The Kids' Week In Books, No. 6

For this week I thought I would review two books by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long. "A Seed Is Sleepy" tells the story of how seeds work and become plants, and "An Egg Is Quiet" describes how eggs work. One neat thing about these books is that you can read them on different levels. The largest text is a very basic overview (though still well written), then there is medium sized text that gives a bit more detail, and finally small text goes into a lot of description. I think that's a particularly effective way to approach a science-type topic for children, because it allows the child to direct the process by asking questions and the parent can read more about things the child is interested about. Best of all, these books are gorgeously illustrated with bright colorful drawings that start on the detailed endpapers and even extend to the beautiful lettering in the text. Hannah has really enjoyed these books, and the information seems to be sinking in, because today at lunch Hannah found a seed in her apple, and instead of referring to it as "a piece of trash" as she normally would, she said, "Yook Mama! A seed in my appo!" (Yook=look; appo=apple). I'd highly recommend these books for little children, but I think older kids might like them too because of the deeper detail sections.


We finished "Winnie the Pooh" by A.A. Milne for our read-aloud book. It's really gratifying to see how much Hannah loves this book! The great pencil drawings by E.H. Shepard that appear on nearly every page help her "read" the stories to me or to Jack after we're done, and it's fun to see which details she decides are important. Moreover, this book was a lot of fun for ME to read, because the text is so funny and charming. Because we enjoyed it so much, we moved on to "The House at Pooh Corner" for our next read-aloud book and we like that one too.