Growing a Reader: Kids Books, Tips and More

Stories for a winter's night

As we race for the finish with holiday preparations, it is good to take a moment to think of stories to share with our children, stories that reflect the time of year and the anticipation of the celebrations to come. Some stories to consider are highlighted below:

The Night Tree by Eve Bunting is a charming story of a family enjoying a tradition of trimming a tree for the holidays. The tree is not what you expect, however. It is located in deep in the woods and the family decorates the tree for the woodland creatures, making certain that they include treats for all of the forest animals -  fruit slices, popcorn, sunflower seed balls. It is a heart warming story that begins to teach the importance of thinking of others during a festive time. Written by one of North America's most well known children's author, it is sure to become a family favourite.

 

The next two suggestions come from one of my facourite authors for children, Patricia Polacco. If you have never read any of her books, you are in for a real treat. Most of Patricia's books are based on stories from her family and family experience. In Welcome Comfort, though, she deviates from this pattern to bring us a story about a young foster child who does not have any fond memories of the holidays and does not feel as if he belongs anywhere. Then he meets a special person, the school custodian, and all of that changes. Told with warmth and understanding, children of all ages will relate to how it feels to finally find your place in the world.

With the story The Trees of the Dancing Goats Patricia returns to the story telling that she does so well by relating an incident from her own family. This story explores the love of neighbour for neigbour when her Jewish family reaches out to help their Christian neighbours celebrate Christmas. When she was very young, scarlet fever was raging through the area. Most of their neighbours were too ill or taking care of relatives and could not prepare for the holidays. Patricia's Jewish family prepares and secretly delivers a small, decorated Christmas tree and a food basket to each home early in the morning so that their neighbours can enjoy Christmas.

Your children might enjoy a twist on a traditional tale that is offered by Gingerbread Friends. Written and illustrated by Jan Brett, this tale follows a gingerbread boy as he tries to make friends with other cookies in the bakery he discovers. As in most of Jan Brett's books, the story is told on two levels, in pictures as well as in words. There are also sidebars offering instructions for making gingerbread friends to eat and enjoy.

A final book for your consideration is Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen. This beautifully written book explores the adventure a young girl shares with her father as they venture out into the winter evening searching for owls to observe and marvel at. The story is filled with the magic of discovery and the closeness that the two characters share with each other and the quiet of the night. The late-night walks are steeped in family tradition, no words are exchanged, but the companionship of the elusive quest speaks volumes.

 

Whatever books you choose to share with your children in these long winter evenings, enjoy the closeness that it brings to your family and rejoice in the sharing of the magic of reading together.

Happy Holidays.

Celebrating Shel

I am a huge fan of poetry for kids, and one of my very favourites is Shel Silverstein. Who doesn't love Shel? Well, as it turns out, he was one of the authors in a New York Times article we were talking about a little while back, the one about authors whose works were not exactly embraced by everyone at the time?

Shel was, it must be admitted, a strange choice for a children's author. His writing was as adult as it was child-like, and he dabbled in songwriting, cartoons for adult magazines, and stories as well as poetry. Once he found a publisher and editor who embraced him, however, he became a favourite with both adults and children, which makes his work wildly share-able. In fact, the wonderfully kooky poems and drawings of Shel Silverstein have become classics in every sense, and are being delightedly passed down by parents who loved them as kids.

And now, though he passed on some dozen years ago, his family is releasing a book of poems that had not found there way into his previously published collections. Does this mean the 145 poems in the new Every Thing On It are the rejects? Not at all, explains his editor in a recent article on NPR. Instead, they are bits he removed because they did not fit his vision for a given collection quite as ideally as other poems.

"He would move a piece of art over an 18th of an inch ... and look at how it looked on a page," she said in the interview. " ... It's a slight adjustment, but to him, it mattered. I think one of the reasons his books are still so immensely popular after almost 50 years is that every tiny detail was considered."

These poems are, in fact, a small fraction of some 1, 500 poems that Shel left, and were chosen and put together with loving care to come as close as possible to Silverstein's own way of ordering poems and designing his books. While I"m skeptical, in general, about posthumous publications, I can't wait to see this one.

The article itself is really worth visiting, too, as it shows a couple of the new poems, complete with illustrations, and features children reading one of them aloud. And, as the family noted, poems really are meant to be read aloud.

If your kids are not already a fan, I highly recommend you get your hands on Where the Sidewalk Ends or A Light in the Attic (my two favourites) today and get them started. They are wonderful for reading together or for kids to enjoy on their own, the sort of book they can dive into at any point and get pulled in to reading more, and finding more treasures that they simply must read aloud to you, complete with giggles.

This is a great thing, for not only is he fun for kids, being silly, philosophical, and more than a smidge subversive, but poetry is great stuff for children. They are naturals for it already, fresh from nursery rhymes and still chanting schoolyards skipping rhymes, taunts, and those little ditties not meant for adult ears. It's only a matter of marrying that sense of bounce and rhythm to a poet who knows his audience, and suddenly, you've got small fans of poetry on your hands, onces who might write poetry of their own, or simply enjoy the reading and sharing of words that sing with metre and rhyme.

First & Best for Kids!

Every year, Canadian publishers are busy working with our treasure trove of authors and illustrators to create handfuls of wonderful books for our kids. We are a country rich in talents, and the support for children's literature here has made us a leader in children's literature.

By the end of each year, in fact, there are enough great new things to share that it is a bit of a challenge for our librarians here at Toronto Public Library to look over everything that works for our youngest readers, aged 0-5 years, and whittle down the list to just ten outstanding titles.

We choose titles for this list to be books that are not only good reads and fun to share aloud, but also books that feed early literacy skills, so that you can nurture your child's budding abilities and help your child get ready for reading as you read with them.

The list is now online on Kids' Space and available on bookmarks at your local library branch!