Some Days by Karen Kaufman Orloff and Ziyue Chen - Children's Day #4

Some days 

are chocolate pie days.

Kites up in the sky days.

Jumping super high days. [...]

Some days are hurt myself somehow days.

Icky . . . sticky . . . OW! . . . days.

Need my mommy now days. 

Some Days by Karen Kaufman Orloff and Ziyue Chen is a rhyming book that would make an excellent prompt for classroom or home discussion with little ones. Some days, the book shows, you have fun swimming, jumping, getting a puppy, playing dress-up, etc. But, other days are not so good. You can feel lonely, scrape a knee, get in trouble, have to run to catch the bus, or do chores you may or may not like.

I kind of wish I could copy the entire text of this book in this post because it does such a nice job of covering a lot of the types of fun activities and big disappointments that a child may have. The illustration that shows children stuck indoors on a rainy day when they'd rather be playing kickball reminded me that I used to keep a small pile of books on a high shelf in my eldest son's closet when he was little, just for rainy or sad days. That's what one of the things I think this book would be especially good for -- keeping up high to pull out on a grumpy day or a day the little one's stuck indoors and not happy about it.

Highly recommended - Each of the rhyming paragraphs above comprises a two-page spread, so the text is on the light side. Also great for thinking about the fact that there will be bad days, I think Some Days is especially useful for pulling out on a moody day, a sick day, or a stuck-indoors day to remind children that both good and bad things happen and even if you're having a bad day, good days will come.

Yet another wonderful book sent to me by Sterling Children's Books for review! My thanks to Sterling!

©2019 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Goodnight, Little Bot by Karen Kaufman Orloff and Kim Smith

Goodnight, Little Bot by Karen Kaufman Orloff and Kim Smith is a book about a little robot's going to bed routine. There are some similarities to the human litany (take a bath, read a book) and some charming differences (plug in to recharge, comb your circuits). It's a simple book that contains nothing overly surprising or unique beyond those few differences between a robot's routine and that of a human child but the illustrations are super cute. I'm a fan of robots and I enjoyed the illustrations more than the story, itself.

I was slightly bothered by the fact that the robot is shown snacking on batteries, since children do put dangerous things in their mouths. While I personally wish that had not been put in the book at all, I'm also aware that there's a way to overcome that problem, by playing a game relating to food. "Ew, we don't eat batteries. Yuck! What do we eat?" Talking about foods that are acceptable versus batteries or other things a robot might be shown munching on . . . I don't know, nuts and bolts? . . . could also lead to doing similar with the other differences between robot and human routines.

Neither recommended or not recommended - Love the illustrations and it's always nice to have a few bedtime stories that are just about the routine, itself, but apart from the cool robot pictures there is little that I found outstanding about Goodnight, Little Bot and it seriously bothers me that the robot is shown eating batteries. They're tremendously dangerous. If you're willing to use the robot's eating habits as a lesson, though, it's definitely a terrific visual experience.

©2017 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.