We haven't had anything that I would quite call a milestone of late in my three-year-old daughter's journey towards literacy. But we have had some fun moments:
Last night my daughter asked me why she doesn't have a bubble over her head when she thinks. I must attribute this to seeing bubbles over people's heads in picture books. She's also still working to understand why she can see the people in books and movies, but they can't see her.
This weekend my husband was reading to her in bed. I was down in the kitchen. I could just hear the murmur of his voice. Every couple of minutes I would hear my daughter, much louder, chime in with "there was the mouse!". Yes, they were reading A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker & Kady MacDonald Denton. When I reviewed this book back in 2008, I enthused about it's read-aloud potential, and the fact that "I (couldn't) read the book without saying that phrase out loud." To have my initial reaction validated six years later by my own delighted three-year-old is ... satisfying, to say the least. This book remains one of my favorite read-alouds.
She was admittedly in a silly mood last night, but she was positively hysterical with laughter over The Chicken Problem by Jennifer Oxley and Billy Aronson (review here). Also, to a slightly lesser extent, Jeff Mack's Ah Ha! While these may not, in retrospect, have been good choices for bedtime books, I love it when she gets the humor in books.
We also read Extra Yarn, by Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen last night (and this morning). I've always respected what Barnett was trying to do with this book, and I do love Klassen's illustrations. But I never loved Extra Yarn for some reason (though many people, including last year's Caldecott committee, do). But I have to say that my daughter was rapt, and asked again for "the yarn book" first thing this morning. She loved the magic of the yarn box that never emptied, and she liked predicting what would qualify for a new sweater next. She noticed things in the illustrations that I had missed (or not remembered, anyway). I still don't adore this book myself, but I love that my three-year-old has her own opinions.
That's all for now. What moments have you been enjoying on your family's read-aloud journey?
© 2014 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
