Day 15 of the 25 Days of Christmas: Celebrate Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales!

Expose your child to timeless tales with these two great treasuries!

Engelbreit, Mary.
Mary Engelbreit's Fairy Tales: Twelve Timeless Treasures.
October 2010.
HarperCollins.
Review copy provided courtesy of publisher.

The images and illustrations of Mary Engelbreit come to life in this wonderful treasury of twelve fairy tales, meant for sharing with your child! Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Frog Prince, The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Pea, Rapunzel, Thumbelina, Snow White and the Red Rose, Rumpelstiltskin, and Sleeping Beauty.

The fairy tales are generally 12 pages or less, making this an ideal treasury for bedtime reading, as well as a quick reference for teaching using different fairy tales!

Mavor, Sally.
Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes.
September 2010.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Review copy provided courtesy of publisher.

Complete with over sixty nursery rhymes, Pocketful of Posies is a wonderful resource for parents, teachers and children alike! From the classics, (Little Bo Peep, Pat-a-cake, and Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill) to the lesser known (See saw, Margery Daw, and Molly, My Sister), children will love the rhyming and take pleasure in learning all about nursery rhymes!

This is definitely a must have and I'm so lucky that I can take this in and share all these with my preschoolers!

In your gift basket, along with the two titles above, include:

• Treasury of 25 Classics: Fairy Tales, Magic... and More! (Scholastic Storybook Treasures DVD)
• Classic Fairy Stories (Audio CD)
• 100 Favourite Nursery Rhymes & Songs
• Mother Goose Treasury, Volume 1: Sing Along Nursery Rhymes
  

If you're interested in finding out more information about any of the books reviewed or if you'd like to purchase the books, click the cover image for a link to Amazon.com. I am an Amazon Affiliate, so any purchases you make after clicking these images will result in my receiving a small percentage of the sale price!

Review and Giveaway: Wolf Pie

Teach children not to "judge a book by its cover" with new, unexpected characters based on a longtime childhood fairy tale.

Seabrooke, Brenda.
Wolf Pie.
June 2010.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Review copy provided courtesy of publisher.

The three Pygg brothers get an unexpected visitor one day shortly after they move into their sturdy, new home. What you (and children) expect to play out doesn't... and you just might be surprised at how the story does end! Together, the unlikely foursome team up together to play a trick on a large pack of wolves, surprising everyone with their creativity in the process.

The story will definitely impress upon readers that you really shouldn't judge someone based on just their "cover!" Children will likely easily catch on to this. The book itself is quite lengthy... but definitely ideal for a family (or classroom) read-aloud over the course of a week or so. I do think that it will capture the attention of the youngest of readers, so long as they are previously introduced and familiar with the story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf.

Learning/Reading Activities:

• Read a version of the Three Little Pigs and Wolf Pie aloud with your child(ren). After reading, have your child complete a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the two different stories. With older children, you could also ask them to write an essay upon completing the Venn diagram. Venn diagram can be downloaded here.
• Work with your child(ren) to create "Wolf Pies" of your own for dinner one night! They're really just vegetable pot pies... a fairly simple recipe can be found here!

HOW TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:

• Leave a comment on this post sharing your child's favorite fairy tale.
  
• Be sure to leave an email address along with your comment.
• Deadline to enter is Saturday, September 25th at 11:59PM EST.
• For an extra entry(or three):
  1. Become a subscriber/follower of my blog (+1)
  2. Blog about this giveaway on your own blog and leave a link in your comment (+1)
  3. Leave a tweet on your Twitter page and then leave a link in your comment (+1)
• Contest is open to U.S. Residents only, sorry for any inconveniences!
• Winner will be selected at random by Saturday, October 2nd and will receive a copy of Wolf Pie.

If you're interested in finding out more information about any of the books reviewed or if you'd like to purchase the books, click the cover image for a link to Amazon.com. I am an Amazon Affiliate, so any purchases you make after clicking these images will result in my receiving a small percentage of the sale price!

Fairy Tale (Fable) Friday... Last Day of the "Old" Style Blog!

I have five reviews for today! Some are more recent, Zen Shorts; some are almost ancient, Deep in the Forest. However, they're all fairy tales/folk tales/fables and I enjoyed them all. I would have to say, my favorite was probably Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky. It wasn't at all familiar to me when I stumbled upon it at the library. All of the others I had at least heard about it! Second favorite to me was probably Deep in the Forest. I really enjoyed this wordless rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I could really see a teacher incorporating this into a unit on different versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, perhaps as some form of assessment by having students write their own version, based on what they have learned from different versions and basing it upon the illustrations in the book.

Designed to teach us to reexamine habits, desires, concepts and fears, Zen Shorts are short meditations. Karl, Michael and Addy view their world differently after Stillwater, a panda, moves into their neighborhood and shares a different tale with each of them, teaching them life lessons in a unique way.

Other Books by Muth:
The Three Questions, Jon J. Muth
Stone Soup, Jon J. Muth
Gershon’s Monster, Jon J. Muth

This African folktale tells the story about how the sun and the moon came to live/settle in the sky. Their friend, the ocean and its inhabitants came to visit, quickly filling the house and pushing the un and the moon onto the roof and eventually into the sky, as the house continued to fill with water and water animals.

Lesson Plans/Book Activities:
http://techplan.edzone.net/ci2006/SunMoonSky.doc
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/nttidb/lessons/ut/moonut.html

http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3863

This Mexican fable teaches that the strongest person is always you. In her attempt to bring home “a great big crumb,” the little red ant asks for help from those who she feels might be the strongest. When she gets no help from others, the little ant realizes just how strong she really is.

Lesson Plans/Book Activities:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/6-4_(K)_Writing_to_Text__107410_7.doc http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2000/4/00.04.06.x.html
http://www.plumasarts.com/pdf/lp/daphne.pdf

In a take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Turkle’s worldless version switches roles slightly, with a small bear cub entering the home of a family deep in the forest. When the family returns home, they find their house in shambles, with their cereal bowls left empty, the baby’s chair broken, and Mama’s bed pillow torn and the bed messed. The dark pencil drawn illustrations leave you feeling as though you’re really deep in the forest.

Lesson Plans/Book Activities:
http://www.lib.ucon.edu/online/research/speclib/ASC/findaids/Turkle/MSS20000115.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson853/FracturedFairyTalesBooklist.pdf

In this Mexican rendition of Cinderella, the Mexican culture is heavily touched upon and realistically portrayed. Readers are introduced to some aspects of the Spanish language and these terms are translated to ensure that they meaning/comprehension continues. The mosaic-like tile backgrounds and arcrylic illustrations along with the text tell a story very similar to the Cinderalla known by so many young readers while emphasizing Mexican culture and traditions.

Lesson Plans/Book Activities:
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tsl/archives/04-1/lesson027.shtml
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/multicultural-literature/reading-comprehension/34368.html
http://www.sunbeltpub.com/sunbeltpub/html/bilingual.pdf