#orange reader

Hello Readers!

Today’s post is going to be a bit different. Instead of a written review, I’ve posted a Book Talk video on the genuine, hilarious, action-packed first book of Rick Riordan’s teen series, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.

Click play on the video to hear why I think The Sword of Summer is an important, worthwhile read for teens of all ages.

Enjoy!

A classic story about friendship, family, and belonging.

To be a classic piece of literature, a work must have enduring value. Corduroy by Don Freeman is, without a doubt, a classic work of children’s literature which any parent or child would find joy in reading, even today. For those parents who wish to also promote emergent literacy skills in their children, Cordury’s enduring story is as effective at teaching children in the 3-5 age range about narrative now in 2020 as it was when it was first released in 1968.  

But what exactly is Corduroy about? Well, for those parents who haven’t yet had the joy of reading this story, Corduroy is about a stuffed bear who goes on an adventure through the department store in which he lives to search for his missing button. His journey begins after he is made aware of the button’s absence when the mother of a young girl, Lisa, says that she cannot buy her daughter Corduroy not only because she has spent too much money but, more importantly, because Corduroy is missing his button. At its core, Corduroy is a narrative about finding family, friends, and home regardless of where we come from or of the things that make us different. The themes at the heart of Corduroy’s narrative therefore make this book perfect for promoting childhood literacy and social development. 

Corduroy is geared towards an older age range than were the ‘first books’ we Readers reviewed not long ago. This difference means that Corduroy promotes a new set of literacy skills than our previous recommended books did. The most obvious literacy skill this book promotes in children is the ability to understand narrative. There is a distinct beginning, middle, and end in this story, tracing Corduroy’s journey through the department store in search of his missing button from where he lives on the shelf, to the different store departments, until finally he finds what he is looking for all along—a home, with Lisa, whom he meets in the beginning. For those parents familiar with narrative tropes, this journey also means that Corduroy follows the ‘home-and-away’ pattern common to children’s stories, as Corduroy starts his journey in his first home before he finds his true home with Lisa by his journey’s end. 

In addition to promoting narrative understanding, Corduroy also promotes social development in children through the story’s message, which coalesces at the end of the narrative. At first, Corduroy seems to be looking for his missing button. The certainty he expresses at the end of the story about always wanting a home and always wanting a friend reveals, on the other hand, that those were the things for which he has been searching all along. The button, for Corduroy, actually only represents his true wants—a home and a friend. When Lisa offers to sew on a different button in his new home, she makes it clear that she doesn’t actually care that he is missing a button. Instead, she simply wants to make sure Corduroy is comfortable, and figures a second button to hold up his overalls will help with that goal. This conversation between Lisa and Corduroy at the end crystallizes the message at the heart of the story: regardless of somebody’s superficial differences, each one of us deserves friends, family and a home—and these things exist for all of us. 

Through the combination of an older target audience and a more complex plot, the storytelling experience must also change and increase in complexity if we wish to extend the meaningful engagement and learning a child can have with a book like Corduroy—both before and after reading the story. Before reading the book, children should be encouraged to bring a favourite stuffed animal to enjoy the storytelling session, and children should be asked if they know any other stories about toys or stuffed animals to both encourage each child’s narrative recall and understanding, as well as to put Corduroy’s story into context of other stories the children already know. After reading the story, younger children can be asked to either colour in pictures of Corduroy or other familiar stuffed animals. Alternatively, older children should be encouraged to create pictures of their own stuffed animals going on adventures. Both these activities would encourage children to continue to think about the story—and narrative more generally—while simultaneously putting the story in context of each child’s existing knowledge and experiences. Through these activities, it is possible to further extend both the learning and the pleasure of every child’s reading experience of the already enjoyable narrative in Corduroy.

An entertaining adventure through the colourful and geometric world of Lois Ehlert’s Color Farm.

In an age where we consume most of our media digitally, it can seem difficult--or even impossible--to make time and space in our lives for traditional print media, especially for young children who are drawn to digital media’s bright colours and interactivity. Lois Ehlert’s book, Color Farm, first published in 1990, is an old solution to a modern problem for young children between the ages of 18-24 months, who are in what Piaget refers to as the “mental representations” phase of the “sensorimotor” stage of child development. At this stage, children are working to develop internal depictions of objects or events, and Color Farm aids in this process and promotes emergent literacy skills through the book’s colourful illustrations of familiar animals and the simple geometric shapes of which they are formed.

As a “first book” or “concept book”, Ehlert’s Color Farm makes extensive use of its illustrations to teach children about basic shapes. On almost every page in the book, Ehlert depicts a familiar farm animal with clear, colourful blocks of shapes. The clear delineation of the different shapes ensures children at the lower end of the 18-24 months range can see where one shape begins and the other ends, while the layering of shapes to create the more complex animal portrait keeps older children interested and learning about the way shapes can work together to create new, more complicated silhouettes. Additionally, the book reinforces the shape concepts it introduces by intermittently revising shapes as they appear. When a new shape is introduced, the shape is immediately reviewed both with tactile feedback--thanks to being physically cut out of the page--and also visual feedback, as the shape is clearly defined when the page is flipped after the shape is first introduced. Then, the set of shapes introduced in the book are also reviewed before new shapes are introduced, so as to further reaffirm the child’s shape learning.

As with any good book geared toward children in the 18-24 months age range, Ehlert’s Color Farm not only excels at teaching its core concept--shapes--but also promotes several emergent literacy skills. The first and most obvious of these skills is book and print sense, as Color Farm is a physical book which children must learn to handle in order to use. Due to its focus on shapes, Color Farm also encourages alphabet knowledge, as learning shapes is a precursor to learning the alphabet, which at its core is a system of shapes. Learning shapes, additionally, is a pre-math skill that the book encourages given the way the illustrations are comprised of groups of multiple shapes, which leads to comparison as the shapes are first learned in context of others. Finally, since Color Farm emphasizes interesting and varied illustrations over complex text, this book also encourages development of expressive vocabulary in children. If Color Farm could be said to do anything, it would certainly be to exceed at promoting emergent literacy skills for the 18-24 age bracket with flying colours.

Thanks to the Color Farm’s use of colourful, geometric animal illustrations, there are also many different ways parents can extend the book’s concepts and create other learning opportunities for their children. For example, parents could manipulate the book to demonstrate how the same shapes can look different depending on how somebody looks at them. Additionally, due to the book’s lack of narrative, there are opportunities throughout the book to stop and ask a child about an animal’s shape, colour, or sound in order to further help a child develop his or her expressive vocabulary.