Amy Krouse Rosenthal

This month's featured author for the Virtual Children's Book Club is Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I own three of her books:

The books are very clever:

• a pea who is supposed to eat candy but prefers a dessert of  spinach
• a pig who is supposed to be, well, a pig but prefers cleanliness
• an owl who is supposed to stay up late learning to be wise but prefers an early bedtime 

Who wouldn't enjoy this twist on things? When I was teaching, I thought about having students create their own story in this style, but didn't quite get to it. I'm keeping the idea in mind for when Toddler Train Man is older or if I have a chance to use it in a classroom again. Skunks who want to smell nice? Lions who don't like to be loud? The possibilities are endless!

Toddler Train Man enjoyed reading these books, but I'm not sure he quite understood the irony of them. In his world eating candy, being messy, and staying up all night is a dream world--what's funny about that?

We also picked up a few more of Rosenthal's books at the library:

Bedtime for Mommy was another one I really liked, but TTM didn't see as much humor in a child putting her mom to bed as I did. Alpha's Bet was a great story about how the order of letters in the alphabet was formed. This is also one that I think older children would have fun with--creating their own letter order and name for it.

Planting a Kiss is a sweet story about a girl who plants a kiss, then instead of hoarding her harvest she shares it with everyone...and finds that there's plenty to go around. We happened to go to a cranberry festival the same week we read this book and were able to plant a few things while we were there. 

sunflower seeds 

 a mini-cranberry bog

We've been watching them grow and thinking about Planting a Kiss. Hopefully we'll have some sunflowers and cranberries to share! (If you're looking for a fast-growing plant, our sunflowers sprouted very quickly!)

What great children's books have you read lately? What activities have they inspired?