June 2012 – Booktalking #kidlit

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Row, Row, Row Your Boat
by Annie Kubler (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Babies act out this nursery rhyme in this interactive board book. (Sheet music on the back cover.)

Snippet:
Row, Row,
Row your boat

Zig and Wikki in The Cow

Zig and Wikki in The Cow
by Nadja Spiegelman (Author) and Trade Loeffler (Illustrator)

Booktalk: When alien pals Zig and Wikki lose their spaceship on Earth, their friendship is definitely in trouble. In order to get home, they must travel underground and through a cow, picking up fun facts about ecology (and picking fights) along the way. This funny science-based easy-reader comic is packed with fast-paced adventure and facts about poop: what more could a young reader want?

Snippet:

WIKKI: And how do you know it’s him?

ZIG: I’d recognize that cute face anywhere.

(close up of a fly’s face)

WIKKI: For someone who’s so cute, he sure looks like he’s eating POOP.

ZIG: REALLY? That can’t be good for him.

Stella Batts: Needs a New Name

Stella Batts: Needs a New Name
by Courtney Sheinmel (Author) and Jennifer Bell (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Meet Stella Batts. She is eight-years old and she loves to write. She loves to write lists; like her favorite things and kids in her class. And she’s writing her autobiography. Stella’s favorite color is yellow and she LOVES fudge. As a matter of fact, there is a special fudge counter at her family’s candy store because fudge is one of her favorite things to eat!

But Stella has just one problem—her name. A boy from her class keeps calling her ‘Smella’ after she trips on their class nature walk. (‘I don’t even want to say what I landed in, it was too gross, so I’m just going to leave out that part.’). So Stella decides there’s really only one thing to do: she has to change her name. After all, how hard can it be to pick a new name? But it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Snippet: I think it would be good to have a name that had a real nickname. Penelope is a way better name–it sounds kind of sing-songy, and Penny is the prefect nickname for it. But Stella isn’t a sing-songy name. It only has two syllables, and it doesn’t have any good nicknames. I got to be the older sister, but Penny got to have the best name.

Watch Me Grow!: A Down-to-Earth Look at Growing Food in the City

Watch Me Grow!: A Down-to-Earth Look at Growing Food in the City
by Deborah Hodge (Author) and Brian Harris (Illustrator)

Booktalk: A city is a great place to grow food. Everywhere you look–front yards, backyards, rooftops, balconies, windowsills–people are planting gardens and growing delicious healthy foods for themselves and others to eat.

Snippet: A seed is a new life, waiting to grow. It can sprout anywhere–even a busy city!

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard

Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard
by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld (Author) and Priscilla Lamont (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Alice’s family plants a vegetable garden each spring, and this budding naturalist reports all she sees about how the plants grow, what insects come to eat the plants, and what birds and animals come to eat the insects. It’s the food chain, right in her own backyard! (Science concepts are shared by a pair of very knowledgeable chickens!)

Snippet:
Sunshine, fresh air, water and soil
help the seedlings in our garden grow.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Funny Friends Charlie Monkey

Funny Friends Charlie Monkey
by Roger Priddy (Author, Illustrator)

Booktalk: A hippo and a giraffe, a parrot and a lion, are some of Charlie Monkey’s funny friends waiting to meet babies and toddlers in this colorful board book with embossed textures to touch and feel.

Snippet:
Charlie Monkey’s having fun,
climbing trees in jungle sun.

Swimming

Swimming (Sports for Sprouts)
by Tracy N. Maurer (Author)

Booktalk: See what happens when you take swimming lessons in this simple book for beginning readers…

Snippet: We swim in a pool.

172 Hours on the Moon

172 Hours on the Moon
by Johan Harstad (Author)

Booktalk: It’s been decades since anyone set foot on the moon. Now three ordinary teenagers, the winners of NASA’s unprecedented, worldwide lottery, are about to become the first young people in space–and change their lives forever.

Mia, from Norway, hopes this will be her punk band’s ticket to fame and fortune.

Midori believes it’s her way out of her restrained life in Japan.

Antoine, from France, just wants to get as far away from his ex-girlfriend as possible.

It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, but little do the teenagers know that something sinister is waiting for them on the desolate surface of the moon. And in the black vacuum of space… no one is coming to save them.

Snippet: The room was suddenly buzzing, the tension starting to crescendo.

“You don’t want to go back to the south pole, trust me.”

“Of course not.”

“It could kill you.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“If you ask me, I say leave the whole place alone.”

BONUS! See the video!