Big Update!

Since my last post I finished my library school program and accepted a children's librarian position with a library district here in Colorado. I hope that this regular schedule and regular exposure to new children's titles will help give me plenty of foder for blog posts as well as the time to keep this blog updated at least once a week, and hopefully more.

Thanks, faithful readers, for bearing with me through these busy final months of grad school. I am so looking forward to applying all I've learned and experienced in these past few years to my new position!

Happy Reading!

Kids' Stacks on Pinterest

If you are on Pinterest, be sure to check out and follow the pin boards for Kids Stacks! The boards feature book selections for popular genres and age groups, parent resources and tons of fun crafts for kids!

CHECK IT OUT HERE

Jan Berenstain Has Died

Jan Berenstain obituary: Co-creator of the Berenstain Bears empire dies at 88 - latimes.com - "Jan Berenstain, who with her husband, Stan, made up one of the most successful husband-wife teams in children's literature, guiding an empire of books, videos and TV shows about the everyday problems of a family of bears, has died. She was 88.

Berenstain Bears books have offered parents and their young children guidance, comfort and old-fashioned humor about perennial issues such as fear of the dentist, dealing with bullies and resolving sibling rivalries since the first book was published 50 years ago."

As some of you may recall I highlighted the Berenstain Bears books, some of my own childhood favorites, in a blog post a while back. If you have never checked them out before, I heartily recommend them. Thank you, Jan for the memories and life lessons wrapped in the package of your charming books, may you rest in peace.

Page to Screen - Blockbuster Books

The Oscars will air this Sunday night, celebrating the best in film for the past year and two of the nominees for Best Picture are based on children's literature!

With the most nominations this year, with 11, is Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese, and based on the Caldecott Award winner The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brain Selznick. The film's many nominations include:

• Best Picture
• Cinematography
• Art Direction (Not surprising when you have Caldecott winning illustrations to pull your inspiration from!)
• Costume Design
• Directing
• Original Score
• Adapted Screenplay

The other Best Picture nominee based on a wonderful children's book is War Horse. The film is based on the stage play based on Michael Morpurgo's book War Horse. The film adaptation is also nominated for original score, cinematography and art direction.

Other literary nominees include Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Help, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Jane Eyre.

Though not up for any nominations this year, a film with good potential for best animated film nomination in next year's awards is The Lorax, based on the beloved book by Dr. Seuss which comes out next weekend. Check out the trailer below, along with The Hunger Games, which also comes out in March.

Site Update

It has been entirely too long since my last post, hasn't it? I must admit I have not posted since I started a new part-time paralibrarian job at an elementary school library. I am loving the school I am at. The kiddos I work with go from 4 to 11 years old and include children who are deaf and hard of hearing as well as highly gifted. The downside has been that while the position has introduced me to some great new books it has limited the amount of time I've had to blog about all those books I've been discovering along with all the fun crafts and ways to expand on those printed word gems!

Though I do have a whole board on Pinterest now that you can follow chock full of great ideas for kids from birth through high school (with a lot in the pre-school and elementary range). Check it out here "Kid Stuff"

I do plan to get back into updating this blog at least once a week as well. Starting this weekend with the Oscars and highlights from this year's book to film adaptations from the children's and YA lit world, so keep an eye out for that! Thanks for taking the time to visit!

Books for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)

Here are some great book resources on STEM topics for early grades, from the littlest kids learning shapes, numbers and weather terms through advanced elementary!

Birth - Pre-school

• Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh
• Mouse Count by Ellen Stoll Walsh
• It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw
• Touch and Feel 1,2,3 by DK
• Touch and Feel Shapes by DK
• Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert

Elementary School

• This Plus That: Life's Little Equations by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
• Me . . . Jane by Patrick McDonnell
• Math Curse by John Scieszka
• Science Verse by John Scieszka
• The Grapes of Math by Greg Tang
• Bugs by Joan Richards Wright
• Weather Words and What They Mean by Gail Gibbons
• The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay

For advanced elementary and older kids I really like the Demystified Series that covers chemistry, calculus, stats, physics and more. Subscriptions to Kids Discover, National Geographic and Popular Science are also great ways to augment a book collection whether at home, in the classroom or at a library. With science and technology changing and advancing so quickly, these magazines are a great way to keep up to date without needing to buy a new book every few months!

Survey of Dystopian Fiction

As identified in Scholastic's Trends in Children's Literature, dystopian novels for young people are all the rage at the moment. I wanted to introduce some quality titles within the genre that are worth checking out!

• The City of Ember (The Books of Ember) by Jeanne DuPrau - Set in a post-apocalyptic underground city, this book, the first in the series, tells the story of two children, and how they find a way out. The cliff hanger ending will likely leave you chomping at the bit to read the next book.
• The Hunger Games (Hunger Games Series) by Suzanne Collins - The first book in this YA trilogy introduces us to Katniss Everdeen and the two young men who become her closest friends, helping each other to survive in the rough world of the Seam and in the brutal Hunger Games competition.
• The Giver (Giver Trilogy) by Lois Lowry - Can a world with happy families and no real pain really be such a bad thing? In The Giver a young boy discovers all of the depth of life the people of his community are missing out on, as well as their freedom to make choices for themselves. This is a contemporary classic.
• Matched (Matched Series) by Ally Condie - At 17 a young woman is matched to her best friend, literally, the boy next door, but when she discovers a mistake from the matching department a seed of doubt is sewn. Could she be happy with someone else? And what is she were free to choose?

If you like these, here are some other similar titles and series worth checking out: Ender's Game (The Ender Series) by Orson Scott Card, Life As We Knew It (Life As We Knew it Trilogy) by Susan Beth Pfeffer and Divergent (Divergent Trilogy) by Veronica Roth.

Here is a little sneak peak at the upcoming Hunger Games movie.

National Get Outdoors Day

It is National Get Outdoors Day! I hope you will celebrate by getting outside with the kids in your life today. Reading and playing outside don't seem to go hand in hand, but an outdoor story sharing with some of these great titles might be just the ticket!

• Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe by Vera B. Williams
• When We Go Camping by Margriet Ruurs
• S is for S'mores by Helen Foster James
• Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping by Peggy Parrish
• Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots? by Carmela LaVigna Coyle
• I'm as Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood
• We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury and Michael Rosen
• It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw
• In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming
• Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Elhert
• Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Here are some great resources for grown-ups who would like some inspiration to get outside.

• 15 Minutes Outside by Rebecca P. Cohen
• The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
• More Kids in the Woods - US Forest Service

If it's a crummy weather day in your neck of the woods, and getting outdoors just isn't going to happen, why not bring the outdoors in? Here are some fun outdoor activities to bring inside.

• Plant herbs, flowers and/or beans in pots. If you have the time, it is also fun to paint and decorate the pots before planting.
• Have a scavenger hunt. Hide clues all around the house for the kiddos to find leading to a prize like fresh baked cookies or homemade popsicles.
• Go camping. Set up your family tent indoors or build one of your own out of sheets and furniture. You can put a "yule log" video on to have a fire, or just use an electric lantern. Make smores in the fireplace or microwave. Tell scary stories. Project constellations on the ceiling with a flashlight covered by construction paper with constellation patterns punched in it.

Flag Day

Flag Day kicks off the patriotic summer holiday celebrations, it commemorates the adoption of the Stars and Stripes on June 14, 1777 (almost a year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence), though it is not an official federal holiday. This can be a great holiday, along with the Fourth of July, for a fun and creative civics lesson. Here are some books to help get the wheels turning:

• One Nation: America by the Numbers by Devin Scillian
• United States of America (A to Z) by Jeff Reynolds
• The Constitution of the United States by Christine Taylor-Butler
• The American Revolution for Kids by Janis Herbert
• You Wouldn't Want to Be at the Boston Tea Party! by Peter Cook and David Antram

Rainy Days and Mondays

I missed the April showers, but in my neck of the woods May is actually one of the wettest months on average, so if your May is rainy too, here are some of my favorite rainy day books titles, just for you.

• Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema - One of my all time favorite stories, especially for a rainy day. The repetition in this book is great for phonological awareness and pre-reading skill development.
• Just a Thunderstorm by Gina and Mercer Mayer - Little Critters can get scared by thunderstorms some times, this story shows how Little Critter and family deal with a storm.
• Lila and the Secret of Rain by David Conway and Jude Daly - If you like Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain then you will love this book too. It tells the story of how a Masai girl saves her village from drought.
• One Big Rain: Poems for Rainy Days compiled by Rita Gray - This book has poems for all the seasons, rain and shine. It is a good book for developing phonological awareness, as well as for teaching poetry.
• Rain Dance by Kathi Appelt - This short and simple rhyming book is great for 0-3 year olds as well as early readers. It help introduce numbers as well as having some great word choice!
• Weather Words and What They Mean by Gail Gibbons - Gail Gibbons is an excellent author of children's non-fiction and this book does not disappoint. This book was one of my favorite weather books growing up, and it still holds up today.
• Wet Weather: Rain Showers and Snowfall by Jonathan D. Kahl - This is a great non-fiction book about the water cycle and precipitation, especially good for older kids.

Even though I love the rain and we need those showers every year for the plants to grow and for the water we all drink, it is also worth remembering those in the Midwest and South who have been hit hard by the weather so far this spring. Check out the Red Cross for information on how your family can donate money and supplies to the victims of the tornadoes and floods.