What My Child Is Reading

Selena and I have had a lot of fun with Mitzi’s World by Deborah Raffin photographs by Jane Wooster Scott. This is an eye spy book. I love the artwork and that is what it is artwork, not just illustrations. Selena has had fun learning new names for objects, buildings, and just things she has never seen before. In a way this book in itself has been a real geography lesson for her. In each photo you will find a small dog named Mitzi. There are 150 details to find in 15 works of folk art. Selena found all the items fairly easy, with exception to some of the things she had never seen before or never heard called by the names used in the book, but once she understood what they were talking about it didn’t take her long to move on. We both loved this book if only for the art work contained within.

When the World Is Ready for Bed by Gillian Shields illustrated by Anna Currey, was another great hit with Selena. It is a story about a bunny family and their evening routine from supper to crawling in bed. It demonstrates how they all pick up the toys, have family time of discussing the days events, bathe and groom, then go off to bed with a bedtime story. It is a fairly easy read, and the illustrations are very cute.
Over the Hills & Far Away by Chris Conover is based on a nursery rhyme song entitled the same. It is about a boy portrayed in the book by a groundhog, who learns at a young age how to play the bag pipes. He goes through life playing his bag pipes as he experiences everything from growing up to marriage, the only thing is he only knows one song. The words in the story actually reflect the words in the song which is an old Nursery Rhyme. Selena was just disappointed that I did not know the tune to the song and could not sing it for her. I remember my mom singing this nursery rhyme to me, one of the reasons I picked the book up, but after we got it home I couldn’t remember just how the tune went. Even with the music in the back of the book, we never really figured it out.  I looked it up on the Internet and could find the words to the song and I found a lot of articles about this nursery rhyme but could not find any actual music to play for Selena. She still enjoyed the story though.