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As we enter our summer I think about family. Summer to me is a time for family. It is when our family reunions happen or have happened and when I had more time to spend with my siblings. It is also when we took our family trips. Today I am going to share three books with you. The first is about a baby (gorilla) and the other two are about siblings and their relationships with a bit of a twist. First we will start with Who Woke the Baby? by Jane Clarke and illustrated by Charles Fuge.
In this fun rhyming book goes the question is asked, "Who woke the baby?" The baby they are talking about is a gorilla. It goes through the various things that happened to wake the gorilla and what caused each animal in the succession to make the noise or action that got the next animal to react. In the end it is the beginning animal that also gets the baby to laugh happily. This is a fun book for younger children. The pictures are vibrant and beautiful and the rhymes are fun and easy to read. It is a repetitive book with the various rhymes as well. It is great for those young readers or listeners who are just learning about rhymes and memory. We really enjoyed it.
Our second book is Absolutely One Thing Featuring Charlie and Lola by Lauren Child. This fun book has lots of math in it!! Charlie is the older brother and Lola is the young sister. Their mother tells them they are going to the store where they can each get one thing. Throughout the story Charlies is calculating with counting, addition and subtraction and even a little division. The equations are written out to show the various math involved in daily life. Things like how long it took to get ready to changing minutes to seconds. And of course little Lola tries to push the boundaries everywhere from time to get ready to trying to get more than one thing. By the time they have come home from the store she has used all of her stickers that she picked so she wants some of Charlie's pins that he picked. Overall it is a fun book that really helps show math in an every day situation as well as a wonderful sibling relationship. The illustrations are simple and of course have equations throughout them.
Our third book is Secret Tree Fort by Brianne Farley. This book reminds me of my childhood. I was the annoying little sister. In the book the girls are sent out to play and the older sister brings her book to read. The younger sister keeps pestering her to play and finally starts telling her she is going into her secret tree fort. She keeps telling her about the secret tree fort even though it is secret. She describes how she can see the ocean and play board games with the whales. Throughout the story her imagination is going and finally the sisters get into an argument about whether the tree fort exists. In the end the older sister says but we can build it and starts to plan it out with her younger sister.
The illustrations are fun and show the importance of imagination. The younger sister thinks of pirates and monsters who attack but also come to visit. It is all very sweet and fun. We loved this one as well.
Overall we really enjoyed these three books and will be reading them again this summer. I hope you will check them out!!
