Story Time Monday

Yesterday was rainy again so I thought some fun books for Story Time might make the day seem a little brighter. Seven times I read Al Perkins' The Digging-est Dog, and each time it was more fun. In this rhyming and rhythmic story, Duke is rescued from a pet store by Sammy Brown and taken to live on his farm. There he meets doggy friends and learns to dig holes and tunnels. He gets carried away with digging and wrecks the town as he digs everywhere. When he realizes that Sammy and his dog friends are mad about the mess he's made, he digs himself a big hole which turns into a well and then realizes that he is stuck and can't get out. His dog friends want to let him drown, but Sammy vows to get him out and then organizes the dogs into a doggy chain to pull him up out of the well. Duke then fixes the mess he's made by digging everything back to the way it was.

The fast-paced plot, emotion, humor, and lively illustrations kept the children's attention, always a good measure of a read-aloud book.

As I read it over and over, I realized the story is about making a mistake, realizing the error, being sorry, and making things right again; in short about sin and repentance, if one cares to think of it in religious terms. It's also about love. Although Sammy is certainly mad about Duke's wild digging, he sticks by him and helps him get out of the well.

For the three-year-olds I read Old Hat, New Hat by Stan and Jan Berenstain, the authors of the Berentain Bears books. I'm not a big fan of those books, but I do love this one. A man wearing an old hat sees a new hat in a shop window and decides to buy one. He tries on many hats but finds something wrong with each one, describing the problem in terse yet descriptive words, such as "too small, too tall; too silly, too frilly, " and decides his old hat is "just right." The humorous illustrations had my threes giggling and the simple text had them trying to "read" along with me the second time through.