Somehow Santa got wind of our plans to take a family trip to Europe in the spring. The Bookbenchers are headed to London and Paris for a week this year and the giftgivers jumped all over that, much to my delight. We unwrapped maps and guides to those two cities as well as novels set in them. My boys received Stepping Stone easy reading chapter book versions of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Last night we read the first two chapters of Quasimodo and Esmeralda's tragic story before bed. We were all hooked and can't wait for tonight's installment. Before you get to thinking, "Wow, that Bookbench family is so cultured, reading 19th century Victor Hugo classics," let me just say we spent the two hours before the read aloud watching Dodgeball (funniest sports movie evah!) and laughing so hard someone fell off the couch. We are a mix of high brow and lowbrow over here. I'm worried the European vacation may have more than a little in common with the Griswold's European vacation.

Happy New Year!

In A Dark, Dark Room

Every summer, my children attend a camp out on the beach at our local lake. They enjoy setting up tents, roasting marshmallows, racing around in the dark with friends, and two of my three children love to hear and tell ghost stories around the campfire. Ghost story fever stays with them from the time of the camp out until Halloween. They spend those months on the lookout for new ghost stories. I try to find good ones at the library, but it is a difficult task balancing high interest with low fear factor. They don't want any "babyish" books, but I don't want to be woken up by children crying from nightmares. One of the best books we've found to satisfy everyone is Alvin Schwartz's In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories. It is an easy reader, perfect for first and second graders. It contains a good mix of spooky, creepy, and funny stories perfect for campfires or pre-Halloween reading. My daughter who is now in the fourth grade first checked it out of the school library when she was in the first grade. It has been a family favorite ever since. My six year old son now owns his own copy and does a spine tingling rendition of "The Green Ribbon" story in it. I imagine he'll graduate to Goosebumps and Stephen King someday, but happily he's satisfied with this book for the time being.

Frog and Toad Are Friends of Mine!

Recently I found myself shopping for a small gift to give a three year old girl who just became a big sister. Arnold Lobel's sweet and funny Frog and Toad Are Friends fit the bill perfectly. When my six year old son came home from school last week saying he needs to read for twenty minutes each day as homework, I headed to the library to check out a whole stack of Frog and Toad books. When he saw them, Ethan told me, "You rock, Mom!" I'm sorry, but life doesn't get much sweeter than that. Although listening to him giggle his way through Frog and Toad Together last night was pretty great also. He loved how Toad lost his mind when he lost his list of things to do. Toad couldn't chase after the list because that wasn't one of the things written on the list of things to do. Don't we all love a good neurotic?! Arnold Lobel was a genius, and by the way, he illustrated the Miss Suzy book I mentioned back in Old School week.

The Antidote to a Heatwave

I know Poppleton in Winter doesn't seem a likely title for a book to read in April, but we've been experiencing a bit of a heat wave (90 degree temps) here the last few days and a book about icicles and sleigh riding enjoyed by the world's second best pig- there's no topping Wilbur- has proved a great release from the heat. If you are not familiar with the Poppleton books written by Cynthia Rylant and illustrated by Mark Teague, I'm sorry for you. They are delightful books about a sincere and sweet pig named Poppleton humorously going through everyday experiences. He has great neighbors/friends including Cherry Sue a llama (or alpaca?), Fillmore a goat, and Hudson a mouse. They all show up in this easy to read three chapter book. In this installment, Poppleton befriends a finch after an incident involving icicles, gets very creative as many of us do during the long winter months, and enjoys a midnight sleigh ride with friends. Poppleton in Winter put a smile on Ethan's face as we read it together this week, and I do believe it lowered the temperature in the room by a few degrees. I always find books about this gentle pig make great gifts for preschoolers through first graders. Both parents and kids seem to enjoy them.

Pizza Friday!

It makes perfect sense that I would choose pizza as the focus of this Foodie Friday. It's in fact surprising I haven't used it on any past Fridays considering how many Friday nights I order it for dinner. By the end of a week of school, homework, sports, and activities, my mind and energy are often too fried to come up with a great dinner idea. Pizza and a salad makes a terrific default dinner. Pizza is the ideal food to serve kids. It's tasty, it includes three major food groups, it can be eaten without utensils, and let's hand it to God and the Italians for creating an entree that is so helpful in teaching fractions. Moreover, if you do like my dad did when I was a kid and tear the delivery box into plate sized pieces, you've got no dishes to clean. It's no wonder there are so many kids' books on the topic. For this Foodie Friday, I'm going to share a beloved old family favorite and a fun new find. We've had Pizza Pat on our bookshelves since my eight and ten year olds were toddlers. It has been joyfully read so many times it is now held together with Scotch tape and hope. This easy reader by Rita Golden Gelman and illustrated by Will Terry tells the story of a pizza baked by chef Pat and stolen by a bunch of rats in the style of a cumulative poem such as "The House That Jack Built." It is addictively fun to read such lines as "This is the oven 800 degrees, that cooked the pizza and melted the cheese that topped the sausages, spicy and choppy, that sat on the sauce, all gooey and gloppy, that covered the dough, all stretchy and floppy, that lay in the tray that Pat bought." Pat and his pizza helped all three of my kids learn to read, making it as beloved and utilized as the phone number to our local pizzeria that delivers.

Our new literary pizza find is Tony and the Pizza Champions, a picture book energetically illustrated by Matthew Trueman and written by Tony Gemignani. Tony is, according to the dust jacket, "a world renowned pizza acrobat and chef." Tony and the Pizza Champions tells the story of the team he assembled to go to the World Pizza Championshp. Readers get a little geography as he criss crosses the USA to collect Mighty Mike and Strong Sean from Ohio, Silly Siler, a unicycling pizza chef from South Carolina, and Famous Joe, a sky high pizza tosser from New York City. Like any good team, the guys have to practice, and then they fly to Italy for the big competition. Gemignani the author uses this opportunity to show some of the many ways people eat pizza around the world, such as the Brazilians who like ketchup on their pies and the Swedes who enjoy them with coleslaw on the side. This is one of several features of the book that would make it a fun elementary school classroom read. Happily, the book ends with Tony and his team winning the world championship, and it includes recipes and illustrated instructions for tossing pizza dough. The process is pretty nicely explained in the book, but you can also check Tony out on YouTube.

Buon appetito!

Foodie Friday Visit with Amelia Bedelia

I feel as if I'm reaching back into the archives on this Foodie Friday to visit an old favorite, Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia. This was a guaranteed laugh out loud book for me as a kid, and my own children enjoy it today. In case you are unfamiliar with Amelia who made her debut in 1963, she is a very literal minded girl who is hired as the new housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers leave Amelia with a to do list and head out for the day. When the list says to draw the drapes when the sun comes out, she takes out paper and pencil and starts sketching. When the list directs her to change the towels, she gets busy snipping them with a pair of scissors. It is humorous and a great introduction to idioms. It's perfect for kids because they spend their days wading through semantic ambiguity. They can relate to Amelia so well. So much of what Mr. and Mrs. Rogers request seems ridiculous to her just as so much of what adults request seems to defy reason for kids. Some of the idiomatic confusion makes its way into the kitchen. Mrs. Rogers wants Amelia Bedelia to trim the steaks. She decorates them with ribbons and lace. Mrs. Rogers wants the chicken dressed, and Amelia Bedelia wonders if she should dress it as a boy chicken or a girl chicken. She measures rice with a tape measure. All of the miscommunication leads to Amelia Bedelia's firing, that is until Mr. and Mrs. Rogers taste her heavenly lemon meringue pie. A reading of Amelia Bedelia would be a great springboard for a discussion of language, idiomatic expressions, and clear communication, and it's also a really good excuse to share a slice of lemon meringue pie!

There are many other books in the Amelia Bedelia series of easy readers. Peggy Parish's nephew Herman Parish started writing more in 1995. They are fun easy readers, but the original remains my favorite.

Hee Hee- Thanksgiving Version

What sound do turkeys make in outer space?

hubble, hubble, hubble

What did the widow turkey say to her naughty son?

If your father could see you, he'd turn over in his gravy!

What do you get if you cross a turkey with a bottle of glue?

Gobbledy-gook!

Why did the turkey stuffing go on strike?

It wanted a higher celery!

The last two jokes came from Turkey Riddles, an easy reader from Puffin Books by Katy Hall and Lisa Eisenberg. Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday is Veterans Day

Thank a veteran, buy a poppy, say a prayer, read an enlightening book- remember to observe Veterans Day this Tuesday. Two years ago, my then six and seven year old children came home from school early in November and reported that they had made cards for veterans. I asked what their cards looked like or said. Both children had written "Thank You," but one had colored a flag on his card and the other had colored puppies. Puppies? It seems she thought it was Veterinarians Day. Obviously, we needed to do some explaining. The history of Veterans Day and how it developed from Armistice Day is really quite interesting, but maybe too much information for the four to eight year old set. Here are two books which are great for them: Veterans Day by Marlene Targ Brill and Veterans Day by Jacqueline S. Cotton. A nice feature of the latter is that it suggests ways to honor vets. Also appropriate for this age group is Eve Bunting's picture book The Wall. With moving text and simple yet powerful illustrations by Ronald Himler, The Wall tells the story of a boy and his father who visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. to search for the name of the boy's grandfather. I actually think this book could be put to good use in a classroom up to fifth grade.

For older children and young adults, there are more interesting and thought provoking books about wars than I could list here. Two that I know are frequently used in middle schools in my area are Walter Dean Myers' Fallen Angels, a young adult coming of age novel set during the Vietnam War, and Paul Fleischman's Bull Run, which recreates the first great battle of the Civil War from a variety of points of view. One nonfiction suggestion for readers ten and up is The Tuskegee Airmen, Black Heroes of World War II by Jacqueline Harris.

Seven Chocolatey Good Books

I am suffering a serious case of eater's remorse and parental shame. I overindulged on my children's trick or treating loot and on a bag of Heath bars I picked up for 50% off at Target two days after Halloween. In case you did the same, and need food for thought rather than food in thighs, here are some calorie free chocolate indulgences.

1. Max's Chocolate Chicken by Rosemary Wells. This book featuring Max of Max and Ruby fame is not just for Easter time and is fun for 2 to 5 year olds.

2. The M & M Brand Counting Book by Barbara Barbieri McGrath is a fun little board book for 3 to 7 year olds that could work well in a classroom.

3. Also great for classroom use is any one of Jerry Palotta's books which combine chocolate treats and math skills, such as his Hershey's Milk Chocolate Weights and Measures.

4. Curious George Goes to the Chocolate Factory by Margaret and H.A. Rey. You know it's going to be fun from the title.

5. Hot Fudge by James Howe is an easy reader from the Bunnicula and Friends series. This is a cute little whodunit for emerging readers ages 5 to 8.

6. The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling is a retelling of the story of King Midas where everything a boy touches turns to chocolate. This is a good chapter book for 8 to 10 year olds.

7. The granddaddy of all chocolate books is, of course, Roald Dahl's magnificent Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!!!!

(For more list fun, check out anna over at http://www.abdpbt.com/ who got me started with the Monday lists.)

Books About Apples

We spent several hours yesterday picking apples at the beautiful Pennings Orchard in Warwick, NY. The weather was perfect, the view of the fall foliage was stunning, and the apples were crisply scrumptious. I wish I could share some of my apple pie with you, but that doesn't really work via blog. Instead, I've included a photo of some of our massive bag of apples and a selection of a few of our favorite apple books. There are dozens of apple books to choose from. Apples show up frequently in preschool and primary grade science lessons as well as in library story hours, so we've been exposed to a great number of apple picture books over the last few years .The Apple Pie Tree, written by Zoe Hall and illustrated by Shari Halpern, is ideal for children from preschool to grade two. Its text and paint and paper collage illustrations follow two siblings following the cycle of an apple tree over the course of a year. The book includes the contributions of bees and weather, the family of robins who nest in the tree, and a delicious apple pie at the end. Nancy Elizabeth Wallace's Apple, Apples, Apples is another charmingly illustrated picture book introducing young children to the science of apples. Wallace's Leave! Leaves! Leaves! and Pumpkin Day are worth checking out during the fall as well. For slightly older children, I highly recommend How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. In it, a young baker considers how to gather up ingredients for an apple pie if the market is closed. It will involve taking various modes of transportation to get to Italy for the semolina wheat, Sri Lanka for cinnamon, Vermont for apples, Jamaica for sugar cane and so on. It is a lovely combination of geography and whimsy that shows readers that our food doesn't just magically appear, shrink wrapped in plastic, in our grocery store. (As you might remember from my Aug. 4 post "Of Books and Blueberries," this is an issue for me.)
For second through fifth graders, here's a book that we use throughout the year, not just during apple season, in my house. Apple Fractions by Jerry Pallotta and illustrated by Rob Bolster enlists adorable elves to divide different types of apples into fractions. Some interesting apple facts are presented along with a math lesson in fractions. For example, on two facing pages showing the elves dividing up a Gala apple into five equal parts, using miniature wooden tools, the text treads, "A Gala is a medium-sized apple. It is about the size of your fist. The largest apples are as big as grapefruits. The smallest are the size of cherries. This Gala is cut into five equal pieces. Each piece is one-fifth. One fifth plus four-fifths equals five-fifths. When the numbers above and below the line are the same, the fraction equals one whole."
Finally, the award for best children's book with apple in the title goes to Deborah Hopkinson's Apples to Oregon: Being the (Slightly) True Narrative of How a Brave Pioneer Father Brought Apples, Peaches, Pears, Plums, Grapes, and Cherries (and Children) Across the Plains. And don't forget that there are literally dozens of books at all levels from easy reader to young adult about Johnny Appleseed. How about them apples?

Say Cheese

We survived school picture day this week! All three kids got onto the school bus in clean, relatively wrinkle-free, decent clothing. Nobody fell in the mud, ripping his pants and muddying his hands while running for the bus like last year. Nobody broke eyeglasses the morning of the picture this year. My daughter did get off the afternoon bus grumbling, "Why did I have to bother wearing a skirt? I stood in the second row." Apparently skirts hinder her monkey bar fun at recess. It occurred to me that school picture day is a rich mine of conflict and comedy. Surprisingly few children's book authors go there. With kids' obsession with missing teeth, parents' obsession with looks and good hair days, and the struggle over wardrobe in many households, there's a lot to write about. Our family has enjoyed Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones Has A Monster Under Her Bed in which Junie B. cleverly places her bad school picture under her bed to frighten away the monster she fears lives under there. So many of the Junie B. books ingeniously deal with school situations that can be stressful for kids.David Shannon's picture book David Gets in Trouble doesn't go into much detail about picture day but includes one fantastic two page spread illustration of young David's class picture. David is the one crossing his eyes and making a goofy face along with the words, "I couldn't help it!" This is a book that always makes us giggle, but hopefully won't give my youngest any ideas! Three other picture books/easy readers I found on the topic are
Class Picture Day by Andrea Buckless
Mrs. Toggle's Class Picture Day by Robin Pulver (deals with the teacher's bad hair day)
School Picture Day by Lynn Plourde

In case you are wondering, I am in the middle row, second student from the left in the picture above.

Penguinpalooza

We're in a penguin phase here lately. Now that they are home on summer vacation, my kids have rediscovered Club Penguin on the computer, they've asked me to rent Happy Feet again, and Hayden's new penguin beach towel cannot get through the washer and dryer fast enough for her. This morning on the drive to church, my older son read Penguins by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld, a Scholastic Science Reader, to my younger son. It is informative with great photographs and lots of facts about penguins, including the following tidbit, "The mothers soon return from the ocean. Their bellies are full of krill. They pass the krill up from their bellies to feed their new babies."
I was asked what "pass the krill up from their bellies" means. Once I explained, these two comments were loudly and simultaneously voiced:
"That is so cool!"
"That's disgusting!"

I've seen a book called Mr. Popper's Penguins on a number of suggested reading lists for school aged children. I'm thinking the time is right for me to check it out of the library and see if anyone in my household wants to read it. If they do, you can be sure I'll report back here.

A Few Words on Memorial Day

Back when I was a high school teacher, I worked in a school with a vice principal who was a veteran of the war in Vietnam. Each year, on the Friday before Memorial Day, he organized a simple and moving Memorial Day observance around the flagpole in front of the school. There was a color guard and music and he explained that Memorial Day was originally Decoration Day, created to honor those who died in the American Civil War. He briefly explained how it expanded into Memorial Day after World War I and he led the faculty and students in a moment of silence. He really demonstrated to the students that although the picnics and barbecues are great, there is more to Memorial Day.

With that in mind, I have an excellent book for children about the Gettysburg Address that would be perfect to read at this time of year. Although Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address during the Civil War, he movingly and in few words, gets to the heart of memorializing the dead who bravely struggled on that battlefield.

Just A Few Words, Mr. Lincoln: The Story of the Gettysburg Address by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Charles Robinson tells the story behind the writing of that famous American speech. It is made interesting by details of Abraham Lincoln's life at the time he wrote it, the fact that his son Tad was sick when he left to deliver the speech, the other guests in the house where he stayed who had to bunk together, the too small horse he originally had to ride, and so on. Fritz makes the readers understand what it was like to be in the audience standing outdoors surrounded by frsh graves listening to the president with his Kentucky accent deliver those 271 words. The book includes the Gettysburg Address at the end.

Even if you don't get around to checking out this well written easy reader, Memorial Day is a good opportunity to look up the Gettysburg Address and reread it. It's about the same length as the blog entry you just read and certainly more significant. Oh, and enjoy your barbecue!

Wonder Woman

Several weeks ago, my five year old son Ethan and I were discussing Batman and Spiderman. Out of the blue, he asked me, "Mom, do you know why Wonder Woman only wears her underwear and high heels?" I thought about saying that it's because men draw her, but I told him I'm not sure, and I pointed out that she does wear bullet-deflecting bracelets. Needless to say, I was not satisfied with my answer. I remembered that my daughter Hayden had a Wonder Woman easy reader that she had loved when she was in preschool and kindergarten. Apparently Ethan had never seen it, because I also remembered that the Wonder Woman in that book was not a busty, scantily clad, crimefighting sexpot, but an athletic, more appropriately dressed, adolescent. What I could not remember was where that book was. So I began a search that took about two and a half weeks.

In the meantime, I asked some women friends how they might have answered Ethan's question. It was suggested that I refer him to the women's studies department of a local university. My friend Maureen quickly came up with a good theory that too much clothing would compromise the effectiveness of Wonder Woman's invisible airplane. My brilliant and very stylish sister-in-law Jane, wise to the ways of comic book heroes and villains, came up with my favorite answer: Wonder Woman wears only her underwear and high heels, "so she can attract the bad guys, then stomp on their instep with her stilettos."

When I stopped laughing, I eventually found Hayden's old book. As soon as I had it in hand, I recalled that it is one in a series, and we had borrowed others from our public library several times when Hayden was younger. They are even better than I remembered! The 32 page I am Wonder Woman, written by Nina Jaffe and illustrated by Ben Caldwell, is fantastic. Each page has limited text which benefits a beginning reader without sounding babyish. "Even though I can run the fastest and leap the highest, to laugh and play with my friends is best of all. That is the Amazon way." I love the accompanying images of the other Amazon girls engaged in sports and games with Diana (aka Wonder Woman).

Ethan and I spent some time this week reading these books together. I was happy that Wonder Woman looks more like a real girl than the other images he had seen of her. He thought it was cool that she can play tag with dolphins. Hayden was happy that I had found an old favorite to revisit.

These excellent paperbacks are available, new and used, from Amazon and may even be at your public library