Saturday, April 2, 2011

A few of our favorite stories ...

"The Man Who Walked Between the Towers" by Mordicai Gerstein is a true story. It tells of a New York City street performer, Philippe Petit, and about his wire-walk between the trade towers (yes! those VERY towers) when they were being constructed back in the 1970's. It's a well-written story with great illustrations, several pages of the book opening up and spreading out to VERY wide pictures of the trade towers ~ the story builds, along with the towers, and there is a lot of anticipation about what will happen to this daring young man! Emma, Chris and Matthew were SO engaged with the events of this story! At the end, there is a small mention about the World Trade Towers not being part of the skyline anymore ... but it's handled really tastefully. I always love a true story! I purchased this book in the Used Book section over at Schuler Books back in early March.
I have always loved anything written by Rosemary Wells. She writes and illustrates her own books. This is just a cute book about going to school and being accepted by other children, making friends, and some of Timothy's frustrations. I found that Emma, Chris and Matthew wanted to talk about their own experiences after we were finished reading ~ and it was interesting to hear their own stories about school and about some of their friends too.
"Pig and Crow" (Kay Chorao) was definitely my favorite of the books I brought to El Paso for my March trip. I'd never heard of the book or the author before! I had driven over to Discount Books over on 29th street the week before I left for El Paso, searching for some soft-cover books to add to my story collection. I had several hours that day and sat down and read through dozens of books. Our Emma continues to LOVE pigs to this day; so I always try to find a story or two that includes pigs for her. This books was delightful from cover to cover. The illustrations are gorgeous and the story was so much fun to read! Here is a rather succinct review of the story by Booklist ~ "A lonely pig learns the value of hard work and patience in this delightful modern-day fable."

I find what's really fun to do is to open each page of the book and talk about the illustrations first ~ to see if the children can figure the story out just by looking at the pictures. It's also fun to ask a lot of questions: "Wow ... what's happening now?" "What do you see?" "Oh, no! Now what?!" And the kids just love trying to figure the story out before it has even been read. But after we do read it, it's also fun to ask questions and see what details they can remember about the story. Children have amazing memories and minds! I'm always pleased to see how much they have learned from just a simple story.

We read many other enjoyable books, but these were the favorites. I left "Pig and Crow" with Emma (she has a small book shelf and takes care of the books) so that she could read it and share it with her brothers. A few days after I was back home, I drove back over to Discount Books and picked up another copy for my house! I loved this little story. I also found quite a few more titles that I purchased to bring with me when I go back to El Paso in June ... I'm counting the days!

1 comment:

judy hand said...

Those all look and sound like great
reading and good for getting the children into it too. The one about
the walking between towers is really
neat.