A Springtime story "Lost in the Woods"

Spring isn't too far away. With the thought of melting snow and how soon we will see the grass turn bright green, the trees start to bud, and flowers making their appearance, I have been in the mood for some good springtime books!  I came across this one that the title caught me first Lost in the Woods What's it about? Does a kid get lost in the woods? Does it tell you what to do if you get lost? As all these questions about the title rolled through my head I knew I had to read it regardless of what it was about.  Picking it up I found that it's a Photographic Fantasy, with a fawn on the cover.  I was sold, this was the springtime book I wanted.

The Details:

Lost In The Woods: A Photographic Fantasy

 by Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick 

Published by Carl R. Sams II Photography, Inc.

Copywirte: 2004

Grade level: K-2

National and International Awards for Lost in the Woods:

2006-2007 Children's Crown Gallery Award Nominee

2005 Independent Publishers Best Children's Picture Book Award

2005 Earlychildhood NEWS Director's Choice Award

2005 Earlychildhood NEWS Judge's Choice Award for Excellence

2005 USA Book News Best Children's Picture Book Award

2005 Library of Michigan "Michigan Reads!" Finalist

2004 Great Lakes Booksellers Association Book of the Year Finalist

2004 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Finalist

That is an impressive list of awards for any book, and it's easy to see why it received so many awards.  The photography is stunning and interactive.  The story goes perfectly with the subjects in the photographs, it's educational, and the story is fun to read aloud.
I will say I agree with the Kindergarten and older reading level.  My four year old and the other preschoolers I tried to read this book to were not interested.  They liked to look at the pictures but they lost interest quick in the story.

The story is about a fawn waking up in the woods alone, the other animals think he's lost, but he knows his mom will come back.  The fawn walks around the woods alone and meets other baby animals.  Finally at the end it's his time to join his mom and wander around.

Carl and Jean did a great job with putting a fictional narritive to the photographs they took and incorporating some nonfiction in as well.  Children learn about some different animals in the forest, what they do, and about the first two weeks of a fawn's life.

These two wild life photographers tell how they wrote this book to educate people that when they see a fawn alone in the woods they aren't abandoned, they spend most of the first two weeks of their life alone because the mother's sent will attract predators.  (This and more about the authors can be found on the inside back jacket cover of the book)   If you come across a baby deer laying in the grass alone you should leave it be, you can keep an eye on it, if you notice that it is injured, week, extremely thin or you want more info about finding fawns in the woods you can check out the National Wildlife Federation.  If you want to have a check list of questions to ask yourself you can find a detailed list here by Second Chance Wildlife Center.

There are many lessons parents, and teachers can use from this book.  I'd highly recommend it for anyone wanting to do a spring, baby animal, or nature lesson, identify animals, their sounds, where you find them, what they do, and so on.

I thought the book was easy to read. I'd say it's at a 1-3 grade could read most of it on their own with little help.  Reading it aloud I believe is the most fun and useful though so you can animate the sounds of the animals.  Example:

"Look how he used his spots.

He did. He did," said the Katydid

Then there's the little owl that was also another favorite of mine:

"Who-hoo-hoo do I see?"

hooted the little saw-whet owl.

"Someone's moving through my woods.

I saw-whet!

I saw-whet!"

There is a special treat at the end of the book, there's a page of did you spot these animals? And we spent time looking back through the book to find a little bunny, a caterpillar, and still haven't found the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.  This was a lot of fun to do a look and find through each of the pages.  My youngest even noticed a shadow on the page about predators which I had read and searched twice before she pointed it out to me.  I think it's a great book you can read and find something new in with each read.

What did my daughters think of it?  My youngest lost interest in the book right from the start the first time we read the book for their review so only my oldest shared her thoughts on Lost in the Woods, you can view her video review here.  It wasn't until bedtime that my youngest would look through the book with me, and it's not one she will pick out to read together.

The Bottom Line: Perfect Spring Read

The story-line: is fun, easy to read, educational, and entertaining

The art: is colorful, extremely interactive, educational, and aids the story.

I Love You More Than Rainbows

My kids love holidays...all occasions to celebrate anything.  So with Valentine's Day this week they read and reviewed I Love You More Than Rainbows by Susan E. Crites.  It's not necessarily a Valentine's Day book but it does talk about loving people more than objects and makes a great point.

Before I go into my review let me give you the details:

                                           Written by: Susan E. Crites

                                           Illustrated by Mark and Rosemary Jarman

                                           Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Tommy Nelson Jan 2008

                                           Copywrite: 2007

                                           Format: board book (link above), also available in hardcover

This is another great used book find that I picked up when my youngest daughter was 2 because it was a colorful board book and has been well read in our house.  On Amazon it says this book is for children aged 5-6 but again I want to argue with this.  I started reading this to my 2 year old daughter and it was immediately a favorite that she'd ask for over and over again.  We'd cuddle up on the couch and I'd read aloud how much I loved her.  It was such a sweet bonding time we had together.  I would say get it for your babies and enjoy it for many years, when they learn to read they can read it to you telling you they love you more than all their favorite things.

I love the message that Susan E. Crites sends to children in this book.  We can like and enjoy many experiences but we love each other more than that.  To take a couple quotes from her book:

"I love you more than a candy store filled with all your favorite treats."

That sends a very clear message to children.  No matter what there is in the world I love you more.
Crites did a wonderful job coming up with so many different things that people say we love, and showing that we love our kids and each other more.

"I love you more than the fun you have when you make lots of noise!"

The illustrations are wonderful throughout the whole book.  Each page transports the readers to a new place, new season, and new adventure that children enjoy doing.

This book can be used for any holiday that you talk about loving someone else, it would make a great lesson for libraries, preschool through first grade.  Valentine's day you can talk about friendship being more important than favorite food, toys, or activities and how we love our friends more and what we love to do with our friends.  It would also work for Mother's and Father's Day as well.  Here are some examples:

To make these they can be as simple as you need just using construction paper and writing the note, or to give more of a gift attach a favorite candy bar, or cookies in a jar to make together.  Use your imagination and create something special.


The lesson learned from this book is so valuable.  I reference the book all the time, when the kids are fighting over who ate the last (in today's case) mint, or used special markers or stickers.  These are big deals in our house.  I have to sit each child down and explain how the object that is gone is only a thing and can be replaced, the important thing is that they love each other more than anything, and that I love them even more.

The Bottom Line: A Valuable Lesson and Wonderful Book

The Illustrations: are fun, vibrant, attention grabbing, and aid the story

The Story Line: is easy, fun, and entertaining to read

Make sure you tell the ones you love how much you love them! 

Snow Day books

With snow in the forecast we all tune in and wait for the announcement of a Snow Day!  We love them in our house, as most children do.  We start making our plans for what we will do with a free day.  This week as we waited to hear if we'd get a 2hr delay or snow day we read three of our wintertime books and thought we'd share them.  We have The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, Snow Day by Patricia Lakin, and All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle.  There are so many more great books about snow, snow days, sledding, snowmen and much more, but these are the couple my kids picked out to share and review this week.

Snow Day 

Written by Patricia Lakin

Illustrated by Scott Nash

Copyright 2002

First published by Scholastic: December 2004

I highly recommend this book for beginning readers. 0-7.  Yes, I know that's a large age gap there but I have good reasons for this.  While this is not a board book therefore won't survive rough baby handling it's no reason not to read it to infants and toddlers.  We know that all reading to infants helps their brain development.  Snow Day has big, simple words and will grow with babies and it also has colorful illustrations that they will enjoy looking at.  As the baby develops reading skills this will be a first book they will be able to read on their own.  Using large print, sight words, and rhyming it is a perfect book for Kindergarten.  

The story of these crocodiles getting dressed and ready to go outside then learning that they aren't kids but actually the principles is super cute and funny.  I think that is the part that makes this whole book great!  I love the whole concept of the book.  What do you need to wear outside? Where is the safe place to sled? Who is going to go sledding?  It gives you the perfect intro to talk about winter safety.

Scott Nash did a great job with the colorful images.  I'm going to guess that he came up with the idea of having crocodiles instead of people and I think he did a great job there.  You couldn't have someone convinced that it's a group of kids when it turns out to be adults if it was people or even most other animals.  In true picture book fashion the art tells the whole story so kids who can't read words yet can still read the book on their own.

Snow Day Bottom Line: If you have a child 7 or younger OR you teach preschool, Kindergarten, or First Grade you will love this book!

• The Story-line: is cute, simple, easy to read, made for young children, and keeps their attention.
• The Illustrations: are colorful, tell the story on their own, aid the text, are engaging, and cute.

The Snowy Day
Written (and illustrated) by Ezra Jack Keats
Copyright 1962
Awards: The Caldecott Medal

Another snowy day activity: Painted Rocks

This is a classic "What will we do in the snow" type book.  It's a sweet and engaging story about one little boy's adventure out in the snow.

I love how waking up in the morning to a fresh snowfall is so magical to children.  It's so pretty, peaceful, and full of possibilities!  I think this book captures that magic and possibility of a snow day well.  How much fun did we have growing up in fresh snow?  Making tracks, snowball fights, building snowmen, and sledding.  Both of my girls love the part where the boy brings in a snowball and it melts.

The text is more in depth than Snow Day which we just talked about, but it's not overwhelming for children.  This is a book we have been reading in our house since the toddler years.  Amazon says it's for preschool - Kindergarten.  As I said earlier it's never too early to read children's books to babies so pick up the book now for your little ones and I'd say even first graders would enjoy reading it back to you aloud.

The bright colors grab the children's attention and I believe that the simple not super detailed artwork allows the kids to use their imagination more.  What do the kids faces look like?  Are they smiling?  Where does this story take place?  The children can allow the story to be their own in their mind.

The Snowy Day Bottom Line:  Read this for your younger readers before your next snowfall!

• The Story-line: is easy for children 2-7 to follow along with, is fun and full of ideas of fun to have on your kids next snow day.
• The Illustrations: are colorful, imaginative, and help aide the story.

To watch what my daughters thought of both Snow Day and The Snowy Day you can watch their video here.  They each have their favorite out of the two books and go over what they like about each.

Finally we got a good wet snow to build our own snowman, and in honor of that we read All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle.  The kids made another video of their review and show off the snowman we made , be sure to check it out and follow them on YouTube for more fun videos.

All You Need for a Snowman
Written by Alice Schertle
Illustrated by Barbara Lavallee

our snowman Feb2018

Copyright: 2002

This is a cute poetic book about building a snowman.   Again I will say that this picture book works for the same age group of toddlers up to first grade when children are reading well on their own.  The lines of text are short and not overwhelming.

I love the step by step of building the snowman.  "That's all you need..." and wait for the kids to say "No, you need this next" and then continue to read "Except..." It's a very cute idea and interactive.

You can use this book as a great platform for building your own snowman.  I can see a whole lesson plan for educators around "What all do you need?" What type of hat? What will you use for a mouth? It's great for using your imagination. If you come up short on supplies for building a snowman check out some of these helpful kits:


 Barbara Lavallee did a great job with the illustrations, they are colorful, and fun, and fully aid the story.  Again like Snow Day this is a book that kids can "read" to themselves without having to read the words.  My kids especially love the full two page spread of the finished snowman.  The snowman is larger than life and wonderful.  At the same time my adult mind keeps picking out that there either the kids are the size of aunts or that there's some magical element that once the item is on the snowman it grows to be ten times it's original size.  That is just me over thinking the images tho.

All You Need for a Snowman Bottom Line: Read this and go make your own Snowman!!

• The Story Line: is easy to follow, flows smoothly, and is engaging and interactive for children.
• The Illustrations: are colorful, well done, and aid the story line while keeping the kids attention.

For more info about reading to infants and babies please check out these links:
Babycenter: Reading to your baby
The Benefits of Reading to your Newborn
6 Great Reasons to Read Aloud to your Kids

Now there are millions of great snow day books out there!  This has only been 3 of the ones we love, I am sure we will share more in the future.

Comment Below with your favorite snow day book!!

Mary Poppins the Book

I found a 2018 Read Harder Challenge that I'm doing myself and on there was to read a children's book published before 1980.  That's easy enough, we have several classic children's books we love to read here like But No Elephants we just talked about, but I thought I'd read something a bit longer than a picture book.  So in browsing the shelves at the library I came across Mary Poppins First Edition 1934 Hardcover & 1962 Reprint EDITION SIGNED: P.L. Travers.  I was thrilled!

I grew up watching Mary Poppins   The songsare still ones I sing along to and it's still a movie I enjoy watching with my children.  After watching Saving Mr. BanksI knew I had to read the books one day.

191 pages is not much for an adult to read, but I felt like this book dragged on.  I was so disappointed.  I hate to say that I like the movie so much more than I like the book.

Before I go further let me give you the details on the edition I read...Written by PL Travers
Illustrations by Mary Shepard
1962 edition. 1934 copyright.
Young Reader chapter book.

This being a classic book there are many other editions but this is the one I read.

So what made me not like the book?  I think it all has to do with how I view Mary Poppins as cheery, and fun and loving, but in the book she seems to be so much more conceited, always looking at her reflection and how perfect she is.  That really started to bother me.  I know in the movie she's beautiful, and "Practically perfect in every way" but it didn't seem like she was always self absorbed as she comes across in the book.  I clung to this until it really ate at me.  As a mother of two little girls and a woman myself I know we all care deeply about our looks and others are quick to judge us on how we are dressed, but in a children's book I feel that we shouldn't be teaching our children that they have to look at their reflection and make sure that they are looking perfect all the time.

There are many differences between the book and the movie.  There are more adventures in the book.  The outings with Mary Poppins are never dull.  Each moment the kids are with her something magical happens.  Which I love!  What I don't like is that after this magical adventure happens and it's back to reality the children are wondering if this crazy adventure happened and Mary Poppins blows it off like it's nonsense.  The story seems to have a constant fight between children's imaginations and reality constantly contradicting each other.  This makes me almost sad.  We want our kids to have imaginations but then shatter them by saying "that's not possible" "stop day dreaming" yet maybe if we let them have their day dreams without bursting their bubbles they can do the impossible and will one day write about their crazy imagined world and take us to it.

I wish the lessons the children learned were a little more clear in the book.  Michael wakes up in a foul mood and is nasty to everyone, then he gets scared and is all better?  No, I wanted him to see how he hurt others and make appoligies not just move on to the next chapter.

There are six different books so the story does continue on and I could be missing so much by not having read all of them.  There were many good reviews of the original Mary Poppins on both GoodReads and Amazon.  66% of the people gave the edition I read five stars and only 8% gave two stars or less, so maybe I'm the one missing something here.   If you are interested in all the books you can find a collection of them here:
While I believe that the reading level for this book is about 3rd-5th grade I did not read this to my children so I don't have their reactions to it.  This edition was above their reading level, however I did find a Little Golden Book edition that says it's for ages 2-5 that I'd love to check out:

It looks colorful and cute and I would like to see how they make it a short story, and it would fit in more with my girls reading level. 

There are hand drawn sketches every couple pages or so.  Some are small while there were a couple that were a full page.  I found the pictures didn't distract from the story, nor did they aid it, they just showed how the artist viewed one scene.

The Bottom Line: The movie is a must! 

• The Illustrations: are classic early 1930's hand sketches in black and white.  They neither aide or distract from the story but are nice to look at as you read along.
• The Storyline: has it's magical moments, but left me feeling lacking in areas.  As an adult I was easily distracted.
• The Movie: is a classic musical.  It makes you laugh, and will stick with you forever.  It's fun, colorful, and magical.  The songs you will find yourself singing over and over again.

The comments are open so please leave a comment if you read the books before the movie, if you read all the books and let me know what you think.