“Did kittens get their name in Britain?”
Sometime last year, The Five-Year-Old discovered the highly informative children’s book series “The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That.” The books relay all…
What? Where’s my Book Review?
Although you would hardly know it from the silence on the site today, we are still reading very good books here at Caterpickles Central. We highly recommend Coyote Steals the Blanket by Janet Stevens. We love it. In fact, we are so very busy loving it we haven’t had any time to write a proper review of it.
If you draw a preschooler a mouse
If you draw a preschooler a mouse, She’ll tell you he looks hungry, and ask you to draw him a plate of cheese. When you draw…
Book Review: Meow: Cat Stories from Around the World
Our mini-course in animal folk tales continued this week with Jane Yolen’s Meow: Cat Stories from Around the World. Yolen’s collection mixes familiar nursery rhymes and Aesop fables with lesser known stories from India, Burma, Oman, and Thailand. Within its pages, you and your child will discover why tiger is angry at cat, why cat always lands on her feet, why having one very good trick is better than having dozens of poor ones, and most importantly, why cats and mice don’t always get along.
Book Review: How the Guinea Fowl Got Her Spots
As you may remember, after last week’s unfortunate fairy tale incident, we decided to give folk tales a try. How the Guinea Fowl Got Her Spots was an excellent and encouraging first pick for this new strategy.
Book Review: The McElderry Book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Last week I picked up a copy of The McElderry Book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales for The Four-Year-Old from our local library. I chose this book in part because of its attractive and not too scary illustrations, the relatively simple language and brevity of the stories inside, and the fact that the cover copy implied that this edition had been developed specifically for reading aloud.
Book Review: Snow Friends
If I could give a book six stars, I’d give them to M. Christina Butler’s Snow Friends. My daughter made me read it three times in a row last night, and still couldn’t get enough (at one point I buried it under the stack of library books, while asking her to choose between two others for the next story–she dug through the stack, pulled this one out and pushed it onto my lap).
Book Review: The Burgess Bird Book for Children
My favorite book as a child was without a doubt the Burgess Bird Book for Children. I read my copy of it so many times I wore out the spine. Reading the book to my daughter has reminded me of how much fun this book is to read.
Book Review: In Season: A Natural History of the New England Year
Growing up in a big city, like I did, you can easily feel disconnected from nature. Turns out growing up in small town Massachusetts, like The Four-Year-Old, is not that much better. The world around us still feels pretty well-groomed and not terribly wild. Even if we do have a rabbit living under the shed in our backyard. That’s just one of the reasons I was thrilled to find Nona Estrin’s In Season: A Natural History of the New England Year.
Book Review: Read Me Another Story
One of the many things I love about my Aunt Jeanne is that she has fabulous taste in books. I credit her gifts to me during my formative years with at least part of my passion for reading. Aunt Jeanne is working hard to instill the same devotion for books in my daughter. Each trip so far, she has come bearing a lovely book of some sort to share with The Four-Year-Old.
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