UPDATE: THIS WEEK'S WINNER IS TRACY H.
Wow! You guys do a lot of reading with your kids. The Scholastic Summer Challenge people are sure to be impressed, and they will be happily giving away another pack of free books to an A Parent in Silver Spring reading family this week too!
The Scholastic Summer Challenge is a program to ensure kids don't fall victim to the "summer slide" - a loss of skills that can occur when they're out of school and out of practice. The website, parent resources and Summer Reading Lists all help keep kids' skills current.
Additionally, Scholastic recommends kids read at least 4 new books over the summer. Thus I'm going to recommend 4 books each week for three weeks in July. In the comments below, if you recommend 4 titles too, then you'll be entered to win a pack of 4 new books especially tailored to your child's age! One winner will be randomly chosen each week on Wednesday. So you didn't win last week, enter again!
Check out the comments here for some exciting children's literature recommendations from fellow parents. And here are my family's recs for this week:
Tanya and the Red Shoes by Patricia Lee Gauch, illustrated by Satomi Ichikawa $13.95 Ever since the kind Silver Spring Librarian Margarete Levy (aka Mother Goose) recommended them to my daughter, Eve can't get enough of the Tanya books. This series chronicles a little girl's dream to dance ballet. I can't get enough of Ichikawa's luminous watercolor illustrations.
Komodo! by Peter Sis $14.03
Personally, I think a run-in with a real life komodo dragon sounds like a nightmare, but for reptile-loving kids this fantastical picture book is a dream come true. My son loves the hidden pictures that reflect the protagonist's yearning to spy the big lizards. Shudder.
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag $7.99
The lyrical dialogue and retro ink drawings explain the numerical concepts of "hundreds, thousands, millions and billions and trillions" better than this numerically-challenged mama can on her own. It's also a fable about kindness and charity. Written in 1929, it still feels current.
A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson $16.37
Isn't this every child's first introduction to poetry? Did you ever memorize "The rain is raining all around," or "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me..."? My kids can sit for ages luxuriating in the gentle rhymes.
Well, there's my 4 for this week - what are yours? Congrats to last week's winner Anita K, and this week I hope YOU win!
|