If I Ran the Rain Forest by Bonnie Worth is a selection from the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library, a wonderful series of books for young readers. These books are entertaining and educational, presenting non-fiction concepts in a basic format to help children build ideas about the natural world. In If I Ran the Rain Forest, the much loved Dr. Seuss character, the Cat in the Hat, is here to tell you about a fascinating part of the world, filled with life! The rain forest is brimming with enormous trees, which are home to amazing creatures, like parrots, monkeys, and frogs. However, this fantastic place is threatened–people are cutting down trees, and so the Cat tells us, if he ran the rain forest he’d say “chop somewhere else, people. Leave us these trees. Don’t cut them down. Save the trees, please!”
Rhyming
Cat & Mouse
Cat & Mouse by Ian Schoenherr was one of my favorite books last year, but it kicked up a bit of controversy among my colleagues in the children’s librarian community (and what a community it is! I’m so proud to be a member). Schoenherr adapts a few well-known nursery rhymes, “I Love My Little Kitty,” “Hickory Dickory Dock,” and “Eeny Meeny Miney Mo,” into a Tom-and-Jerry-esque romp between a saucer-eyed cat and an acrobatic mouse, natural enemies who turn out to be best friends in the end. The illustrations are strikingly detailed. I think they’re just gorgeous! But you may want to have a discussion with your child about the proper way to treat animals, before and after you read it (some might say the mouse is a little malicious).
Horton Hears a Who
To celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss, who was born 105 years ago this month, we held a large celebration at our library centered around his masterpiece Horton Hears a Who, the story of a kind-hearted elephant who discovers an entire city of tiny people living on a dust speck and vows to protect them because, after all, “a person’s a person no matter how small.” It was a pleasure to share my love for Horton with the children who attended our party. Like many of Seuss’s works, Horton Hears a Who teaches us valuable lessons, in this case about tolerance for others’ cultures and beliefs. If everyone was as caring and open-minded as Horton, I believe the world would be a better place. So please read this book to your child! A young person can’t have much of a better role model than Horton the elephant.
What’s Under the Bed?
Joe Fenton’s What’s Under the Bed? introduces to a cute bespectacled boy named Fred, who would much rather play with toys the go to sleep. After some coaxing, he goes to lie down, but then… what’s that sound? Is there something under the bed? Fred’s imagination runs wild. Perhaps there’s a monster hiding in his room. Is it red? Or green? Fat? Or thin? Does it have sharp teeth? Or long scary nails? What if it’s hungry? Oh dear! We better take a look under there to make sure. There is something under the bed! It’s Fred’s teddy bear! What a relief. If your child has a fear of the dark this book might help put their mind at ease.
The Neighborhood Mother Goose
The Neighborhood Mother Goose is one of my favorites by the fabulously talented Nina Crews. Crews was inspired by her neighborhood in Brooklyn to create this urban reprinting of traditional nursery rhymes. Each verse is illustrated photographically–pictures of real children with beautiful multi-cultural faces accompany each selection. Every page is a delight, whether it’s Pat-a-cake with two girls in front of a bakery, Georgie Porgie on the playground, to market to market to buy a fat pig at the grocery store, or Mary Mary quite contrary watering her garden. It really modernizes and brings meaning to stories that seem trite and old-fashioned to the new generation. Check this book out for a spicy new taste of Mother Goose!
My Many Colored Days
My Many Colored Days is a Dr. Seuss book you may not be familiar with. It was published posthumously by his widow Audrey Geisel. He had written it, inspired by the view from his study, and envisioned it to be illustrated by an artist with a completely different style from his own. That mantle was taken up by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher, who created beautiful paintings for the book. “You’d be surprised how many ways I change on different colored days,” Seuss writes, articulating how colors can affect, or be used to explain, our emotions, and how our moods may fluctuate throughout the week. My favorite pages are for feeling brown, and sort of “low down,” immediately followed by bright shades of yellow and feeling like a “busy buzzy bee!”