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April is National Poetry, Garden, Humor, and Math Education month.  But did you know that April is also Nation Frog Month?  Here are a few titles that will get your readers jumping out of their seats.

Nic Bishop Frogs, photographed and written by Bishop, is a companion to the 2008 Sibert Honor-winning book Nic Bishop Spiders.  With clear, informative text and vivid photos, this book about agile amphibians does not disappoint.  Readers will enjoy the author’s note at the end of the book which explains that some of these photos were taken in Bishop’s own backyard.  To get certain shots, he even trained a frog to catch food right in front of him!

Great for beginning readers, Fun Facts about Frogs is another book full of wonderful  frog  photographs.  Author Carmen Bredeson teaches readers about frogs in a question-and-answer format.  Complete with a glossary and life-cycle diagram, Fun Facts about Frogs is a great pick-up.

In more of an environmental twist, learn about how the environment affects frogs in Frogs in Danger by Jim Whiting.  Topics of mutated frogs, global warming, and the future of frogs are explored in this photo-filled title.  Readers will get information about what they can do to help the earth and the frog population.

Happy National Frog Month!

Cowboys come in all shapes and sizes. There’s the lady-sheriff and the rest of the townspeople of Fiasco in Tales From Gizzard’s Grill by Jeanne Steig who have all sorts of adventures in this tall-tale-esque story. Ridin’ Dinos With Buck Bronco is another tall tale featuring a rancher who gets more than he bargained for with some strange eggs that turn out to be dinosaur eggs.

Catch a case of the cowboy sillies with The Toughest Cowboy by John Frank or the Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake. The visual humor and nuance of these books will have kids wanting to read these books again and again.

  Cowboys aren't always boys, either. Erica Silverman has published four early chapter book so far about Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa, her horse. The newest title in the series is out this month: Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa: Rain or Shine.

Then there’s Cowboy Slim by Julie Danneberg. Slim wants to be a cowboy, but he writes poetry. What kind of cowboy writes poetry? At least, that’s what the other cowboys say, but little do they know the power of words. 

Pair these titles with some great nonfiction to tie it all together. Try classics like Cowboys of the Wild West by Russell Freedman or Cowboy Country by Ann Herbert Scott for a look at life in the wild west that will fascinate your primary grades audience.

The fourth season of Project Runway just wrapped up this week. To stave off any withdrawal symptoms, here are a couple fantastic fashion design books.

Fashion Design: The Art of Style by Jen Jones is a highly photographic, behind-the-scenes peek at fashion design and designers, past and present. And, taking a more in depth look at one designer, Vera Wang by Anne M. Todd delves into her design roots as well as what motivates and inspires her to create today.

Interested in becoming a designer yourself? Check out these two tomes. Trendsetter: Have You Got What It Takes to Be a Fashion Designer? by Lisa Thompson looks at just what the title asks. And get started yourself by transforming clothes you already have with the ideas in Sew Subversive: Down and Dirty DIY for the Fabulous Fashionista by Melissa Rannals.

Fashion can be fiction too. From the publisher of Gossip Girl comes Poseur by Rachel Maude. Four Hollywood Hills sophomore girls couldn’t be more different, so when a school class forces them together to create a fashion label, the sparks fly.

Happy Leap Day to all and especially happy birthday to everyone who was born on this special day!  Since Leap Day occurs only once every four years, take this opportunity to step out of your comfort level and try something new.

Interested in joining the dance buzz and learning a few moves of your own?  Hip-Hop Dancing by Joan Freese will take you through hip-hop history, explain what type of clothing you should wear, and show how to do a few basic moves.  Once you get the hang of it maybe you (or your middle to high school-aged student) can form your own crew and win a few battles!

Dancing not your thing?  Try your hand in the kitchen with Spatulatta Cookbook by the Gerasole sisters,  Olivia and Isabella (hosts from www.spatulatta.com).  Written for grades 3 and up, this creative cookbook is full of bright photographs, easy recipes, and sections that explain basic cooking skills and measurement.  Delicious and fun recipes like “Mashed Potato Ghosts” and “Yumbo Gumbo” really make this cookbook stand out from the rest – there’s even a section for snacks and another for vegetarians!

If dancing and cooking are too stressful for you, then a relaxing activity like yoga may be what you are looking for.  Strike a Pose: The Planet Girl Guide to Yoga by Karen Birkemoe casually explains how yoga can be incorporated in your everyday life.  Organized for grades 5 and up, it covers a variety of poses, breathing, and meditation.  Simple illustrations will help readers execute and understand beginning yoga positions.

Take your leap today, unless you can wait until Leap Day 2012!

On February 27th, Polar Bear Day celebrates the world's largest carnivore.  It may be a big, meat eater, but somehow it often looks a bit cuddlier in children’s books than it might in real life.  Just look at how cute the little polar bear is in Lonesome Polar Bear by Jane Cabrera.  All the little cub wants is a friend to play with, but it’s hard to find a friend when all the other animals think of you as a big, scary predator as described in Sandra Markle’s Polar Bears in her Animal Predators series from Carolrhoda, which features a photo of a mother and cub feasting on a bloody carcass on the very first page.    Two very different depictions of the same animal.  One will appeal to storytime audiences and the other will be perfect for your reluctant readers looking for something a bit graphic.

Polar Star by Sally Grindley is an accurate yet gentle look at the polar bear as a hunter that blends fact and fiction as it follows a mama bear searching for food with her cubs.  Polar Bears are Hungry by Carol Carrick has a similar story, but a slightly different focus.  In spare text, the point is put forth that our warming temperatures are making it difficult for polar bears (and other animals) to find food.  This is a good choice for talking about the environment, global warming, and endangered species possibly paired with Polar Bears in Danger by Helen Orme and Face to Face with Polar Bears by Norbert Rosing for the latest facts on the polar bear population.

Make friends with real polar bears in Pair of Polar Bears by Joanne Ryder and Knut: How One Little Polar Bear Captivated the World by Carig Hatkoff.  Both are filled with vivid photographs of baby bears that will capture your heart.

Happy Polar Bear Day!

by Louis Sachar
Harper Trophy 1978

They got it wrong when they built Wayside School. It was supposed to be one story tall and thirty rooms wide, but instead it's one room wide and thirty stories tall. Sorry about that, say the builders. It's a weird building (with a lot of playground as a result) that has a lot of strange stories attached. And with that we're off on 30 short stories (one for each of the building's floor, though they all concern the occupants in the class on the top floor) of all the strange goings on at Wayside School.

It's taken me a while to get to reading this book because it seems beyond review. Just shy of being 30 years old the book has obviously proven itself over time with kids, and given its age I'm sure there is a generation bringing this book home to read whose parents read it when it was still a new book. But I missed it, being that I was in high school working on my AP English when it was initially released.

Each of these incredibly short interconnected stories usually focuses on one individual and is made up of complete nonsense. Their first teacher turns students into apples when they misbehave until she herself is turned into an apple and eaten by the playground supervisor. One boy becomes class president and is responsible for turning on and off the lights but loses his position one day when he is late for school and finds the class working in the dark because no one else knew how to turn on the lights. Utter absurdity, pure entertainment.

This is one of those books that flies under the radar with parents, one of those books kids read and like and the parents just go "They really liked those wayside books" but never read themselves. Having transitioned from series books like Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House or Jon Scieszka's Time Warp Trio parents my just write off the Wayside books as more gobble-em-up stories, books aimed at a very hungry readership that reinforce reading without challenging them either in content or vocabulary. I'd like to suggest that there might be another reason kids are drawn to these stories, something beyond the familiarity factor.

A little over a year ago I caught my girls working on a secret project in a notebook. Caught is a relative word here, they only hid it from me when I casually went to check on why they were being so quiet. The notebook, it turned out, was a collection of individual stories about various "characters" in their school, friends whose names were changed only slightly in order to distance themselves from being accused of making fun of their classmates. I smiled, remembering how me and some friends had made a similar collection of stories when we were their age, sharing them in secret on the playground or at lunch.

I don't remember the source of inspiration for the character studies we made back then, and I can't be certain that the Wayside Stories were the inspiration for my girls, but the timing makes it plausible that the two are connected. Even if it's a coincidence there appears to be something deeply rooted in the exercise of children inventing nonsensical stories once they have a feel for the telling of stories. The freedom of being able to write whatever you want, coupled by the excitement of actually inventing stories is just too irresistible. The appeal of a book that does the same thing probably equally so.