Literacy - It's What's For Bedtime

Since I prefer stealing borrowing other people’s good ideas rather than going to all the effort of coming up with creative ideas of my own, I figured I’d take DannieA’s totally cute idea and share what we’re reading right now. This is a book house, through and through. When I was young, until I was in about the third grade, I lived in the small town my parents currently reside in again (they actually live in a house one block away from the house I fondly remember on Wellington Street). When I was a little girl the train still ran through town, and the public library was walking distance from our house, a small circular brick building, now engulfed by a much larger addition.

When I was in college working on my English degree I worked in that same library and then my college library, which meant I got first dibs at the annual book sales to paw through the dusty donations of inappropriate joke books and endless incomplete encyclopedia collections. During Teacher’s College in Ottawa, I took every opportunity to buy books, figuring I was building what would one day be my classroom collection. And when I was working in daycare, well, who could pass up those Scholastic deals? Then preparing for single motherhood – you can imagine I might have gone a little overboard in purchasing the ‘you may not have a dad but you’re still most likely going to be normal’ type stuff. So needless to say, Jelly has quite the varied collection.

Right now on the nightstand;

So Many Bunnies. We just rescued this one a few weeks ago from a local used bookstore, Pauper's Books. Tata wins for telling us about it, the place is awesome. So Many Bunnies is cute because it's both a counting book AND an alphabet book, and Jellybean likes that one of the bunnies sleeps in a trellis.

Bats at the Library (she’s getting Bats at the Beach for her birthday, and I can’t wait to read it. ALSO she's getting a little stuffed bat! Squee! So cute!). Beautifully illustrated, this is one of those books where the rhythm of it is so perfect it's a joy to read aloud, and I love a story that sucks you in ABOUT stories sucking you in. Maybe it's the librarian in me that finds a secret pleasure in teaching children to love and respect books, I'm not sure. But if you are one of those people who knows the statistics about reading to your kids and how they're going to be smarter, better, faster, solve all the world's problems, take care of you in your old age - you'll love this book.

J is for Jellybean (this)

The Z Was Zapped, a wonderful alphabet book where horrible things happen to all the letters of the alphabet. I collect children's picture books in general, but especially alphabet books. This is one of my very favorites.

And, finally, Sam Sheep Can't Sleep. I like this one because it's phonics-friendly, she likes it because it's repetitive and she thinks she can read it because she's got it memorized. There are also some fold-out flap pages, which is neat. You gotta love Usborne books.

She’d have me read 20 more a night if I’d let her. Every few weeks I make her rotate them out. If it was up to her we’d read a Clifford or Berenstain Bears book every night, but they make me insane after a while. I love Robert Munsch books, but I’ve found she’s still too young for them, so they’ll have to wait a little while yet.

She's also getting a couple more pop-up Bug books for her birthday;

And this - look, so cute;

I'm a sucker for books for kids with their names in the titles. I try to find books like that for my niece and nephew.

I'll let you know what she thinks.