The books of January

I send personalized letters to children once a month, and in each letter I write, I tell the kids about a wonderful book. I write two letters – one for older bookworms and one for younger bookworms.

Well, I finished writing my January letters yesterday, and I had so much fun searching for animal books to talk about!

I picked two really great ones, and I wanted to share them with you!

For my younger bookworms, I chose Eric Carle’s Animals Animals. This book looks so great and every single time I pick out a book to talk about I want to go out and get it for my kids! I better be careful and not listen to myself too much, or we’ll be living in a box made of books! Heehee! If I had the means available to me, I would have sooooooooooooo many books! It would be fabulous! Like those libraries in mansions with the sliding ladders…. aahhh…

Well! A girl can dream, can’t she?

Ok, ok, back to the book – it is filled with loads and loads of poetry from many different cultures! From Shakespeare to Lewis Carroll, from Emily Dickinson to Rudyard Kipling, from passages in the Bible to Japanese haikus!

And then, of course, there are the amazing and wonderfully colorful illustrations by Eric Carle – most of the animals gracing two pages each! The whale stretches out on four pages!

This book sounds really fabulous! Here it is:

The book I chose to talk about to my older bookworms is The Kingfisher First Encyclopedia of Animals. This book looks so awesome! I know, I know – I already said that about the other one, but, I just get so excited about the books that I find! (Hence, wanting to buy them all!) I mean, really, though – just look at the cover:

Doesn’t that look fabulous? I know, I know – you can’t judge a book by its cover, but, you know what? A cover can definitely draw you in! And draw me in, it did!
The best thing about this book is that it is not set up alphabetically, but, rather, in animal groups – mammals, reptiles, birds, etc. There are two great things about this – for children who are just learning to look stuff up for themselves, this can be a lot easier. Also, this will help children to better understand and learn the classifications of animals. Very cool!

The book also has over 1500 beautiful color illustrations and photographs. And it has one of my favorite features of kids books – those little cross reference boxes to help the children find related topics within the book.

Yep – those are two very good books! They get my bookworm seal of approval!

GO READ A BOOK!