This month my family’s favorite read-alouds cover some reverse psychology about potatoes, sloths that have to “go,” Christmas bots, spatial thinking skills, and more!
The Twelve Bots of Christmas by Nathan Hale is a geeky twist on the twelve days of Christmas. I just took our copy out of the Christmas storage and it’s been fun reading it again to get in the spirit. My 5-year-old can now memorize most of the song and it never really stops being cute hearing her sing “and a cartridge in a geeeeeear tree.”
The Potato King by Christoph Niemann tells the legend of how King Frederick the Great of Prussia convinced his kingdom to adopt the newly-imported potato plant in their diets. They wanted nothing to do with this strange plant, but King Frederick found an ingenious solution. It’s a funny and clever story, illustrated entirely as potato stamp art!
A Home for Bird by Philip C. Stead follows a frog who finds a lost bird and tries to return it to its home. The frog and his forest friends don’t seem to notice that the bird is an inanimate figurine with buttons for eyes, but that doesn’t make finally finding the bird’s home any less sweet in the end.
Lucy in the City: A Story About Developing Spatial Thinking Skills by Julie Dillemuth and illustrated by Laura Wood is about a small raccoon trying to find her way home using the resources available to her. Julie holds a PhD in spatial cognition geography and offers multiple pages of activities at the end of the book to help kids develop spatial thinking skills.
Disclaimer: Julie is a friend of mine, but I genuinely enjoyed the concepts introduced in this book.
Kyle Goes Alone by Jan Thornhill and illustrated by Ashley Barron follows little sloth Kyle as he goes alone from the treetops to the ground by himself for the first time, because he has to “go.” On his way down, he encounters his rainforest neighbors and the reader gets to learn a little about three-toed sloths, the animals that share the forest with them, and having the courage to do something alone for the first time.
Black Cat, White Cat by Silvia Borando is a playful book with simple black and white art featuring a black cat who only knows daytime and a white cat who only knows nighttime. They meet somewhere in the middle, introduce each other to night and day, and fall in love. What happens next is exactly what you’d expect, but not without a surprise!
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce is a sure hit with any book lover. We enjoyed this book as an iOS app with our first daughter a couple of years ago, but I found the book at the library this month and our 2-year-old is taking her turn adoring the story of Morris’ life with books.
Disclaimer: GeekMom received some of these items for review purposes.
