Poems for Very Short People

Little Poems for Tiny Ears

by Lin Oliver

illustrated by Tomie dePaola

Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014

(In case you are wondering about today's post title, yesterday's post was "Very Short Poems." Go check it out. I'll wait.)

Welcome back!

Is it ever too soon for children to learn to love the rhythms, rhymes, and fun of poetry?

NO!!

Here's a great book for a baby shower gift. It will be as much fun for new parents to read over and over again as it will be for a new generation to listen to, look at, and slap their slobbery little hands all over the happy babies they see in Tomie dePaola's illustrations.

YOO-HOO LADY BUG by Mem Fox

Sooo sooo happy that Mem Fox has a new book out.  I have been waiting for it every since I heard it was coming months ago. The book is called Yoo-Hoo, Ladybug! and I fell in love with it immediately.

Mem Fox uses her brilliance as she always does in writing for young children. This is a simple I Spy type book. On each page of the book, the lady bug is missing, so each spread begins with "Yoo-Hoo, Ladybug! Where are you?"  As readers turn the page, he/she reads, "There you are.." alongside an illustration in which the lady bug is hiding.  After a bit of looking, the reader can turn the page to rhyming text showing where the ladybug was hiding.

This book is so perfect for young children--the predictable repeated texts, the rhymes, the unique illustrations and the active work of finding the ladybug on each page makes this book one that is perfect for K-1 classrooms.  It is also going on the top of my list for baby and toddler gifts that I need to buy soon.

Definitely a new favorite!

MAMA SAYS: A BOOK OF LOVE FOR MOTHERS AND SONS

Mama Says: A Book of Love for Mothers and Sons
by Rob D. Walker
illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon
The Blue Sky Press (Scholastic)
April, 2009
review copy provided by the publisher

This is a book for every mother of sons and for all sons. It is perfect for Mother's Day, baby showers, graduations, birthdays, and just because it's so beautiful.

Each double page spread in the book features wisdom from a mother written in English and another language (12 in all) with a gorgeous painting by the Dillons of a mother and son in the culture that speaks that language. On the cover you see the painting of the Cherokee mother. Her wisdom is:

Mama says
Be good
Mama says
Be kind
Mama says
The rain will come
But still the sun will shine

The mothers in this book (who speak Cherokee, Russian, Amharic, Japanese, Hindi, Inuktitut, Hebrew, Korean, Arabic, Quechua, Danish and English) teach the importance of kindness, sharing, diligence, faith, courage and a willingness to always try your best -- and the paintings and translations show us that these are universal traits that all mothers teach to their sons.

This is a perfect choice for the Diversity Rocks challenge.

If Animals Kissed Good Night

If Animals Kissed Good Night
by Ann Whitford Paul
illustrated by David Walker
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008
review copy provided by the publisher



This is my new baby shower gift book.

Reading this book as the last read aloud of the night is bound to result in lots of snuggling and kissing. What a great way to end the day!

The book starts out, "If animals kissed like we kiss goodnight, Sloth and her cub in late afternoon's light would hang from a tree and start kissing sooo slooowwwww...the sky would turn pink and the sun sink down low." Peacocks kiss with a fan dance, snakes kiss like rope loosely wound, walrus calf and papa kiss with whiskery swishes, elephant give a kiss and then a shower, "and Sloth and her cub? Still...kissing good night." Land and water and forest and Arctic and human animals kiss their way through the rest of the book, and you can probably guess what Sloth and her cub are doing after the child is tucked in with all her stuffed animals around her!