Skip to main content

Nursery Rhymes Rule: The Helen Oxenbury Nursery Collection (2004)

The Nursery Collection is a 91-page hardcover filled with traditional nursery rhymes, stories, and poems gathered by English author/illustrator Helen Oxenbury. "Hardcover books for babies?" you ask. Yes! They make great reading for very young babies who are too young to grab at sharp corners. They'll listen more than look, and look at you more than at the book. Look back.

My favorite pages hold the "Verses from TINY TIM." The collected poems are rhythmic, rhyming and playful - perfect read-aloud for new babes in arms. Take for example ‘MICE,’ by Rose Amy Fyleman, below. 
MICE
I think mice
Are rather nice.
Their tails are long
Their faces small.
They haven’t any chins at all.
Their ears are pink,
Their teeth are white,
They run about
The house at night.
They nibble things
They shouldn’t touch
And no one seems
To like them much.
But I think mice
Are rather nice.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Is a Concept Book?

The short (or long or tall) of it: A concept book is a picture book that teaches a broad concept to young readers. Examples? Alphabet books, number books, books about c o l o r s , opposites, feelings and emotions.   A concept is an idea, an abstract notion. Here's the rub. Very young readers are concrete thinkers, very "here and now." Luckily concept books do not have to teach the alphabetic principle, or algebra, or color theory. They teach what toddlers and young preschoolers can see, hear, touch, and feel - the upper and lowercase, quiet and loud, and happy and sad face of things.   Three concept books by DENISE FLEMING: LUNCH (1998) from Henry Holt and Co. Concept: Colors. A toothsome mouse called Mouse eats his way through the primary and secondary colors and then some. The pictures are deliciously big. Bon appetit! The emergent literacy bent: The text is sparse and the letters large, fostering print awareness. Point out a few words as you read. Clever...
4 comments
Read more

All A Board! All About Books for Babies

Hello! I've moved to Poughkeepsie (New York, not Arkansas) and started a free online magazine about books for babies. It's called All A Board! and can be accessed via a title search at issuu.com or by clicking here . It offers a peek at new and upcoming board titles. Age icons help match babies to books based on stages of development. Articles focus on the people that make board books happen and early book sharing. The first issue is out. What's on top of your read-aloud stack?
1 comment
Read more

Books Take a Bite Out of Vegetables

It's tomato season in Louisiana. Translation: Tomato sandwich season!  Two slices of white lightly toasted, thick slabs of juicy red goodness, Blue Plate mayo, a sprinkle of salt. Summer HEAVEN.   Does your tot take to tomatoes? Does she beam at the sight of green beans? Does eggplant egg cite him? I thought not. Board books can help.   In their 2014 article Let's look at Leeks! Picture Books Increase Toddlers' Willingness to Look At, Taste and Consume Unfamiliar Vegetables , UK r esearchers Philippa Heath, Carmel Houston-Price and Orla B. Kennedy conclude that reading books about veggies to a two-year-old can increase his interest in the nutritious fare.  Study participants were more apt to eye, try and eat more of a vegetable that they'd read about with their moms, given the vegetable was new to them.  The children in the study were 19 to 26 months of age, which is important because strictly speaking study results relate only to same-aged kiddos. Moms wer...
5 comments
Read more