These words from Waber’s book, “Courage,” can be applied to many of his familiar characters. There is Ira, from “Ira Sleeps Over” (my favorite book by Waber), who must decide whether or not to take his teddy bear when invited to stay the night at a friend’s house for the first time. Lyle (of “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” and many follow-up books) saves a neighbor from a burning building and teaches us that we can’t judge someone just by how they look. And as title characters “Evie & Margie” learn, it can take a great deal of everyday courage to admit feeling jealous and repair a friendship.

Waber passed away on May 16, and his signature illustrations, warm wordplay and gentle treatment of complicated emotions will be very much missed. Check out one of Waber’s many wonderful books in celebration of his great talent and contributions to the world of children’s literature.

Ambria Van Engelenhoven

A group of very talented kids and teens created bookmarks to promote our upcoming Summer Reading program. The teen theme this year is “Beneath the Surface” and the kids’ theme is “Dig into Reading.” See the 2013 winners, and be sure to pick up a bookmark when you visit the library!

“Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo.” – Paul Simon

Ah, the family trip to the zoo. Mom would throw together bologna sandwiches, pick up some store-brand soda and chips, toss them all into the cooler and load up the station wagon for the two-hour drive to the zoo. “I get the front!” “I get the back!” “I get the way-back!” I always got the ‘way-back’ and didn’t really have to call for it – no one else wanted to squeeze in between the cooler and the stroller back where you couldn’t roll down a window, but I knew that was the best place to be seen by the truck drivers and to get them to blast their horns by pumping my fist. “Honk! Honk!”

For us, “the Zoo” meant The St. Louis Zoo. We’d find a parking spot along a street in Forest Park and hike our way to the entrance. As soon as we walked past the vertical ZOO sign, we would get a balloon. I always thought it was extravagant to pay for a big balloon, especially when we scrimped on our lunch and such. I eventually learned the reasoning; the balloon was like a homing beacon that allowed the adults to spot us if we ventured too far away from the group. Brilliant!

The Zoo had a train…a bright red train. While seeing the animals was free, riding the train was not. We always begged and wheedled to get to ride the train. My savvy mother would hold her cards pretty close to her chest, saying, “Maybe if you’re good.” Years later I learned that she always planned on walking to the back of the Zoo and catching the train back to the entrance. “I didn’t want to walk all that way!” Tricky, tricky survival-mode mama. (The Zooline Railroad celebrates it’s 50th anniversary this year!)

We’re fortunate here in Columbia, having two zoos close enough for a day trip; The St. Louis Zoo, a leader in animal conservation and education, and the ever evolving Kansas City Zoo. Check out their websites, consider joining their Friends groups and get your plan on! Meanwhile, check out these zoo reads at DBRL:

Some fun, easy fiction titles are “Good Night Gorilla“ by Peggy Rathmann, “Peek-a-zoo!” by Marie Torres Cimarusti and “Alligator Baby” by Robert Munsch.

Easy non-fiction titles can set the stage for meeting the zoo animals. Try ”Life-size Zoo” and “More Life-size Zoo” by Teruyuki Komiya, or “ABC Zooborns” by Andrew Bleiman. The photography in these books is amazing!

For a little insight into why we have zoos, check out “You Can’t See a Dodo at the Zoo” by Fred Ehrlich or Carolyn Mueller’s “Bubbles, The Dwarf Zebu.”

For more tricky tips for traveling with little ones, check out “The Travel Mom’s Ultimate Book of Family Travel” and this fun book of travel games, “Travelmates.”

I highly recommend a road trip. Not the bouncing around like a basketball in the “way-back” (be sure your kid is safely restrained), and I can’t recommend bologna sandwiches anymore, but I strongly recommend at least one visit to the zoo this summer. “Honk, honk!”

Going on a picnic,
leaving right away.
If it doesn’t rain,
we’ll stay all day.
Did you bring the (sandwiches)?
Yes I brought the (sandwiches).
Ready for a picnic, here we go!

When singing this song, my family likes to keep listing all of the words we’ve added in the previous verses, trying to remember the order, going from the newest item to the oldest. What a workout for your brain! If you are not sure of the melody, stop by the library, and I will sing my off-key version. Or you can just check out Raffi’s performance of this song on “The Corner Grocery Store” CD.

Did you know that octopuses, or octopi (as I like to call them), have beaks? They are also very good at hiding. Sea stars don’t have eyes; they have eye spots. Where did I find these fascinating facts? I learned this information and much more from two nonfiction books on our new books shelf at the library. The Life Under the Sea series has six titles written by Cari Meister:

• “Dolphins”
• “Seals”
• “Walruses”
• “Octopuses”
• “Whales”
• “Sea Stars”

The colorful pictures and the easy-to-read text make it a snap for younger kiddos to learn facts about life in the ocean. The books even include a picture glossary at the end to explain more about what was just read. A simple table of contents and an index at the end of each book introduce kiddos to using these important parts of nonfiction books. Sea life not your thing? Try the Animals on the Farm series and see what you and your kids can learn! (We have a soft spot for the baby goats - so cute!)

Many kids’ titles are available for download, both new books and classics. These are great for families to listen to during long car trips. Audiobooks can also be a good transitional tool for reluctant readers, either alone or with the print copy to follow along. Some books are even better to listen to, when the narrators do a good job of dramatizing the story.

I recently decided to check out “The Beverly Cleary Audio Collection” because it had six books in one download.

• “Ellen Tebbits” is a classic story of a girl dealing with bullies, embarrassment, and other problems of growing up.
• “Otis Spofford” gives readers the bully’s point of view.
• “Emily’s Runaway Imagination” is historical fiction that gives kids an idea of what it would have been like to grow up in a small town many years ago.
• “Mitch and Amy” are twins who bicker constantly, a theme any child with a sibling is sure to identify with.
• “Socks” is a cat who resents being displaced by a baby as the center of his family’s attention, and his story is narrated by Neil Patrick Harris.
• “Muggie Maggie” is the story of a girl who refuses to learn to write in cursive.

Of course, the themes of these books are universal and timeless, and I would highly recommend them all. However, I will add one caveat: these books should perhaps be read together as a family because some of them were written over 50 years ago, and there are a few references to things no longer in common use, like union underwear and party lines. For that matter, parents may not know these terms, and dictionary searches may be in order, but what a great opportunity to model for your kids what to do when they come across text they don’t understand!

If you’ve never downloaded an audiobook before, check out our Quick Start Guide. If you have any trouble, that page also has tips and links to Frequently Asked Questions. OverDrive has recently upgraded their system to be more user-friendly, so it’s even easier than it used to be to download and listen to books for free!

To make the trucks:

We used DLTK’s pattern for the dump truck. We suggest you skip the paint and use markers instead. Markers allow your kiddos to custom detail their trucks. You can geek out adding specialty headlights and chrome wheels, but honestly, we got excited about drawing passengers and drivers. (One’s a hedgehog.) If you aren’t ready to hand your child markers, try stickers.

We also attached the truck bed with masking tape so that it can be raised and lowered. We think you will be impressed with this upgrade.

Add signs into the mix: 

We found cute traffic signs on Doodles and Jots. Include signs your child knows, like the stop sign, and more unique ones. My favorite is “Be alert for bears.” Be imaginative in how you incorporate the signs’ meanings into your play. Are the cars following the speed limit? Who has the right of way? We’ve got books on signs that you can use for inspiration.

Note: we simplified the sign making instructions. Instead of slicing holes in water bottle lids, we used our leftover egg carton pieces.

Why? 

Adding print to play helps your child develop print awareness, knowing that print has meaning.

P.S. It’s also FUN!

When you read a picture book like Nikki McClure’s “Apple,” chances are your young child is focusing on the beautiful illustrations, the fruit a splash of red that appears on each page. From time to time, point to the words as you read so that your child learns you are reading the text, not the pictures. If a book has a repeating word or phrase, point it out and encourage the child to say it each time it appears on the page. Let the child turn the pages, so your little one learns how a book actually works, which way the spine should face and which part of the book is its beginning.

Show your child that print is all around us. Point out signs in the grocery store or along the road. When your child starts yelling “S-T-O-P spells stop!” from the backseat, you’ll know you are successfully developing her print awareness!

Use every opportunity to read print aloud to your child. Soon your kiddo will learn that print is everywhere and that print has meaning. A powerful thing indeed.

Any book can help develop this early literacy skill, but stories with patterns and predictable events and books about books are particularly good. Here are a few of my family’s favorites.

• “Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type” by Doreen Cronin
• “Orange Pear Apple Bear” by Emily Gravett
• “Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes” by Eric Litwin
• “We Are in a Book” by Mo Willems
• “Where’s Spot?” by Eric Hill

There are 12 different themes, and each Little Red Reading Bag contains books, a DVD, a music CD and a couple of awesome toys. Bags also include a skill sheet with suggestions of activities to support early literacy skills. (But don’t tell the kids – they just think it’s fun!)

Let’s say we check out Little Red Reading Bag B: Classic Tales. Inside we find four puppets. Maybe they are the characters from “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”! Let’s turn a table on its side…instant puppet theater!

Later, we can snuggle up and read the five classic children’s books from the bag and watch the DVD “James Marshall’s Fairytale Collection.”  After all those stories, we can play with the Story Starter Cubes and make up our own!  Put on the “Sing Me a Story” CD at nap time, and Heather Forest’s gentle tales with catchy refrains will lull little ones to sleep.

In Columbia, ask for a Little Red Reading Bag at the Children’s Desk or place a hold through our online catalog. You can request to have a bag delivered to and held for you at any of our branches or the Bookmobile. And together, we’ll make it through to May!

Knowing that stories have a beginning, middle and end, and the ability to talk about activities in a sequence are important to developing narrative skills. Want to make a story more fun? Act it out! Acting out a story helps your child understand and remember the order of events in the story. One of the favorites in our household is “Mud Puddle” by Robert Munsch. I love to pretend to be the mud puddle and get my son “completely all over muddy.”

“But my child is just a baby,” you may be thinking. “She can’t talk.” Even if your child is too young to talk, allowing your baby to babble to you helps with her expressive language so that when she gets older, she can understand what she is reading. So get out that book and read it for the 501st time!