Summer Blues and 4 cool picture books

     I am suffering a little from "What happened to my summer blues!!"  It all went so fast and I only got a fraction of my (many) projects done.  I set out to organize our home and only got a small amount accomplished.  I am trying to round out my summer by going through my Food and Wine and Vegetarian Times magazines;  saving recipes and tips so I can recycle the magazines and get them off my shelves.  Because I've taken to reading books so much I lost track of the joy of paging through these lovely mags as soon as they come in the mail.  I aim to get back to that tradition as soon as I get caught up.  Really-(my husband 1. rolls his eyes  2. chuckles when I mention "getting caught up!")  The nerve!

     I have four lovely picture books to share with you today; all thee are from my local library and have been added to my titlewave list (which is already overbudget). 

1.  I'm Your Bus by Marilyn Singer; pictures by Evan Polenghi (5 stars)

Cute happy cover which will attract massive amounts of children to check this book out. It begins:  "Howdy, you can count on us.  Morning, evening, I'm your bus. Sweepers sweeping, bakers baking.  Dawn is barely even breaking.  Time for buses to be waking!" It's cheerful, high-energy "talking" bus will have every student wanting to ride the smiling bus!  The illustrations show diverse children and a bustling clean city.   I think it would be great  paired with Kate McMullen's series, I Stink, I 'm Dirty,I'm Mighty.
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2.  Country Road ABC; an Illustrated Journey through America's Farmland by Arthur Geisert (4 stars)

     This is a beautiful book with much needed information whether your a city kid or a country kid. My only complaint with this book is the very first page. "A is for ammonia fertilizer." Hmmm. Not that thrilling of a beginning but hey, the glossary says A.F. is important for the soil and I don't get how the picture gives us that info. Hey, it's my only concern in an otherwise informative text. The next page is "B is for Barn Cats" and the illustration clearly shows us cats wandering around on the farm. I think students at my school will love seeing such an elaborate farm inside the pages of this book. I found an Iowa connection, while researching this book, and the article is from the Quad-City Times. Geisert based the book on a farming community in Iowa where he lived.

    

3.  Animal Crackers Fly The Coop, egg-secuted by Kevin o'Malley  (5 stars)

     Kevin O'Malley cracks me up in all of his other books so I knew I was in for some serious belly laughs when I picked this one off the shelf.  This is a unique retelling of The Bremen Town Musicians using humor as the catalyst instead of music.  The first page:  Hen loved to tell jokes.  Jokes like:  Why did the chicken go to the library?  To check out a bawk, bawk, bawk.  And:  How do comediens like their eggs?  Funny-side up!  Hen dreamed of standing on a stage in a comedy club and cracking up the crowd.  She simply had to be a comedi-hen."  And the book is FILLED with puns like that...My mom and I got the jokes but most of them flew right over my nephews and daughter in the bedtime story audience.  They still thought it was funny and cute but theydidn't get the play on words.  Like I did, a teacher will just have to do some explaining-and that's okay.

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4.  Bobby Bramble Loses His Brain by Dave Keane; illustrated by David Clark

Another one with lots of puns to go around as "Bobby Bramble had ants in his pants, a thirst for adventure and evergy to spare."  and he's been duly warned by his kind-hearted mother that if he's not careful he will "crack his head open like Humpty-Dumpty."  He does just that when he falls on his head and his brain "ran off as if it had a mind of its own."  Its a wild rumphus as the whole town spots and looks for Bobby's brain all over town!  This will make a magical read-aloud as kids laugh at the puns as much as the pictues of Bobby, with the top of his brain hinged off!  5 stars

Enjoy your last bit of summer...

with more reading!!