No Krafts for December
There will be no Kid Krafts for the Month of December. Come to our Christmas Extravaganza instead, and meet Santa Claus!
‘Tis the Season to be Reading!
- Seasonal books for children can be found by the fish tank in the children’s section
- Wrap up a dozen seasonal picture books in inexpensive gift-wrap and place them in a basket. Each night let one child choose a wrapped book to “open” and then read it aloud.
- Read a chapter each night in a children’s novel related to the season.
- Look at the fun displays at the library
“The Color of Magic” by Terry Pratchett
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When Terry Pratchett passed away earlier this year, I decided it was time to explore his Discworld universe. It turns out, it was way past time.
Brief backstory: You have a flat, round world sitting on the backs of four enormous elephants who are in turn standing on the back of a mindbogglingly massive sea turtle slowing flippering its way through space. On this world (the Discworld), there is a preternaturally inept wizard named Rincewind who, much to his chagrin, becomes tourguide to the world’s first tourist, a strange being named Twoflower who is completely lacking in any instinct for self-preservation. Then, you know, there’s a hulking barbarian, dragons, tree-nymphs, sentient luggage, and Death himself.
The book is organized into four vignettes. They follow each other sequentially, but are written in such a way that they almost read more like short stories than chapters.
I truly enjoyed this book. The tone is absurd and satirical, taking all the tropes of ‘80s high fantasy and cranking them up to eleven. It was like reading Monty Python or witnessing the world’s silliest game of D&D. If such geeky references are already putting you off, this is not the book for you. But if they made you chuckle, or if you just said to yourself, “The world’s silliest game of D&D? I don’t know. That’s a pretty stiff competition,” odds are either you’re already a Discworld fan or you desperately need to be.
This is the first novel published in the Discworld series, but I found out a while after I read it that there is some debate among fans of Pratchett’s work as to whether this title or Equal Rites, the third published, should be read first. They each launch a different subseries, so there is no canonical harm in reading them in any old order. Having now read both, I can tell you that Equal Rites is in some ways more accessible. Equal Rites is cheekily humorous without being as completely over-the-top as The Color of Magic, and the plot is a continuous progression from beginning to end rather than episodic jumps. If you want to ease yourself into Pratchett’s world, go with Equal Rites. As for me, I’m actually really glad I started with The Color of Magic.
If you like satire, humor, and fantasy, you may love this book.
Upcoming Craft Days
December 3: Goldfish Ornaments
No craft on December 17
Craft dates for Jan: 1/7 and 1/21 – What we’re making has yet to be decided.
“The Forsyte Saga” by John Galsworthy
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One of the greatest works of literature, there's a reason why Mr. Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this work. An epic saga of a single extended family which spans several generations, Galsworthy creates characters that are human and fallible, noble, kind and cruel. The story is deeply moving, funny, infuriating and completely compelling. This is a huge work, but, as with all great novels, the better it is, the more you want it to continue on and on. This one does! The Saga comprises of three novels and two "interludes" or short stories between the novels. The first interlude of the saga, "Indian Summer of a Forsyte," is one of the most beautiful and poignant works I have ever read.
In addition to this first work, Galsworthy continued the story of the Forsytes for another two complete epics, creating nine novels in all. He also created a series of short stories to fill in elements of the characters backstories.
If you intend to embark on this wonderful journey into the heart of middle class Brits at turn of the 20th century, I recommend the Oxford University Press edition, which has an extensive glossary included. Galsworthy includes a large amount of slang of the period, and this edition explains those terms. Its available at the Madison Library District for patron use.
JUMPSTART READ for the RECORD 2015 Story Time — UNUSUAL PETS !
Every year JUMPSTART sponsors a Read for the Record event. They select a title and invite anyone to host an event to read it aloud to a group of children on one day. This year’s selection was Not Norman: A Goldfish Story, written by Kelly Bennett and illustrated by Noah Z. Jones.
Here is a link: https://www.jstart.org/campaigns/read-for-the-record
As children arrive our two story performers greet them and one stamps their hands. This is just for fun and the children love it. Those who come late get their hands stamp during the coloring and craft segment. Our library circulates stamp sets for crafters so we have a large selection. This week we used the Purrfect set, which was… perfect!
— the fish bowl image, of course!
We sing a GREETING SONG — The More We Get Together and then we sing an ACTION SONG to focus the group — Hello Everybody, Let’s Clap Our Hands.
Sometimes we begin with a WIGGLE BREAK sort of book.
We invite the children to stand up and do the actions suggested in this silly story. They love this!
Sections include “Who hops”, “Who flies”, “Who slithers”, “Who swims”, “Who crawls” and finally, “Who does them all?”
With every critter we asked, “Does anyone have a pet…frog, rabbit, kangaroo, cow? etc. What fun we all had!
Dear Zoo: A Lift-the-Flap Book by Rod Campbell
A child who writes to the zoo for suggestions for a pet might get more than he bargained for. An ELEPHANT, for instance, would be TOO HEAVY. Send it back! (and so forth)
This lift-the-flap classic is full of surprises for toddlers. Great for lap-sharing and also for story time sharing with young children. Now available as a pop-up — even better! Older children trying to persuade parents to let them have a puppy could take some sales tips from this book. 🙂
Can I Keep Him? by Steven Kellogg
A little boy tries to persuade his mother to let him keep a DOG. She says dogs are TOO NOISY. Well, how about a CAT? Mom says G’ma is ALLERGIC to cat fur. What about a FAWN? His requests become increasingly outrageous and mother keeps coming up with practical reasons to say NO.
From Head to Toe by Eric Carle
It’s time for another WIGGLE BREAK! Stand up and do the actions suggested in this book! That’s what we did in our story time celebrating the works of Eric Carle.
Turn your head like a PENGUIN.
Bend your neck like a GIRAFFE.
Shrug your shoulders like a BUFFALO.
Wave your arms like a MONKEY.
and so forth…
MORE “UNUSUAL PET” BOOK SUGGESTIONS…
Buzz wants a pet to enter into the pet competition. He catches a fly that knows his name “Buzzzz” and decides to keep him. He takes it to school, overcomes all sorts of objections, and finally gets to keep his new pet.
The pre-schoolers attending story time loved this story.
This is the first in Tedd Arnold’s hugely successful “Fly Guy” series. There’s even a plush of this popular character!
When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach
Imagine you are a kid and facing yet another excursion of errands with mom.
Imagine how it would be if everywhere you went they were giving away free dinosaurs–the real live roaring kind?
Oops, now imagine what you’re going to do with them all when you get home.
This is just plain fun from beginning to end.
Apparently children have been struggling with persuading parents to let them have pets for a very long time!
Not Norman: A Goldfish Story by Kelly Bennett
And finally… our SPECIAL EVENT FEATURE STORY.
about a boy who receives a pet fish for his birthday and wants to trade or return.
After which we sang the silly song
Norman, Norman bo-borman
Banana-fana-fo-forman
Fee-Fie-mo-morman. NORMAN!
We then did the author’s name — Kelly, Kelly, bo-belly. Banana-fana-fo-felly. Fee-Fie-mo-melly. KELLY!
And then the artist’s name — Noah, Noah, bo-boa. Banana-fana-fo-foah. Fee-Fie-mo-moah. NOAH!
And then the story performer’s names. Here’s a link to the tune and lyrics of THE NAME GAME song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1xlehyLK5o
COLORING & CRAFT FINALE`
We introduce this with a jingle sung to the tune “London Bridge is Falling Down”
Now it’s time to do our craft, do our craft, do our craft
Now it’s time to do our craft — FIND YOUR GROWN-UP!
This week our coloring sheet doubled as our craft. We found our images in the May/June 98 COPYCAT Magazine “Crazy About Critters” activity (page 37). They suggested the images be copied, cut out, and turned into finger puppets. We simply put the
- five “pet” images in a strip 11 inches long by 2.8 inches wide (or three strips per page).
- Children colored the “pets” and then
- taped a drinking straw to one short edge — thus turning the strip into a
- little flag or banner. It was fun to see all the children trooping out waving their banners.
The images were similar to these which can be found searching google images:
resulting in something like this — only not a flag — a pet banner!