Book! Book! Book!

Author: Deborah Bruss
Illustrator:   Tiphanie Beeke
Publisher:  Levine/ Scholastic
Publication Year:   2001
Location: Personal Collection

Awards:   IRA Best Books,

Summary:  When the kids go back to school, the animals get bored and want to get some books from the library. Unfortunately, the human librarian can't understand what the animals want until they send the hen in ("Book! Book! Book!" clucked the hen.) Everyone was happy enjoying their books except the bullfrog because he had already "read it..." Clever word play and charming watercolors.

Classroom Ideas: This book is brimming with alliteration ("the horse hung his head", "the pig pouted") and onomatopeia. There are also GREAT verbs in this book (ambled, grumbled, trotted, plodded, flapped)

The Bee Tree

Author & Illustrator: Patricia Polacco  
Publisher:  Philomel
Publication Year:   1993
Location: Personal Collection

Awards:   School Library Journal starred review

Summary:  When Mary Ellen gets tired of reading, she and Grampa go off to follow a bee to a bee tree. Along the way lots of members of the community join them. When they finally reach the tree they work together to smoke the bees, collect the honeycomb, and then go back to the house for biscuits, tea, and honey! But at the end, Grampa uses the honey to show Mary Ellen that the joys of reading have to be pursued just like they ran after the bees to find the honey.

Classroom Ideas: There some great examples of onomatopoeia as they all chase after the be (slap, bump, honk, tweddle-tweddle-squeak fump!) The theme is well-explained at the end. ("There is such sweetness inside of that book too!")

Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Dam Creek Affair

Author & Illustrator:   Patricia Polacco
Publisher:  Philomel
Publication Year:   1996
Location: Knox County Public Library- Lawson McGhee

Awards:   School Library Journal starred review

Summary:  In Triple Creek they love TV so much that they've forgotten what books are for. They use them to hold up roofs, mend fences, stuff potholes, and even fix the dam. Aunt Chip is appalled by these changes and tells her nephew Eli about books and the library.  She teaches him to read and he starts reading to the other kids. The kids start grabbing up all the books and then moving them makes the dam explode. When books rain from the sky, kids start teaching their parents to read again and the town rebuilds the school and library.

Classroom Ideas: This would be a good book to teach problem and solution. There is also good vocabulary (vowed, consequences, eiderdown) and dialect ("Now Eli took to reading like a beaver takes to gnawing wood, or a flea takes to a dirty little yella dog.")