Picture book Monday – week 8

Holy moly! I just looked at my Goodreads list of what we have read in the past week and it is slightly obscene. Between spending some time with my 3 year old at the elementary school library and then finding a slew of awesome books at the public library, we have read 28 new books this week! Of course J, my 7 year old, is still completely hooked on Harry Potter and is nearing the end of book 4, but even she has gotten into the fun of new picture books this week.

 It is hard to pick stand-outs when the list gets this long, but that won’t stop me 🙂 I have already written posts on Zvuvi’s Israel and Count the Monkeys, two really great books. Here are some of the others we enjoyed.

An Apple Pie for Dinner – E picked this out at the library, which always makes me happy that I wasn’t the one to find it. This story actually reminded me in some ways of Only One Cowry where one item is continually exchanged for another. The main character in this story is a woman who wants to make an apple pie but only has plums. She picks the plums and goes on a journey exchanging them until she gets apples. Along the way, she also helps a family in need and makes friends. She finally gets her apples and invites everyone she has met along the way to come and share her pie with her. The art in this was also special as it was mixed media instead of simple illustrations. A surprising gem.

Rabbit and the Not-So-Big-Bad Wolf – I think E picked this one as well, but J and I read it one day while she napped and we both thought it was pretty darn funny.

No Monkeys, No Chocolate – I had heard so many amazing things about this book that when I saw a copy at our library, I actually gasped in joy. Yes, I am that much of a geek. The book was a wonderful journey on the life of a cocoa bean. It was actually a whole lot more scientific and in-depth than I expected and appropriate for older elementary school aged kids to grasp the concept.

The Princess Knight – At some point last week, E made a comment that she wanted to be a Princess Knight, not knowing that this book existed. I’m more than willing to encourage that concept and told her about the book. She was so excited that she was actually the one to remind me to check it out. Gotta love the mind of a 3 year old. This book is a great story about a girl who is raised with her 3 older brothers to do all of the things they do – jousting, horseback riding and sword-fighting. Her size makes it difficult, but her determination wins out. When her father informs her that there will be a jousting competition and the winner will win her hand in marriage, she secretly joins the competition and of course wins. Her father finally sees the error in his ways and she marries the man she loves. I’m a push-over for a story with a strong female lead like this, and I like that it just feels a little different.

Library Mouse – If you haven’t read these, you should. Both the original and A World to Explore are fabulous books. I wrote about them in more detail back in my post about books regarding the library, but when we were reading these the other night, J even said that these were 2 of her favorite picture books and can I please check if there are more. I put holds on 2 books at the library that night and one just came in today.

Cold Snap – I picked out this book at the library because it was seasonally appropriate. This book is about a town going through a major cold spell.  The first day the kids play in the snow and enjoy themselves, but then it just drags on and everyone is freezing and oddly many people’s heat stops working. One day it actually gets down to zero (gasp!). I found that page particularly funny as there were many days when I lived in Kansas that I would get in my car in the morning and it would be a negative number. I can only imagine what people who live in states that get serious winter think of this book. However, considering that we just got 8 inches of snow that quite seriously shut our town down for 4 days, this seemed very appropriate for my kids. Both of my girls enjoyed watching the icicle on the town founder’s nose grow and grow and there were always things to look for in the illustrations on each page. E has made me read this multiple times in the past week.

A number of our books this week were non-fiction. Some due to random discoveries at the library and some due to my post about 10 non-fiction picture books that we love for #nf10for10. I pulled some books off of our shelves for that post and both girls saw them and asked me to read them. I never argue with that. I will write about those books more on Wednesday for our weekly non-fiction round up.

As always, keeping track of all of the picture books that we read is a part of the 300 picture book challenge hosted by Anne-Marie at Child Led Chaos. The current posts on this topic can be found on her link-up. We are currently at 140 books out of 300 and loving every minute of it. Click over to Anne-Marie’s site to get inspiration of other great picture books out there.