Story time Monday

Another rainy, gloomy Monday for story time. Seemed appropriate for David Shannon's The Rain Came Down, the entertaining tale of how the rain seemed to spread bickering and dissension through the town streets. Until finally, "And then..... the rain stopped..." and a rainbow appears and everyone's good humor comes back. The story opens with the line "The rain came down, which caused the chickens to squawk..." and ends with the chickens picnicking happily in the bright sunshine. In two different classes I got the question, "Which is the chicken?" Clearly we need to read more books about chickens! And we have a wonderful new one to try-- Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken by Kate Dicamillo-- for next time.



I thought David Shannon's book might be over the heads of the three-year-olds, so I read them Mo Willems' new Elephant and Piggie book, I Love My New Toy. It was such fun that I slipped it in to a couple of the older classes as well. Everyone loved this funny and insightful story of how Elephant "breaks" Piggie's new toy, which turns out to be a toy that is meant to break and then snap together again. It was impressive how clearly Piggie identified his (her?) emotions ("I am Mad and Sad!") and how clearly Elephant knew what really mattered ("I want to play with you; friends are more important than toys.") I admit to not knowing Willems' other works (such as the Knuffle Bunny series and the Pigeon series), but I'm going to make a point of exploring them now.

You can see from the covers how different the artwork is in these two books. It's so amazing to me how the styles can vary so greatly and yet be so effective in each book.