Book Review: My Little Sister Ate One Hare

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My Little Sister Ate One Hare became a fast favorite for my middle child. The little sister in the story eats the strangest things, starting small:

"My little sister ate 1 hare. We thought she'd throw up then and there."





The little sister goes on to eat more and more disgustingly delicious critters, building from that one hare to nine lizards. Gross! Each verse includes a rhyme and repeats previous verses to build the suspense and silliness. It is great for toddlers and preschoolers who are starting to count and rhyme, especially those who have a little sister of their own at home.

But what about number 10? Spoiler: It turns out the one thing Little Sister can't stomach is peas, and she upchucks all the critters she has swallowed! Kevin Hawkes created delightfully silly artwork to show just what that might look like.

Books for Young Readers

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Once a child starts reading, finding books at the right level can pose a challenge. BOB Books and easy readers are a great place to start with a new reader. But after that? We find we need to balance the reading difficulty with appropriateness. Too tricky and the child gets frustrated, too simple and they lose interest. And then we have to consider the content. Will it be too much for my sensitive child? Promote questionable behaviors in my impressionable copycat?

I will be posting some of the readers and chapter books that have worked well for our family, especially series that help satisfy a voracious reader, but also some individual books. There are a few ways of measuring the difficulty of books, and you can look them up on Scholastic's Book Wizard. I prefer using the Guided Reading system, which ranks books from A to Z, as well as the easy readers that rank books up to Level 5.

BOB books are roughly levels B to G. These are great little books with lots of picture clues! They have short sentences based on building up familiarity with the sounds each letter makes. They help a child feel successful rather than overwhelmed--a BOB book was the first book my kid read on his own.

Modern and classic picture books, I Can Read!, Step Into Reading, and similar books bridge the gap from phonics series to simple chapter books. We have shelves and shelves of picture books that capture the kids' imagination. I was skeptical at first of the easy readers, but have found they are very popular and I am constantly having to re-shelve them because they are read so often! The simpler books (My First/Level 1) have very simple stories with short sentences. By Level 4, these books are divided into short chapters, but with friendly, larger text.

For simple chapter books, Flat Stanley (M), Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures (M), and The Magic Treehouse (M) were hits. Once we found characters we liked and got comfortable with the level of suspense, we stuck with a series for a while before moving on. We took turns reading as my reader tested out his comfort level.

The Boxcar Children series (O) is great for kids who are ready for longer, more complex stories. The author, Gertrude Chandler Warner, wrote the original books, and then even more were added so there are over 100! We were also delighted to discover that our library had some of the stories as audio books, and it kept my kids' attention and let me get some work done! We are working on story telling, so I asked my son to pick a book to "review." Here is his pick and what he had to say about it.




The Boxcar Children Mysteries #2: Surprise Island

Because their grandfather owns an island, the boxcar children get to sleep in a barn, and they have their own rooms. And it starts raining, and they have pans so they can catch the rain water so that way the barn doesn't get flooded. They pick from a garden which is behind the barn, and they have what they picked for one of their meals. They go on a boat. They found a very, very high shell pile. They found a tiny cave, an arrowhead, and an axe head (I think so). Then they almost get caught in the tide. Their dog, Watch, saved them. Violet got a violin. Near the end of the story, it's Benny's birthday. I think he turns 7.

Next up? Our favorite nonfiction books, The Cat in the Hat Learning Library!

Make Your Own: Story Stones

I recently ran across the idea of making story stones from Happy Hooligans. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon some river stones on clearance a few days later... then discovered an unopened container of modge podge in the garage... and then found two discarded Ranger Rick magazines at the library. The world was trying to tell me something, no?

This turned out to be an incredibly easy project that kids can help with! You start by cutting out your pictures, sizing them at least a bit smaller than the flat surface of the stones. The magazines had a lot of animal images, so I cut those out in advance. Older children might enjoy cutting pictures themselves or drawing pictures to use. I am sure stickers would also work well and have the benefit of letting younger kids get more involved in the selection process. As for me, I was excited to find a lot of pictures with word labels on them--sneaking in a few sight words and phonics practice! And the labels were helpful for the more "exotic" animals I found, like the pika. When choosing your materials, the thinner the paper the easier it is to get it to lie smooth without creases. I wouldn't recommend paper thicker than magazines unless you have especially flat stones or have a tolerance for a little puckering. (The puckering is not a problem at all, it's just a matter of preference.)

Once you have all of your pictures ready, apply a thin layer of modge podge to the stone and smooth out your picture onto it. Once it is flat, cover it with another layer of modge podge to seal it in. A sponge brush worked great for this, but any brush that won't leave a lot of texture strokes would be fine. At this point in the process, my 18-month-old got very into applying the modge podge to the stones ("Tap tap tap!") and my 4-year-old was more interested in running to the yard to look for more stones. And by the time I started working on the last stone, the first one was completely dry and ready to go. Nice! Here's a picture of this first batch:

We just tried the story stones out for the first time, letting my son pick four stones from a bag and then taking turns adding to a story. It was fodder for some silliness and he sounded out "parakeet." My daughter spent the entire story time taking stones out of the bag and putting them back in. The only change I am going to make is to have more variety in the pictures. The animals served as characters, but I'd love to have some stones for settings, actions, and emotions to give a little more of a spark to get the stories started!