Halloween Alphabet Book H is for Haunted House By: Tanya Lee Stone Illustrated by: Scott Burroughs

 

A great book to get your kiddos ready for Halloween and learning their alphabet at the same time.  This book is full of spooky and silly fun! My kids love picking which kids costume they want to have from this book for Halloween.




Each letter is showcased in uppercase followed by a Halloween rhyme.
"E is for eyeballs
(They're grapes that we peel).
They slip through our fingers, We scream and we squeal!"

Children will have fun with this book and I love books that help me review something like the alphabet while making it fun.

Shake dem Halloween Bones By: W.Nikola-Lisa Illustrated by: Mike Reed

Shake dem Halloween Bones is a fun way to get into the Halloween Spirit with your children!  I have been reading this book since Isabela's first Halloween and she has loved it ever since.  The book is full of rhythm and rhyme and will get the kiddos up and dancing and singing along!  It also showcases familiar story book characters like Cinderella, Puss and Boots, and lots more. 



I sing this song to the tune of  KC & the Sunshine Band "Shake your booty". Which makes the chorus so much fun!  "Shake, shake, shake dem bones now..at the hip-hop Halloween ball."  As my husband likes to point out not all the "shakes" match the tune but I improvise to make it more fun!  Because that is what moms do best!  The last page is so much fun for the kids, they can belt out "Scoo-bee-doo-bee-doo-wah. Yeah!"  So get your bones rattling and  have some fun with this great book this Halloween season.  

Here are my girls singing the song in this book their style!

Humbug Witch By: Lorna Balian

The Humbug Witch is a sweet book that reminds me of the times where you would don your plastic mask and matching vinyl outfit and head out to trick-or-treat for the night!  Humbug Witch written in 1965 has that retro feel to it with its illustrations and light heartedness that makes me long for the simple days of childhood!


This book showcases a witch, her black cat and all things spooky a witch does...with a little twist at the end!  My girls can't wait to read this and I love the humor of it!  It will become one of those books you have to pull out and read to get you into that Halloween mood.

Peekaboo Kisses By: Barney Saltzberg

If you are looking for a fantastic book to get for a baby up to a preschooler this is it.   This book covers all the basis of a great book to keep a little one occupied!  A sturdy board book that is touch and feel, with lift up flaps, a squeaker, and a mirror.

All the adorable animals in this book are playing peekaboo with your little one even a squeaky little mouse.  The book ends with a mirror for your child to see their own reflection.  Peekaboo Kisses has always been a huge hit with my girls and I can remember both of them shoving their faces in the mirror to see themselves and bouncy their fingers off the mouse to hear it squeak! 

 Introduce kids in a fun way to reading with this playful book Peekaboo Kisses!

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs By: Judi Barrett Drawn By: Ron Barrett

 

Special weather forecast for today it is looking like it will be Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs...Wait, what?!
This book will bring delight to your child on any day no matter what the weather.  The illustrations that accompany the quirky tale will have your children's imaginations running wild!  What child wouldn't love to live in the town of Chewandswallow?  Where every ones meals fall from the sky.  This great book will have you laughing and have your kids in awe imagining how they would deal with giant donuts and pancakes raining down on their town.


If you want to make the book even more fun have spaghetti and "giant" meatballs for a meal, read the book and then watch the movie.  Theme days/nights are a great way to get your kids wanting to read more when they feel like they are apart of the action.  The movie although slightly different from the book is a funny movie that you can watch as a family.

Have fun with your kids and include reading as a part of your daily routine!  Light up their imaginations daily with a great book!!

One Cool Friend By: Toni Buzzeo Pictures by: David Small

One Cool Friend is a funny tale of a proper boy named Elliot who gets invited to go to the aquarium with his father.  At the aquarium Elliot ends up taking home a real penguin (which reminds him of himself) and with his father's permission of course.  His dad gives him $20 dollars as he appears to be reading the stuffed penguins for sale sign.  Elliot is great to his new penguin Magellan who he lets ice skate in his room, sleep in the freezer, eat anchovy pizzas, and have nice cold baths in the bathtub.  All the while it seems the penguin goes unnoticed by his father. Until Elliot's dad goes to take a bath and discovers Magellan in there and says "Young man, where did this penguin come from?" and when Elliot replies from Argentina his dad says "That's right," and says his Captain Cook came from the Galapagos Islands.  The joke is on us at the end when you turn the page and see that like father like son his dad has a huge and real turtle!

His father says I got Captain Cook (his turtle) in the third grade.

 This book is a slyly written and more enjoyable with each read!  My girls got a big kick out of the plot and loved the illustrations!  One Cool Friend will be remind all of us how with every visit to the zoo you wished you could take home an animal for a pet!

Penny Love By: Lisa Soars Hale Illustrated by: Marilee Harrald-Pilz

Penny Love is a heartwarming book about a little girl and her Grandmother who loves her very much.  The little girl and her Grandma go for a walk and find a penny.  The Grandmother tells her that "whenever you find a penny, you will know that Grandma loves you."  After their walk the Grandma gets a jar for the girl to put her penny in and tells her to put any penny's she finds in this jar and "Soon you will see just how much Grandma loves you."  It shows the girl growing and finding more pennies and after each penny she finds she whispers "I love you too Grandma." Many years pass and the jar eventually is overflowing with pennies or Grandma's love."  It then shows that little girl as a Grandma herself passing on the tradition to her own granddaughter and looking up to heaven to whisper "I love you, too, Grandma!" 

My girls like watching the girl find pennies and seeing the little girl growing up.  I think it is a wonderful idea to actually do as a grandparent and think a child would love this little game. 

This is a very sweet book and a great read for any grandparent to their little beloved!

Super-Completely And Totally The Messiest By: Judith Viorst

 

This great book really showcases how different two sisters can be.  Olivia the big sister in this book is very neat and organized while her younger sister Sophie is well, just plain MESSY!  Poor Sophie, not only is her sister constantly reminding her to be neat but her parents like to tell her too.  Even when Sophie tries to be careful it makes it worse. 


 This book has Judith Viorst great sense of humor sprinkled throughout.   Viorst really understands all the stages of life we all go through and she has a great way of making things that drive us crazy really funny!

Emy then (pudding time)

 My girls are a little like this too.  Isabela more on the neat side likes to have things lined up and to color in the lines "perfectly" while her younger sister Emma has to squeeze anything she holds just to check its durability out first.  Yes of course this ends up with a lot of things broken but how else can you test if it is indestructible?  Emma was one of those babies you fed sweet potatoes to and wondered how she ended up with it all over her entire face and how could she possibly reach her toe in her Boppy to get it down there too??  I laugh picturing Emma eating a Pb&j sandwich and the peanut butter mustache that follows it.

Emy now (Smore fun)

Read this to your little ones for a great laugh!  I'm sure we all have a little Sophie or Olivia in all of us.  They will be sure to find something to relate to!

The Giving Tree By: Shel Silverstein

I can remember being read this book at school as a young child.  I remember feeling sad for the tree. This book really stuck with me.  As a child I liked seeing how the boys life progressed and how what he thought he needed changed as he grew older.  I didn't fully understand the book as a child and even as an adult I don't delve too much into the meaning behind the book.  I see it simply as a love story.  One of my favorite things in life is to give and see the pleasure that comes over a person when you have done something special for them.  That feeling is such a gift.


The Giving Tree is about a tree who holds the love of a little boy and he does as well for her.  As a child he plays on her, eats her apples, sleeps in her shade and that makes her happy.  But as the boy grows he begins to need more in his life and doesn't have time for the simple pleasures.  He comes to visit the tree in different stages of his life and eventually depletes the tree of all she has to offer him.  By that time the boy is an old man and she is a stump.  "I don't need very much now," said the boy, "just a quiet place to sit and rest.  I am very tired." "Well," said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, "well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest." And the boy did. And the tree was happy."
 

This book was also one of the first books I heard Isabela reading out loud.  It made me smile so big and after she finished reading it she read it again.  I asked her today why she loves this book and she said "I like that their names are on the tree in a heart."

I want to be the giving tree for my girls.  I want us to be together and have fun and love our whole lives...together.  That will make me happy.

I can't say enough about this book but I can say that it is a truly fantastic read. Share this story with your little ones because everyone who reads it will feel something for this book!

Sesame Beginnings Baby's First Board Books By: Sesame Workshop Bendon Publishing International,Inc.

I have been reminiscing the past couple of days and couldn't help myself but to dive into memories of my first born Isabela as a baby. When I started remembering those times these books popped into my head.  These were the first books I picked out with Isabela.  I remember finding Baby's First Board Books as we strolled through K-Mart trying to pass a long day.  Isabela was about 6 months old and just starting to love the little, red, furry monster known to all the world as Elmo. Elmo was an instant hit!  I would read these books over and over and over and again.  She couldn't get enough of the illustrations and the rhyming of the words.  She was hooked.  I didn't even have to look at the pages anymore to any of the books they could be recited in my sleep!

This set of books includes four books.  Nighty-Night is about bedtime and the routine that ensues.  Eyes & Nose, Fingers & Toes a great introduction to body parts and basic functions.  This book I would always act out the clapping and pointing and hiding my tongue only to let little fingers try to find it.  At the Zoo is a sweet book about silly animals and great descriptions of each.  Then there is Bubbles Bubbles which Isabela loved.  "Bubbles bubbles Pop! Pop! Pop!"  I have so many fond memories of Sesame Street and still think it is a great learning tool for children.  After all in order to get kids interested in reading they need to have a passion for what you are going to read to them.  I can still picture Isabela grabbing a book and for a baby who was never content for long, books for her were different.  She still loves books and I can only hope that it lasts for her lifetime! 

My Name is Not Isabella By: Jennifer Fosberry

My daughter Isabela received this book for her fourth birthday.  It is such an enlightening book that is very inspiring for any little girl.  A little girl name Isabela goes throughout her day telling her mother that she is not Isabela but many other names.  The names just happen to be names of women pioneers of different eras that changed our world dramatically for women.  "I am ROSA, the greatest, bravest activists who ever was!"
 

Your little girl will love the illustrations and will find it an easy read with its repetitive structure.

"It's me, Isabella, the sweetest,kindest,smartest, bravest, fastest, toughest, greatest girl that ever was," and the little girl as she fell sleep and dream about who she would be....tomorrow. 

I just love how this book has the most simplest intentions to just inspire little girls to go for it all and to imagine anything for themselves because it is all possible!  What a wonderful message! At the very end of the book there is a page with all of the "women who changed the world" and it provides you with a history on each of them (they even include a paragraph for the most important woman, mommy). There is also a boy version of this book that my girls enjoyed as well called My Name is Not Alexander. 

When Emma got a hold of her sisters copy of this book I think she loved it even more than Isabela and she was only two at the time. This book will become an instant favorite!

Here is to an inspirational read!

Thunder Boomer! By: Shutta Crum Illustrated by: Carol Thompson

I was looking for a book to write about today and came across this one and thought it was perfect for this time of year.  It seems any day around here in the summer a storm can creep up and my girls will scour the skies and tell me of the ominous looking clouds and their beliefs of the threats of an approaching storm.  Some of those clouds disappear as quickly as they came and others produce a thunder boomer capable of cooling everything off with its hard rains and winds. 

This book gave me a way to explain the awful and scary thunderstorms my oldest daughter was so afraid of and still sometimes is.  This books gives some of the best descriptions of a hot day and of a storm and uses great adjectives.  You can have a lot of fun doing the sounds of the thunder and lightning and it gives me a chance to talk to the girls about how they feel when the storm comes. I explain why the storms can bare gifts for our garden like the rain but that it can also be dangerous and what we can do to protect ourselves from a bad storm.

The book Thunder Boomer has some cute humor that runs through out it as well.  We get a laugh out of the girls dads underwear being blown by the winds and the dog chasing them and of the gift you find out about that the hen is trying to protect.

For me I love a good storm as long as everyone is safe.  I am always in awe of the clouds and the lighting.  I remember as a little girl going out to my living room and looking out our bay window to see the lighting flashes because to me it made it look like day time for a split second.

Check out this great book the next time you feel a thunder boomer approaching it really is a sweet book!

Eating the Alphabet Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z By: Lois Ehlert

Eating the Alphabet is an awesome book filled with familiar and exotic fruits and vegetables. Not only do you get to introduce your children to different things to eat and try for the first time but you also get to teach the alphabet. This book includes the upper and lower case of each letter. The book is saturated with such vivid pictures with beautiful colors.

You can have a lot of fun with this book.  Have your kids pick a fruit/vegetable to try each week or test their knowledge of the foods they might be familiar with and of course teach them their letters!  We like to get this book from the "big book" section of the library and lie on the floor and explore this great book.  I love the section in the back of the book that describes every food item to give you more information if you are unfamiliar with something.  There is also a page with the tiny illustrated version of the foods and my girls love picking one and then trying to name what it is or go hunting to find where the bigger match it so they can name it for us!











Have fun reading to your children and to a book that encourages healthy eating and learning something new!