Kitty Flynn, Lolly Robinson, and Martha Parravano discuss what works–and what doesn’t–in picture books for preschoolers.

From Dr. Robert Needlman explaining the difference between babies falling asleep and learning how to go to asleep, through Cambridge librarians Julie Roach and Beth McIntyre coaching us through selecting books for preschool story time to Anna Dewdney using photographs to demonstrate how to transform unpleasant expressions on family members faces into picture book gold, our Fostering Lifelong Learners event yesterday with Reach Out and Read and the Cambridge Public Library was a great success. The day was a little long but I learned a ton, and several attendees told us they got lots of good, practical ideas to use in their libraries and classrooms right away. We’ll be sharing some of the day with you next week, including Anna Dewdney’s inspirational speech, which she is graciously allowing us to publish on hbook.com. Julie Roach and I are already talking about what to do next year.

The post Early Notes on Early Learning appeared first on The Horn Book.

I’ve been getting emails from people wondering if our Fostering Lifelong Learners conference is still happening this Thursday. Of course it is; hasn’t the media been telling you over and over what a hardy city we are? And transportation is unimpeded: the Cambridge Public Library is a five-minute walk from Harvard Square, miles from the still-roped-off  Copley Square. If you’re coming via train or inter-city bus, you can catch the Red Line subway from South Station right to Harvard Square. Locals, travel as usual; here’s the Library’s map of its location. See you soon!

The post Last Friday and this Thursday appeared first on The Horn Book.

Julie Roach

Cambridge Public Library youth services manager (and Horn Book reviewer) Julie Roach will be discussing library services for preschool children at our Fostering Lifelong Learners event (free; you should come) at CPL on April 25th. I asked her to share some of her thoughts on serving this (very) particular audience. (I think her answer to question #5 is one of the wisest things I’ve heard.)

1. What’s the most important thing about library service to preschoolers that you DIDN’T learn in library school and wish you had?

In library school you learn the theory and philosophy behind library service to preschoolers, which is as it should be.  Children’s librarians need a solid background there before venturing out on their own.  But I’m not sure any academic setting could have prepared me for what an emotional roller coaster a typical work day would be.  Every day with preschoolers and their entourage rockets back and forth between hilarity and tragedy, discovery and near-disaster (or sometimes full-on disaster) and the situation gets more complex depending on how many other people are in the space and their range of ages and stages.  In the mornings, our children’s room often has more than 200 people in it.  The drama is both utterly addictive and completely exhausting.

2. If you were suddenly told you had to do a story time in FIVE MINUTES, what would be your go-to stories?

This actually happens to me quite regularly!  Our storytimes skew pretty young, so I gravitate toward funny stories with very simple plots or concepts that invite kids to participate. They tend to involve animals or vehicles that make a lot of noise.  I also want to make sure the parents and caregivers get to laugh—I want them to see how fun this all is so, hopefully, they’ll go home and keep reading aloud.  I love Jan Thomas’s books, Bark George by Jules Feiffer, Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? by Susan Shea, The Bus for Us by Suzanne Bloom, Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard, Tiny Little Fly by Michael Rosen, A Perfect Square by Michael Hall, and Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s concept books.  And if the group is such that everyone can see a smaller book, I have fun using Olivier Dunrea’s gosling books.

3. What is the darndest thing a preschooler ever said to you?

This is one of the job’s best perks–a conversation with a preschooler can take you to a whole new dimension!  Although often they’re just saying out loud what everyone else is secretly thinking.  Once a very small but confident child approached the desk and dramatically looked around our rather large children’s room.  Then he looked right at me and demanded:  “Which one is the best book?”

4. If you could give publishers of preschool books one piece of advice what would it be?

Keep making those really great books, please!  The ones that make us laugh, the ones that make us think, the ones that make us gasp, the ones that make us a little scared, the ones that put us in charge.  We especially like them simple!

5. And if you could give parents of preschoolers one piece of advice, what would it be?

All of the books in the library are free to borrow and you get to return them later, so let your young child pick out a book too, on his own—even if his choice is impractical or too hard or too easy, even if you have a copy at home, even if it’s the unabridged edition of David Copperfield!  How empowering and special to get to choose your own book when you’re small.  How deflating to hear that your choice is not suitable for you.  Save some room in the library bag for the child to have a choice.

Join us on Thursday, April 25, 2013, for a big day focused on the littlest people.

The post Five Questions for Julie Roach appeared first on The Horn Book.

1. You were a book reviewer before you were a parent. How has the first job helped with the second?

Two words: review copies. After umpteen years of working at the Horn Book, I’ve amassed a pretty good and varied collection of children’s books. We’re never at a loss for something to read, and thankfully both kids love books (coincidence? Maybe, but having tons of books all over the house doesn’t hurt). There have been more than a few times that I’ve come upon one or both kids sitting (quietly!) and looking at a book—and that’s just the kind of help I need.

2. And how has the second job helped with the first?

Being a parent has and hasn’t informed my job as a book reviewer. What each of my kids likes is not an indicator of what other kids will like or of what makes an outstanding book. For example, Chloe can’t get enough of Blue’s [as in Clues] Sleepover Party, but that doesn’t mean I would recommend it to anyone else (unless that person deserves it).

I do like having my own captive audience to test drive reading books aloud, which helps a lot with reviewing picture books. And when they were infants, I even read some novels aloud to them—working and bonding at the same time!

Living with young children has allowed me to see childhood from a different angle. I recently reviewed Ole Konnecke’s Anton and the Battle, which I think captures perfectly how a four-year-old (boy, especially) thinks and plays. At one point in their proverbial pissing match, Anton and his frenemy, Luke, pretend to throw bombs at each other. I would have liked this book BC (before children), but I wouldn’t have had a clue how completely on-target the cartoony pretend-violent play is.

3. You have two preschoolers, a girl and a boy. Do you see any gender stereotyping in their book preferences?

My first reaction to this is that their preferences have more to do with their interests and temperaments than with their gender, but who knows? Jakob likes information and has a lot of patience; he’ll listen to a 128 page book about space if someone is willing to read it to him. He also likes fiction and nonfiction books about dinosaurs, construction, knights, firefighters, and other typical little boy topics, but he doesn’t limit himself to those things. If someone is reading a book, he’ll usually sit and listen, no matter what it’s about.

Chloe isn’t girly at all—she won’t look at a dress; her favorite color is black—but she does gravitate toward fiction rather than her big brother’s information books. She loves Curious George (like any self-respecting three-year-old), Leslie Patricelli’s board books, and any book with Humpty Dumpty in it. She likes folktales; Feodor Rojankovsky’s The Tall Book of Nursery Tales has been at the top of her morning story time pile for a few months now.

4. What are their current favorites?

Chloe and Jakob

Their favorites change from day to day, week to week. I asked this morning and they both said, “That superheroes book with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman [a.k.a. DC Super Heroes Storybook Collection].” Last week the answer would have been, “Traction Man!” (that’s Traction Man Is Here by Mini Grey). They were obsessed with that book for a few days. We read it over and over; we acted out the story (with improvised Traction Man outfits and a pet scrubbing brush); we made a special trip to the library to borrow the other two TM books. But this week Traction Man is off the radar. Jakob has been studying The Usborne Official Knight’s Handbook. Chloe wants us to read “Puss in Boots” (and only “Puss in Boots”) from Anne Rockwell’s collection, Puss in Boots and Other Tales.

Oh, and I probably shouldn’t admit this, but for the last year (or maybe it just feels like a year), Jakob’s #1 favorite? The thirty-two page 2012 Playmobil toy catalog.

 5. What, in your opinion, is the most misguided choice for a baby shower book?

Along with a Playmobil catalog, any book that speaks more to new parents and their experiences/wishes/hopes than to a baby or a child…that is if the gift giver’s intention is really and truly to give the baby a gift. I’m sure many parents would like those books’ sentiments (in fact, I know many parents do like them), but kids themselves won’t give a poopy diaper about them.

Join us on Thursday, April 25, 2013, for a big day focused on the littlest people.

The post Five Questions for Kitty Flynn appeared first on The Horn Book.

I am so pleased that he will be keynoting our conference, Fostering Lifelong Learners: Prescribing Books for Early Childhood Education, to be held on April 25th at the Cambridge Public Library (free! Sign up!). The Horn Book is co-sponsoring this conference with CPL and with Reach Out and Read, of which Dr. Needlman is a co-founder and a member of its board of directors. Here I give him the five-question treatment.

1. You are one of the founders of Reach Out and Read. What led you to think that such a program was needed?

It was a combination of several things: being the son of a nursery-school teacher; living up the hill from a bookstore, where I found a copy of Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook; training in an interdisciplinary child development unit where we had doctors and educators working closely together; being trained to think about children and families holistically; and having a young daughter at home, reading to her every night.  It was exciting to realize that emergent literacy was a field that was not spoken of at all in the pediatric literature. Imagine that! A whole area of crucial child development which doctors seemed utterly unaware of. It was an opportunity that could not be passed up.

2. What did being a parent teach you about being a doctor?

Pretty much everything. The key to effective pediatric practice is empathy– being able to connect to the powerful feelings of love, hope, and fear which all of us parents share. Some gifted doctors can make this connection without being parents themselves, but for me it was the process of falling in love with my own child, and living in constant fear for her, that allowed me, as a young person, to make common cause with the parents in my care. I think these same forces keep me going today.

3. Your mother taught at the University of Chicago Lab School, which is justly proud of its storytelling and read-aloud traditions. What stories did she read or tell to you?

I don’t really remember stories she read to me. I do remember (or think I remember) listening to Tall Fireman Paul, while lying on the couch in the house where I grew up. And I remember many, many conversations about things that went on in my mom’s preschool classrooms– stories about the children and their learning, about things in the world and about their own feelings and ideas. My mother was, by every measure, an extraordinary teacher, and still is, in her 80′s.

4. What advice can you give to the parent who is shy about reading aloud?

I’m not sure what “shy” means in this context. Some parents hesitate to read aloud in front of other adults (that is, in front of me, in the clinic). They’re a bit shy about making goofy animal noises or really letting loose and enjoying the book.  But I think you might mean, instead of shy, unsure of themselves, doubting their ability to “do it right.” In these cases, advice may be useful, but I find direct hands-on demonstration and feedback to be more useful. If a mother can see how I do it (no magic, just having fun and trying to engage the child in a playful exchange), then she can often do it herself with me watching, and then I can point out the things that she and her child are doing that are just right , just what “reading” should be. I think this sort of hands-on in-the-moment teaching is something special that we as doctors have to offer.

5. What children’s book do you hope shows up at every baby shower?

I’m a fan of Pat The Bunny, because it appeals to multiple senses and invites a baby’s active exploration; I’m only sorry that it’s so narrow in its ethnic and cultural identification. For little babies, of course, it’s mainly the sound of the parent’s voice that is so attractive. So, any book that an adult might want to read would work fine.  Some parents I know read their latest romance potboiler, some read their chemistry textbooks, both fine choices. The classics, of course, need to be part of every childhood: Goodnight Moon, The Snowy Day, Where the Wild Things Are, of course, but also Stone Soup, Millions of Cats, Blueberries for Sal, and so many more. My own favorite was Time Of Wonder by Robert McCloskey. It lived on a high shelf, and my daughter knew it was special; we’d take it down and read it together when we felt in the mood.

Join us on Thursday, April 25, 2013, for a big day focused on the littlest people.

The post Five Questions for Dr. Robert Needlman of Reach Out and Read appeared first on The Horn Book.

The post Retract those claws appeared first on The Horn Book.

The conference, held on April 25th at the Cambridge Public Library and sponsored by Penguin, DK, and the Junior Library Guild, invites all professionals in the early-learning community to attend. And it’s free, so you had better sign up now as space is very limited.

The post Building a better board book appeared first on The Horn Book.

I hope you’re all taking a look at our contributions to Picture Book Month; this week we have Peter Sís’s 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Medal acceptance speech.

The post Candlewick is back in Cambridge appeared first on The Horn Book.

The post Saturday stories appeared first on The Horn Book.

The post >Meet you at the Tick Tock Tea Room appeared first on The Horn Book.