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.

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Roger Sutton welcomes participants to the Fostering Lifelong Learners conference

The Doctors Panel: Dr. Robert Needlman, Dr. Lisa Dobberteen, Dr. Marilyn Augustyn

The Publishers Panel: Kathryn Bhirud (Penguin), Nancy Tran (DK), Megan Quinn (Charlesbridge)

The Critics Panel: The Horn Book’s Kitty Flynn, Lolly Robinson, Martha V. Parravano

Kitty Flynn perusing Gideon & Otto

Julie Roach, Cambridge Public Library Youth Services Manager, performing a read-aloud

Cambridge children’s librarian Beth McIntyre

Roger and company engage in small-group work

The Educators Panel: Anne MacKay, BB&N School, and Jim St. Claire, Amigos School

Dr. Kathy Modigliani, Family Childcare Project

Anna Dewdney, the Llama Lady

Author Anna Dewdney (left) and two Llama Llama fans

Author Stuart J. Murphy and a fan

Dr. Robert Needlman and Jackie Miller from Reach Out and Read

Two readers in action

Pictures from the Fostering Lifelong Learners conference. Photos by Shara Hardeson. For more on the day-long event, click here.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Photo by Constance Myers

On a visit with our downstairs neighbors Reach Out and Read, I learned that their CEO Earl Martin Phalen blogs for The Huffington Post on the topics of early education, literacy, and parenting.

Phalen recently interviewed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Walter Dean Myers about literacy and his ambassadorial platform “Reading is not an option.” One of my favorite moments:

I was raised in a foster home and my mom was not a wonderful reader—she could read with her finger tracing the words. She would read with me maybe three days a week. I looked forward to that time—it was just mom and me. I wasn’t conscious of learning anything—I was just sharing the time with her. And eventually by the time I was four I was picking up words because she was reading primarily True Romance magazines. By the time I was five, I could sit there and read to her. And it was not something that I was formally learning or she was formally teaching me. It was just the time that we spent and shared together. . . . What I’m seeing is that many of the parents think you have to be a really good reader to teach your child. And that’s not true.

Read the abridged interview or listen to it in its entirety here.

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