $19.94

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

My niece loves this book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

She has hundreds of books and everytime I visit she would ask me to read her this book. She loves the illustrations... especially the seal!

blueberries for sal-- 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

sweet book for little kids. It is an excellent book to read aloud to your children and grandchildren. It is about a girl out picking berries for her mom and it shows a baby bear doing the same for his mom.

wonderful childs book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book as a child so I got it for my
grandchildren. They aren't as impressed with
the pictures from 1950 as I was, but still is
a good story.

bland 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I don't understand the positive reviews here or the caldecott award. The sketchings are artistically done, true, but in a way an adult can appreciate intellectually; they don't really evoke emotion. The story is a yawner.

Editorial Review:

"The adventures of a little girl and a baby bear while hunting for blueberries with their mothers one bright summer day. All the color and flavor of the sea and pine-covered Maine countryside."--School Library Journal, starred review. Caldecott Honor Book. Full-color illustrations.

Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin (Caldecott Honor Book)

Lloyd Moss

Amazon Price: $13.86 List Price: $18.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 113 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Fun book 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this for my Kindermusik class, and the only thing that would've made it better would've been a real violin. It is a charming book, and it wasn't too long even for 3 year olds.

Love This Book! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is my 4 y.o.'s favorite book. We had read it to her so many times that she has memorized it. She can name every instrument and tells me which ones she likes the best. A plus plus.

Great addition to your library 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is beautifully written. The words on the page flow like musical notes. This book is a valuable addition to any home or school library and a great way to introduce children to the types of musical instruments. I love the way the book introduces the instruments one at a time and gives the vocabulary for the number of instruments in the orchestra each time a new instrument is added (solo, duo, trio, quartet, quintet, etc.). At the end of the book, the author shows how all of the instruments join together to create music "that we all adore."

Great picture book to use in the classroom from preschool through 4th grade. For 3rd through 4th graders, you could use this book as an engaging tool to discuss musical terms, context clues, alliteration, adjectives, prefixes.

Editorial Review:

When this book begins, the trombone is playing all by itself. But soon a trumpet makes a duet, a french horn a trio, and so on until the entire orchestra is assembled on stage. Written in elegant and rhythmic verse and illustrated with playful and flowing artwork, this unique counting book is the perfect introduction to musical groups. Readers of all ages are sure to shout "Encore!" when they reach the final page of this joyous celebration of classical music.

Too Many Tamales

Gary Soto

Amazon Price: $11.55 List Price: $16.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Putnam Juvenile Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $0.96

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Class loved it! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

My class of second and third graders really enjoyed this book. Many of them make tamales at home every year. They enjoyed reading about someone else that shares the same traditions. It opened up a lot of discussion about telling the truth. The only problem was all the talk about tamales made them hungry!

My childhood revisited 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I love this story because it brings back memories of when my family would get together at Christmas time to make the annual batch of tamales. Everyone was involved and when all the work was done, we couldn't wait until they were ready to eat. The story is well told and my students look forward to hearing the story year after year.

Starting our own tradition 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Our family loves this book! We checked it out from our local library and soon it was my four year old daughter's favorite. When December rolled around, I checked it out again, bought tamale makings and my four year old and I made cheese tamales. We took them to her pre-school class for snack along with the book. Her teacher read the book to the class and then they all had the tamales that my daughter and I made. It was a huge hit!! Now that she is in kindergarten, we will do it again (I am buying the book since I have two girls and I think this tradition will go on for a while!). Tamales are a really kid friendly activity and it was a great experience for both of us. You should try it!

Editorial Review:

While preparing dough for her family's Christmas tamales, Maria discovers that she has lost her mother's prized diamond ring somewhere in the dough and sets out to eat her way through the many finished tamales to find the missing ring.

Rapunzel (Caldecott Medal Book)

Brothers Grimm

Amazon Price: $12.23 List Price: $17.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dutton Juvenile Amazon Marketplace: 88 new & used starting at $0.72

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Surely among the most original and gifted of children's book illustrators, Paul O. Zelinsky has once again with unmatched emotional authority, control of space, and narrative capability brought forth a unique vision for an age-old tale. Few artists at work today can touch the level at which his paintings tell a story and exert their hold. Zelinsky's retelling of Rapunzel reaches back beyond the Grimms to a late-seventeenth-century French tale by Mlle. la Force, who based hers on the Neapolitan tale Petrosinella in a collection popular at the time. The artist understands the story's fundamentals to be about possessiveness,confinement, and separation, rather than about punishment and deprivation. Thus the tower the sorceress gives Rapunzel here is not a desolate, barren structure of denial but one of esoteric beauty on the outside and physical luxury within. And the world the artist creates through the elements in his paintings the palette, control of light, landscape, characters, architecture, interiors, costumes speaks to us not of an ugly witch who cruelly imprisons a beautiful young girl, but of a mother figure who powerfully resists her child's inevitable growth, and of a young woman and man who must struggle in the wilderness for the self-reliance that is the true beginning of their adulthood. As ever, and yet always somehow in newly arresting fashion, Paul O. Zelinsky's work thrillingly shows us the events of the story while guiding us beyond them to the truths that have made it endure.

Color Surprises: A Pop-up Book

Amazon Price: $10.94 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Little Simon Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $5.34

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Beautiful and pretty durable for a pop-up 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

We bought this book two years ago, I fianlly packed them in my daughter's keepsake box. We loved these - they are simply beautiful.

Beautiful little book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This has rapidly become my 22-month-old granddaughter's favorite book. We all love the charming and beautifully designed popups, especially the last one, "all colors". A bit fragile, but that just means it is a teaching opportunity on how to take care of fragile, beautiful things.

Just okay... 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

From the glowing reviews, I really expected the book to blow my mind. In reality, it turned out that only the very last pop-up is really spectacular and elaborate, the rest are far more average. Plus, the book proved too fragile for a 2,5-year-old, who wanted to make everything pop up on her own. After only a couple of reads, the tore the penguins, then the snake...
Also, from the reviews I was under the impression that the book teachers colors... I.e. I thought there was a fun and meaningful text that went with the pop-ups, while it turned out that there is none.
I would not purchase this book again.

Editorial Review:

Can you guess what's hiding behind each color? Lift the flaps and watch Chuck Murphy's colors literally explode off the pages in this eye-popping book.

One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale

Demi

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Scholastic Press Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $7.25

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

ANOTHER WONDERFUL OFFERING FROM DEMI 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This wonderful Indian folk tale is brought to life by some wonderful illustrations and art work. Demi is one of the better illustrators, and indeed, writers of children's books active today. I do not know of one book by this author that is not a complete delight to the eye and ear.

This is a story of a "Wise Raja" and how he is tricked by a little girl. This ruler made the decision one day that he must gather all the rice in the land and store it away for future use. He left the poor people of the land in a state of starvation while he feasted at his palace from his over filled store houses. One day some grains of rice fall from the basket being carried to the Raja's home and a little girl gathers them up, but instead of keeping the rice, she returns it to the wise ruler. As a reward, he offers her anything she wants. She asks for one grain of rice. The Raja more or less insists she ask for more, so she tells him she would like one grain of rice, but would like to have it doubled every day for thirty days. The first day, one grain, the second two, the third four, and the fifth eight...and so on until the last day. You do the math. Needless to say at the end of the thirty days, the little girl has all the rice and the Raja has none.

This is an interesting story and an excellent lesson in math, in greed, in giving and in compassion, all wrapped up in one small book. The illustrations consists of full page pictures done in the style of India and is sprinkled with traditional miniature paintings as well. The detail and vivid colors are a feast for the eye.

This book seems to fascinate children. I have noted that they pull it form the shelf and set and read and look at the pictures over and over again. As an adult, I know I see something different each time I read the thing to a class. The children are absolutely amazed when it finally dawns on them what the little girl has done and it makes quite an impact when they realize the power of numbers. This is a great read-a-long book as you can give a mini math lesson and a moral lesson at the same time. I never tire reading it. To be honest, the pictures are worth the price of the book alone.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

Editorial Review:

A reward of one grain of rice doubles day by day into millions of grains of rice when a selfish raja is outwitted by a clever village girl.

Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!

Dr Seuss, Jack Prelutsky, Lane Smith

Amazon Price: $11.56 List Price: $17.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Knopf Books for Young Readers Amazon Marketplace: 86 new & used starting at $2.39

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Started by Seuss, finished by Jack Prelutsky, and splendiferously illustrated by Lane Smith, this is the children's book publishing event of the year! Big--56 pages--and bursting with energy, here is a joyous ode to individuality, starring an unsinkable teacher named Miss Bonkers and quirky little Diffendoofer School, which must prove it has taught its students how to think--or have them sent to dreary Flobbertown. Included is an introduction by Dr. Seuss's longtime editor explaining how the book came to be and reproducing Dr. Seuss's 1989 original pencil sketches and hand-printed notes for the book--a true find for all Seuss collectors. In Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! Jack Prelutsky and Lane Smith pay homage to Dr. Seuss in their own distinctive ways. The result is the union of three one-of-a-kind voices in a brand-new, completely original book that is greater than the sum of its parts. For all of us who will never forget our school days and that special teacher, here is a book to give and to get.