It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly blog hop co-hosted by Unleashing Readers and Teach Mentor Texts which focuses on sharing books marketed for children and young adults. It offers opportunities to share and recommend books with each other.
The last weekend of April was an absolute blast! The Saturday was Canadian Independent Bookstore Day, and I celebrated with a bunch of local authors and illustrators at Kinder Books, a wonderful independent bookstore that focuses on all things children’s literature.
There was an inspiring roster of children’s book creatures, including Nikki Bergstresser (author of Lila Lou’s Little Library), Kirsten Pendreigh (author of Maybe a Whale), and Anu Chouhan (author and illustrator of Hair Oil Magic). What a lineup! It was so much fun to connect with fellow kid lit enthusiasts, talk shop, share stories and just celebrate the art forms that we love so much.
If you’re in the Metro Vancouver area, absolutely stop by the River Market in New Westminster and check out Kinder Books – the owner, Anne, has created such a joyful place filled to the brim with beautiful things for children and young people of all ages – and those of us who are just kids at heart!
Now, on to what we’ve been reading this week!
FLUBBY WILL NOT PLAY WITH THAT
Have you met Flubby? My emergent reader loves this series of beginner readers featuring an endearing reluctant cat named Flubby and his persistent and enthusiastic owner Kami. There are a number of them in the series, and we’ve enjoyed them all. The language level is just right for beginner readers, with short sentences and plenty of repetition.
National Geographic Kids 5 Minute Baby Animal Stories
The various “5 Minute Stories” short story collections are great bedtime options, because you can ready as few or as many stories as you like as part of your bedtime routine. While a lot of them are tied to cartoon characters, we really like the National Geographic versions, with their beautiful photographs. This collection features different baby animals as they face different challenges in the early stages of their lives, and highlights individuals and organizations working to protect these creatures.
What a fun concept board book! A child shows off their brightly colored fingernails, introducing the number and color vocabulary in both English and Inuktitut, one of the primary languages spoken by the indigenous Inuit people of northern Canada, and an official language of the territory of Nunavut. This would be a great book for baby storytimes, as it’s larger than your standard board book (though just as sturdy). It would also be a fun book to share with a young child on your lap, as the illustrations are brimming with detail, and kids would have a blast naming all the different animals and objects on each page (as an aside, the illustrator, Emma Pedersen, did the art for my picture book Queenie Quail Can’t Keep Up!) . I also really appreciate that the indigenous language is printed above the English, so the focus is on the Inuktitut words, with the English being the translation, rather than the other way around. A nice touch! There isn’t a pronunciation guide, but in this modern digital age it’s easy enough to go online and find a recording to help with the pronunciation. I don’t know if this book is widely available outside of Canada, as it is produced by a Canadian publisher, but if you can find it, or can request your library order a copy, I do recommend it.
Hope everyone has a great week – it’s supposed to be sunny at hot here in the Pacific Northwest – I’ll take it!
Hi Jane! It looks like a fabulous time with your book friends and at that wonderful Kinder Books. I love seeing new bookstores, though maybe I won’t ever get there! Thanks for the book recs, too!
We’re so lucky to have so many amazing independent bookstores here in my area, it’s so much fun to visit them all! 🙂
Glad you had such a fun time at the event at your local bookstore! And I also love National Geographic Kids books – these 5-minute stories seem so cute!
Nat Geo books are so amazing – the photography alone is such great quality, and they’re so eye-catching!!
How cool that you got to hang out with other kidlit authors at an adorable indie bookstore, Jane!! That sounds like absolutely the best time ever, and if I ever find myself in Vancouver, I will absolutely stop by that store (and Vancouver Kidsbooks too)!
And the books you shared look like ones kids will adore, especially My Ten Painted Nails—that’s a brilliant premise, and I love that it introduces young readers to new languages too. Thanks so much for the wonderful post, and enjoy your week!
I’m not familiar with the Flubby series but I absolutely must get my hands on it now. The title of the one you shared this week is already hilarious to me–as I eye a basket of cat toys that not a single one of my nine cats will play with! I know all about reluctant kitties over here! Thanks for sharing–and hope you’re enjoying some warm weather!
They’re really great – and we definitely had a chuckle when reading that one, because cats are just like young children – few presents are as exciting as the box, bag or wrapping paper it came in! 😉