What My Child Is Reading–March 03, 2012

I came back from my long business trip on Thursday afternoon. Smarty was spending her “quiet time” in her room reading Our Bodies from A Child’s First Library of Learning series. She loves non-fictional books a lot. She also had a long list prepared of what she was missing most while I wasn’t here. One of the entries was library. This girl loves new books, and she was very excited to open up with me a big new box of Tiger Tales books that we received for review while I was away. So far we read two of them:

I liked At the Boardwalk by Kelly Ramsdell Fineman/Monica Armino better than Smarty did because she couldn’t connect to the story. She didn’t know what the boardwalk was, since she only remembers being on the beach once in her life. In fact, she was on the boardwalk beach before, but she was too young to remember. Smarty's review: I liked the book because now I know what a boardwalk is.
My Friend Fred
 by Hiawyn Oram/Rosie Reeve is a cute book! I almost expected my daughter start asking for a puppy after reading it, but she didn’t, since she is really a cat person. The story is pretty simple and told in the first person, but the illustrations are adding a lot to the story. Smarty's review: I liked this book, because in the end she shared the dog. It was not hers, it was a family dog.


Like every other school in America, Smarty's school celebrates Dr Seuss’s birthday this week. They were asked to bring Dr Seuss books from home to school to share with the class. Smarty lugged in Six by Seuss. It has her favorite story And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and my favorite – The Lorax. We had a little discussion as to why we like these stories. Smarty said that she likes Mulberry Street, because a boy in the story keeps imagining funner and funner things.

Smarty's kindergarten homework book was I’m Gonna Like Me by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell. I didn’t get to read the book before it had to be returned, but Smarty complained that the book was good, but it was difficult to do a homework assignment of drawing the beginning, the middle and the end, because there is no story and no problem to solve. We read several other books by this pair, so I kind of know what she means. A separate story and a problem are presented separately in each page through illustrations, but the whole book is usually just a collection of thoughts to be processed in any order. Still – I can recommend these series as an interesting entry point for discussions about self-esteem.