Elijah has loved books since he was an infant. I have numerous pictures of him pulling every board book from his shelf and then turning through the pages. He will stop what he is doing and sit and listen to any picture book--even The Princess Collection that I am reading to his sister. He has recently been enjoying listening to chapter books, including Charlotte's Web and The Boxcar Children (read twice in a row!!). He has many stories memorized and can "read" them to himself or others. So, I don't know why I am surprised that as I groggily stumbled into the shower this morning my lovely husband comes busting in saying, "Michelle, Elijah can read. I mean really read." Indeed there are several basic books that he can decode the text using the picture clues and sounding out the words.
Last week we were at Barnes and Noble picking out books for the kids and I just blanked out on what to get. I sometimes refer to this phenomenon as "mall eyes." When there is so much to look at, I just glaze over and basically look at nothing. Part of the "problem" is that my aunt is a librarian who buys my kids stacks of books every Christmas and birthday, so when I look at the displayed books, we have lots of them (boo-hoo, right?). Elijah ended up with 2 new Star Wars books (ugh) and convinced him to choose a Kevin Henkes book, Sheila Rae the Brave (yay) . But as I was lamenting I remembered something about my own childhood: my parents always let me buy books, and not always literature. Whenever we went to the mall, I got to pick out a book from the bookstore. Whenever a book order came home from school I got to choose several books to buy. I had lots of Nancy Drew and Babysitter's Club paperbacks that I would read and re-read. He loves Star Wars. He loves looking at the pictures and learning about the characters. It will probably not stunt his development.
But, this does bring me to my next thought: as a kindergarten teacher, mom, and avid reader I thought I would share a list of children's authors and picture books that I particularly like (in no particular order).
Robert McCloskey--Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal
Kevin Henkes--Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, Owen, Chester's Way, Julius the baby of the world
William Steig--Doctor DeSoto, Pete's a Pizza
Martin Waddell--Owl Babies
Vera B. Williams--A Chair for my Mother
Munro Leaf--The Story of Ferdinand
I know there are others, but my brain is about done for now. Maybe you have others that you really like that you'd like to leave in the comments...
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1 comment:
The girls love to read everything. It is amazing at such a small age (just starting to talk) how they are already trying to read to themselves. We go to a book store and the girls immediately grab a book, sit down and begin flipping the pages as if they already know the story. We will keep your list for future purchases.
We love seeing how big the kids are getting.
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