Story Box: Animal Adventures by Claudia Boldt

-
Story Box: Animal Adventures
Illustrated by Claudia Boldt & magma
Review Copy from Laurence King

Earlier this year, I reviewed (and completely adored) Story Box: Create Your Own Fairy Tales. I gave the story telling puzzle (20 double sided pieces, 40 illustrations and eight feet of story telling fun) a test run at home and then took it to school with me where is was hugely popular, especially with English language learners and special ed students.
Illustrator and storyteller Claudia Boldt's tagline is, "Strange Worlds and Absurd Characters," and this is on full and fabulous display here! The starting piece gives storytellers two ways to being an adventure - with a polar bear in a cozy sweater sitting on a floating chunk of ice and holding a map in her/his hand AND with a smiling tortoise on a desert island, party hat on her/his head, standing in front of a calendar (strung between two coconut trees) showing that the fiesta day has arrived.
Tortoise's party adventure features invitations sent out as messages in bottles, a pineapple piñata, a delicious looking cake and heaps of presents. Polar Bear's adventure includes birds, boats, a helpful whale and fireworks. Both adventures (which can overlap and intertwine) have excitement in the form of pirates and a pirate ship, a tornado at sea and a walrus, octopus and swordfish who disguise (or costume) themselves with feathers...

Polar bears or tortoises, parties or pirates, Story Box: Animal Adventures is sure to give hours of enjoyment, entertainment and inspiration to all who open it!



Popular posts from this blog

Fox + Chick: The Sleepover and Other Stories by Sergio Ruzzier

-
Image
Fox + Chick : The Sleepover and Other Stories  by Sergio Ruzzier Review Copy from Chronicle Books Friends. Opposites. Inhabitants of a pastel-hued, water color world that is vaguely surreal, Fox and Chick are back for a third installment of their inviting, if curious, easy-to-read stories. In "The Sleepover," "The Hammer," and "The Surprise," Chick's odd logic is once again upending Fox's life. Happily, Fox responds with patience and even wisdom at times. To these unforgettable characters and luminous illustrations, Ruzzier brings a sublime simplicity that makes this series perfect for emerging readers, adding books with character and intelligence to the often dull world of beginning reader books. If you aren't familiar with this delightful duo, definitely check out my reviews of the first two books (links below) where I put the greatness of Ruzzier's work into historical ( Frog & Toad ) context. Then check out ALL of Ruzzier's p
Read more

Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala

-
Image
Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala Review Copy from Abrams Kids I picture-walked Be a Tree! three times before I actually read the words. Felicita Sala's illustrations for Maria Gianferrari's poetic text are mesmerizingly immersive and richly colorful within a palette of earth tones. Throughout the text, Gianferrari, who shares her inspiration for this book in the author's note ( Peter Wohleben's The Hidden Life of Trees ), gently maintains the human connection to trees and the connections (and communications) trees share with each other.  Be a Tree!  begins exuberantly, inviting the reader to "Be a tree! Stand tall. Stretch your branches to the sun. Let your roots curl, coil in the soil to ground you." From your spine/trunk to your skin/bark and your heart/pith, the words carry you inward and then zoom outward and up to the canopy and ultimately, the forest. "You are one of many trees," and our roots "twine with fung
Read more

Reading Levels: A Quick Guide to Determining if a Book Is Right for Your Reader

-
Image
While I wrote an article titled Reading Levels: How I Assign Reading Levels to Books, How the Publishers Do It and How You Can Help Your Reader Find the Right Book at the Right Time that discusses how reading levels are determined by professionals and amateurs like myself, there is more on this subject to discuss. Determining the reading level of a book from the children's section is never easy, mostly because there are several different standardized methods of determining reading levels. Add to this the fact that knowing their children's reading level is most often the only tool a parent is armed with when exploring the bookstore, library, website, etc, and the job becomes even more difficult. While I think that knowing a child's reading level is a very valuable tool if your child is reading below grade level, I think that it is a secondary consideration when finding books for children reading above, especially well above, grade level because, in most cases, content app
Read more