We are just a few days away from Thanksgiving, so I read another poem from Thanksgiving Day at Our House by Nancy White Carlstron.  It’s great to read poems to young children.  They are short, so it fits the attention span.  The rhymes catch their attention also.  We can often get a child to finish a sentence when the word rhymes with something they heard a moment ago.
Will Shortz, the puzzle master on NPR’s Weekend Edition, often challenges callers with puzzles they can solve by rhyming words.  So it must be great for brains of all ages.

I shared this with the nursery school children last week, and I wanted to share it in my storytime this week.  Children take it at face value.  Of course, everyone helps everyone else.  Grownups, on the other hand, audibly sigh when a simple story is read that shows the power of community service.

It wasn’t a mistake – me reading a book about planting a seed at this time of year.  It’s always good at Thanksgiving to remember and be thankful for our food and all the people who grow food for us.
I also wanted to draw attention to the fact that the book has been featured in our community storywalk, but we’ll be taking it down for the winter.  Finally, I wanted to show the power of sharing.

A new book by Emily Gravett is almost always a cause for me to celebrate.  I love so many of her books.  But I was not leading the preschool storytimes this summer when this book came out.  It is part of a new series.  The most recent one is Bear & Hare: snow!  I decided to keep that for a later date, and shared this one instead – with a grateful heart that there will be no snow this Thanksgiving.  I like it when we read a few books at storytime with the same characters, so we’ll hear more about Bear & Hare this winter.  This is a very simple book where the illustrations tell most of the story, so it is probably better one-on-one.  Check it out.

This was a big hit at the nursery school, and I want to read There Are No Cats in This Book!  soon, so we needed to hear this one again in storytime.  One child was at the nursery school last week and she came rushing up to me when I held up this book – all excited that we were going to do it again.

I just love that kind of enthusiasm for books!

~Maureen