Kids

Homework Help: Giving a Good Oral Report

Book Buzz: Our Latest Picks for Kids

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Kids Blog

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen

Action & Adventure, Angela Critics, Everglades, Florida -- fiction, LibraryPoint Blog, Shelf Life Blog, unRequired Reading Blog, Book Buzz Blog, Kids Blog, Teen Blog

05/17/2012 - 7:31am

Wahoo Cray’s yard is a zoo, literally. That’s where his dad, Mickey, keeps all of their animals, including pythons, monkeys, and an alligator named Alice. Mickey is the best animal wrangler in Florida...or he was until he got hit on the head by a frozen iguana. Since then he hasn’t been able to work. Money is so tight that Mickey accepts a job offer from the Expedition Survival TV series with Wahoo as his assistant. Things get off to a bad start when the show’s bumbling but egotistical star, Derek Badger, gets bitten by a snapping turtle and then an alligator. And that’s before he even leaves the safety of the Cray’s yard in Chomp by Carl Hiaasen.

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Farmyard Beat by Lindsey Craig; illustrated by Marc Brown

Angela Critics, Animal Sounds, Farm Animals, LibraryPoint Blog, Picture Books, rhythm, Animals, Shelf Life Blog, Book Buzz Blog, Kids Blog, Music

05/10/2012 - 12:43pm

As the sun sets, the animals in the farmyard should be settling down for the night. But in Lindsey Craig’s Farmyard Beat:

“Chicks can’t sleep. Chicks can’t sleep.
Chicks can’t sleep
‘cause they got that beat.”

And so begins a toe-tapping dance party where each animal’s noisy contribution to the beat wakes up another. The chicks go peep and wake up sheep. Cat’s purr and meow wake up cow. The racket grows until it is so loud that Farmer Sue comes to investigate the noise. Of course, she joins in and the entire farmyard dances to the beat until they “fall in a heap. Asleep.”

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Bidding Farewell to Maurice Sendak

Caldecott Medal, LibraryPoint Blog, Virginia Johnson, Kids Blog, Teen Blog

05/09/2012 - 5:06pm

When it first appeared in 1963, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are didn’t look like or read like any other children’s book out there. It was full of mystery and wonder--and Wild Things with attitude, including the King of all Wild Things, our hero Max.

But Max of the wolf suit wasn’t originally supposed to voyage to the Land of the Wild Things. He was first scheduled to be visiting the Land of the Wild Horses--which was how the book was planned and given to Maurice Sendak to write and illustrate. The problem was, the author/illustrator did not know how to draw horses. So his editor let him change them to Wild Things, a take on the Yiddish phrase "Vilde chaya,” meaning boisterous children.* This changeover was magic.

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