Scieszka and Smith have written many other classic children’s books( maybe not, but they should be) such as The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man.

I also hear that these two have a fairly well known book called Math Curse. But because the word “math” is in the title I have never touched it.

Science Verse now that’s a whole different ball game.

A funny ball game.

Here is a little excerpt:

Mary Had A…
Mary had a little worm.
She thought it was a chigger.
But everything that Mary ate,
only made it bigger.

It came with her to school one day,
And gave the kids a fright,
Especially when the teacher said,
“Now that’s a parasite.”

Would I recommend it? Of course! It has parasites, water cycles, states of matter and black holes all set to vaguely familiar rhymes and poems.

Happy Groundhogs Day!

Actually I’m not a big fan of Groundhogs day.

We live in Wisconsin, there is ALWAYS six more weeks of winter.

This Groundhogs day the groundhogs  at my house today may be  smarter than my husband.

My husband is on the road to work in the below zero wind chill, and blowing snow,  you know the blizzard that’s caused the state to declare a civil emergency in this area.

I’m certain the groundhogs are sleeping through the blizzard instead of checking for shadows.

So, who’s smarter John or a groundhog???

But, regardless  of my own feelings on Groundhogs Day (or my husbands activities) I thought the girls should have a book so they could learn the whole crazy Groundhog Day tradition. I picked the cutest looking one from the pile at the library and headed home not expecting much.

The book is about the O’Learys and their little farm.  On about page three I thought this book might have something going for it:

Then Mrs O’Learys response to Groundhogs Day really had me hooked…

By the time Groundhogs Day really rolled around I was loving it.

When spring came and Mr O’Leary put in action his plan to foil the ground hog I was planning a new blog.And by the end I was convinced that this is the best Groundhogs Day book ever!

Would I recommend it? Yes!

Oh, Fancy Nancy…

I can’t decide if I despise you and your obnoxious, high falutin, fancy ways…

or if I think your slightly charming and humorous.

I do know that Ivy loves you.

And I loved this page. Would I recommend it? Only every other Friday.

I really am still reading books myself though it’s been almost three weeks since I finished a book! That must be some sort of slow reading record for me, you’d think I was traveling all over the place the last few weeks or something!

Making an apple pie is easy, unless the market is closed…

Then it’s off around the world to gather wheat from Italy, a chicken from France (“French chickens lay elegant eggs-and you want only the finest ingredients for your pie.”), kurundu bark from Sri Lanka, a cow from England, (“You’ll know she’s an English cow from her good manners and charming accent.”) seawater, on your way to Jamaica for sugar cane and then to Vermont for the apples.

After that all you have to do is:

This is a book that I suspect would appeal to slightly older kids but since my testers max out at the age of  three years and  ten months I can’t say for certain. What I can say is that Ivy does currently enjoy it, though I suspect it may be the parachuting cow and chicken more than the world travel that gets her attention.

Would I recommend it? Yes. In a world where a surprising number of kids (and adults I had no idea about the cinnamon) are a bit clueless as to how the food makes it onto the shelf at the market I think it’s a great book.

My only issue with it is that I’m certain my chickens lay just as good of eggs as any French chicken!

This week I checked this book out from the library just so I could write about it…

.. and read it to Ivy 20 million times, becuase she likes it…

…which is fine by me, I sort of love it.

The key to this book is the little comment in parenthesis it is “A Fish Chant.” When you go find this book and bring it home, you can’t just read it. Nope, it won’t work, you won’t love it, your kid will think it’s lame.  You have to find the rhythm of the words and chant it.  If that sounds ridiculous please keep in mind that I can’t clap along with a beat, but I can read this book with a bit of a rhythm to it, so therefore, you can too. Then when you do chant it, you’ll also love it, accidentally memorize it, and then have fish names like “Sockeye Salmon, Arctic Char, Mooneye, Walleye, Gar, Gar, Gar!” rolling around in your head too. Which will turn out to be a good thing, becuase you’ll be able to “read” the book while cooking, cleaning, changing diapers or driving. Then your kid will also start to memorize it and help with the “Gar, Gar, Gar!’s. And then if you’d like to know what exactly these crazy fish are that you have been chanting about all day, you can look it up in the back of the book where they have a little blurb on each fish.

Or at least that’s how it happened here!

Would I recommend it? It’s a must!

Where is a good editor when you need one?  Truthfully I’m not exactly sure what an editor does but with a very small amount of changes this would go from a great book to an excellent one.

-Toads are not green, this looks like a frog to me. And every kid I’ve ever known thinks that  green= frog, brown=toad, why mess with that?

-Bees do not have stinger noses, I dislike improper anatomy on animals (or bugs) for no good reason. Cowboy boots, fine but get that stinger on the other end.

-And finally, if the books follows the same rhyming pattern the whole way through why do you mess it up on the last page?!?!

road-toad

goo-shrew

loose-goose

free-bee

go-crow

stuck-truck

air -bear

stuck-hen — WHAT?!!?

Those problems aside this book has a great chanty, jaunty, rhymey, rhythmy, flow to it (that’s a technical term).

I like the pictures (other than above mentioned problems) and Ivy likes it enough we’ve been reading it multiple times in a row.

So even with the above problems…

Would I recommend it? Yes, unless you are one who reads books in a flat monotone, this requires that chanty, jaunty, rhymey, rhythm in order to be great.

“By the big red barn in the great green field, there was a pink pig who was learning to squeal…”

Sorry, I see the book and the words just start rolling off my tongue, I can’t help it!

Ivy loved it as a baby and I read it so many times I accidentally memorized it. Then when Clara started reading books we pulled it out with the rest of the board books and it took about two times through before I had all the words back again.

Someone tell me why I was never able to master my times tables but I can memorize kids books on accident!

Regardless* of my math ineptitude this book has my favorite sort of sing song rhythm to it, making it easy to memorize (if you are into that sort of thing) and fun to read out loud.  As if that wasn’t enough to make one little book lovely the girls seem to really enjoy the super detailed illustrations (can you see the hose on the barn in the picture?).

Would I recommend it? Yes, both the kids and I agree on this one. Besides, I have it memorized and I don’t hate it, it’s got to be good.

*I was going to use irregardless in this sentence but thought I’d better look it up to see if it meant what I thought it meant. My dictionary had this to say about it:

…”The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however.” … “Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.”

So I did…

…but every time I’ve read though my draft I say irregardless in my head.

Would I recommend it? Yes! After a few false starts I’ve decided that whatever I say will not do this book justice, and it will ruin the fun of reading it. So, I’m not saying anything, you just need to get it, in fact even if you don’t have any kids as an excuse you should go find it. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

P.S. If you have also read it back me up in the comments!!!