And the Train Goes by William Bee

William Bee's over-the-top, almost macabre sense of humor makes a completely unique addition to the wide world of children's books. Bee's style is completely his own, and that's why I adore this author from across the pond.

I first came across Bee's wickedly funny book Beware of the Frog about a monster-eating frog who stands sentry at the front door of poor Mrs. Collywobble's house. I instantly fell in love with Beware of the Frog, but since this is a story time blog, I have to warn you that it is so completely over the top, it might frighten young children. Today's selection by William Bee is And The Train Goes... and though true to Bee's humorously subversive style, there is nothing at all frightening about it.

And the Train Goes.. is a little train book with detailed line-drawing illustrations, flamboyant circus colors--green apple meets eggplant--and roll-off-your tongue prose. In fact, I think the pacing is just perfect. And this time, there is no sting at the end of Bee's little tale. Since this book still has a pinch of Bee's subversive sense of humor, toddlers will be mesmerized by the read-out-loud prose, AND parents will be chuckling along at the busy conductor and the sights and sounds of the train station and the train's passengers.

In this book you will find ladies eating cakes ("Lovely cake, Doris, Lovely Tea Mabel"), a muttering fireman shoveling coal, soldiers on parade, and children on a class trip ("Please, sir, please ma'am...are we there yet?"), businessmen shouting "Time is money, Time is money!", and even a guard sleeping on the job.

All the while, the train goes, clickerty-click, clickerty-clack, and chuff-puff, chufferty puff.

What's not to like?

So give this book a try. The illustrations have an almost hippy sensibility to them. The apple greens and tomato reds and eggplant purples in this book are wonderfully British, and full of humorous detail. Look for spitballs on the school children's train cars, and notice the businessmen are eating the eggs as quickly as the hens headed to market can lay them.

This book is a quick read and I would read in a toddler story time or preschool story hour.

More Recommended Train-Themed Books

• Trains Go by Steve Light
• Chugga Chugga Choo Choo by Kevin Lewis
• The Goodnight Train by Susan Sobel

Getting Kids Involved in This Book

• Divide your group into three parts. Each should say one of these lines. Then have them help you read the story.
• Clickerty-click, clickerty-clack
• Chuff-chuff, chufferty chuff
• Puff-puff, pufferty puff
• To keep things simple, you could have all of the kids join in on the line "clickerty-click, clickerty clack"
• Form wiggly preschoolers into a human train. Invite them to line up, and make sure you have a few adults to help. Make sure to point out that the front is the engine and the end person is the caboose. Remind kids that some trains have two or even three engine cars. When you're ready to move, say, "Last call, all aboard!" and have all of the kids say "Woo-ooooooo!" Walk through the library or classroom, saying chuff-chuff chufferty chuff, and clickety-clackety.

Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells

Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells

Noisy Nora just wants to be heard. Looking for a book that will hook even the squirmiest of youngsters? Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells could be your answer. This sweet story about a little sister acting out predates David of the No David! series by David Shannon, and is as old as I am. (And I'm older than dirt, in case you were wondering.)

I read this story to my little middle child, and well, her jaw was so slack I almost saw a fly buzz inside! This book is escape fiction at its finest. Poor little Nora, making so much noise, and still nobody notices her.

Nora rattles windows, slams doors, and bangs pots and pans together, but to no avail. Mom and dad are so busy helping an older sister with her school work and feeding and bathing the baby, that Nora gets lost in the shuffle. Even when Nora dumps her sister's marbles on the floor, nobody seems to care.

Finally Nora takes drastic action, and slams the door as she makes a dramatic exit. Of course, nobody notices she is gone until they realize the house is completely quiet! Now the search is on, and everybody is searching for Nora, and she finally gets the attention she is looking for with a dramatic crashing entrance at the very end of the book.

This book has a few things going for it from a storytime perspective. First, it has a cute little mouse as its main character. I find stories with cute mice almost always do well. Not sure why this is. I don't really want to encounter a cute mouse at home, but in stories it is different. Next, Nora does some outrageous things that would get her into big time trouble if she were my mouse--I mean child. Third, the book is well-paced and spare with words. Rosemary Wells doesn't have to say much to get her point across. I recommend this book for a preschool crowd, probably 3 and up.

A Little Story About a Big Turnip

A Little Story About a Big Turnip is a short version of an ancient folktale.

An early morning chill is hinting at my favorite season being just around the corner: Autumn. It is still late summer here in Farmerland, Iowa, and the fresh-harvested corn is just now beginning to brown on the remains of their stalks. Not quite ready to dive into the panoply of pumpkin-spiced tales, I wanted to share a fall-harvest vegetable themed story book based on a folktale about a different vegetable that has been passed down through the ages.

A Little Story About a Big Turnip holds a wonderful appeal for early preschool and up crowds. The book has a cast of likeable, rustic characters full of personality. There's a grandma and grandpa, a girl name Annie, her two pets, and a distracted little mouse who would rather be reading than doing anything else. The plot is simple and repetitive, which makes this book easy to join in.

And as you would expect, when they finally do pull out the giant turnip, you as the storyteller have the opportunity to make a sucking, slurping, popping sound. I hope you know what I mean. So practice up and maybe even invite your storytime crowd to do the same. The story is short and that part is a lot of fun!

Now to be sure, I don't know very many people who actually EAT turnips, but that is not the point.

Books to read with A Little Story About a Big Turnip

• The Big Pumpkin by D. Schindler and Erica Silverman puts a Halloween twist on the giant turnip folktale.
• The Gigantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy and Niamh Sharkey is another version of my title pic. This book is lengthier, with zany illustrations ala James and the Giant Peach.
• Growing Vegetable Soup or Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert.

Get the Kids Involved

• Encourage children to repeat the refrain "but the turnip didn't come out."
• Show the kids how to make a giant popping sound by licking your lips, then smacking them together. Now they can help you make a sound effect when the giant turnip leaves the ground.
• Act the story out.

One Winter's Day by M. Christina Butler

One Winter's Day by Christine Butler

I am a sucker for books that focus on values, and this one, printed by a publishing house called Good Books, has a moral that is hard to miss. If you help others, treating your neighbors with compassionate kindness, you will be helped when the time comes. This is a worthy message to share with the young audience for whom this book is intended, and it is a pleasure to see Little Hedgehog rewarded for his compassion, even when he wasn't expecting it. Though it is easy to argue that the world doesn't always work this way, and the rewards of giving are usually much more ephemeral. Young children are usually looking for simple and concrete answers when they are caught up in life's storms, and I liked the way this book approached its story.

Tina Macnaughton's illustrations use dark colors punctuated by the vibrant red and orange hues selected for the hedgehog's scarf, hat, and gloves, which are featured in their touch and feel glory on almost every page of this story book. These clothing items are raised and give a soft surface, making this book just a little more pleasureful to read. I think this book would make a nice companion to The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, and either The Mitten or The Hat by Jan Brett, which are, interestingly enough, also both about cute little hedgehogs and their wintertime adventures with clothing.

Read This With

•  The Mitten or The Hat by Jan Brett

•  The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
  

This children's classic, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
is another story about a snowy journey

On Our Way Home...Not Just for Father's Day

Father's day is one of those holidays I always dread selecting story time books for. Not that there's a shortage of books, but I find myself using the same three or four titles each year, hoping something better will catch my eye. Several children's book authors have found their niche with cute rhyming stories for a cadre of holidays. But you can't use these books for every big holiday, and sometimes the plots in these books feel a little forced or a just a bit stale.
On Our Way Home by Sebastien Braun is no such book.The lovely artwork in this story geared for toddlers and its focus on relationships instead of stereotypes makes it a true standout. You may recognize the bear cub and his daddy from Braun's two other successful books, I Love My Mommy and I Love My Daddy. This book is almost a concept book, because the plot is so simple. But the affection between the little cub and his father shines as they take a walk through the forest, slide down the banks of a stream together, catch falling leaves, and gaze up at the stars.

On Our Way Home by Sebastien Braun

The little cub has some childlike qualities that children can relate to. Holding daddy's hand, carrying a stick, cuddling up close. This book is designed for older toddlers and young preschoolers, but may be a guilty pleasure for the four and up crowd. For some groups this book may be just a little bit too dear, even a bit twee for the more world weary youngsters in your story time crowd.
This book does capture the magic of fatherhood at the young hero worship stage. It is also short, well-paced, and full of beautiful brown, blue and bottle-green pictures. I would definitely include in my Father's day story time program this year, with other selections like The Apple Pie that Papa Baked, the The Daddy Mountain, and Mr. Seahorse.

Julius, Baby of the World

My son's 6-year old friend recently confided to me as he was walking out the door, "Hey, Carolyn, I might get a sister! Then, without missing a beat, he added "...or a puppy." I asked which one would be better, and after a long, pregnant pause, he decided on the sibling. He is a 6-year old only with no sibs, and I wondered how he would really fare with this transition.

Julius Baby of the World, by Kevin Henkes

That's what I love about Julius, Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes. If read with dramatic flair, this book is great in a story time setting. The illustrations have a droll, poke-fun-at-yourself-until-it-hurts quality, but they are a little small for large story time crowds.

Still, I love this story about Lilly, one of Henkes most beloved little mouse characters. The fact that Julius upstages Lilly, even in the title, underscores the feelings of this story about sibling rivalry. This book is laugh-out-loud funny, but is told with a poignant realism that explores the feelings of displacement that children often experience when a new baby comes along. This book will make you groan, then laugh, then groan some more and laugh even harder.

Lilly thinks her brother Julius is disgusting and dreadful, and even shouts to a stranger on the street, “You will live to regret that bump under your dress!” But her attitude turns around when her cousin decides that Julius is horrible too. And true to Lilly's flamboyant, princess style, she rises to the occasion by forcing her cousin to admit that Julius is the baby of the world.

Tone it Down

You may want to pair this book with other titles that are a little more cuddly on the baby spectrum during story hour. Check out any of Karen Katz's loving looks at babies, for cuddling and kissing. Then toss in a little Gyo Fujikawa with the vintage title Babies. This precious book is whimsical and very cute.

The Dirty Little Boy by Margaret Wise Brown

The Very Dirty Boy by Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon) is a newly illustrated version of a vintage story. The whimsical illustrations by Steve Salerno are hilarious, but they do stretch the limits of believability. Everyone knows that sometimes good fiction requires us to suspend our disbelief, and children are good at this. So if you are one of those poor, tormented souls who are hung up on the need for stories to follow good logic, then just stop here.

In this story, a very dirty boy comes in from an afternoon of play begging for a bath. Every mother's dream, right! Wrong. The busy mother (this part I can easily believe), becomes a little bit agitated and sends her child off to watch animals take a bath.

Animals? Really?

So where does the boy go? Straight to the farmyard, where he rolls in the mud with the pigs. And when the little boy comes home dirtier than ever, his mother just can't understand why he didn't come back clean as a whistle.

Maybe it was Margaret Wise Brown's intention to wag a finger at parents who don't give their children regular baths. Maybe this is just a superlatively silly plot device, but the book itself is a lot of fun to read. I for one found it quite amusing.

Brown's books tend to be verbose, like a lot of vintage kid lit, but this book doesn't wash out. My kids squealed with laughter at this very silly story, which is well-paced for reading in a group setting. The graphics have a stylized, vintage appeal, complementing the story by enhancing, certain, erm, details.

Creep Through the House with Little Bitty Mousie

Little Bittie Mousie by Jim Aylesworth and Michael Hague

An unconventional alphabet book with a tiny-sized view of the world is Little Bitty Mousie, by Jim Aylesworth and Michael Hague. For story time presenters and lap reading alike, this book has much to hold a child's interest.

A white mouse with over-sized pink ears and a blue and white polka-dot pinafore dress wanders through an unkempt kitchen that looks as if it stepped right out of the 1950s. From a mouse-sized viewpoint, a mountain of unwashed dishes becomes a towering feast of leftovers, and a chocolate cake missing a wedge is a bigger-than life morsel. Little Bitty Mousie appears to be the queen of the castle, until she encounters an unwelcome presence at the end of the story.

Like many alphabet books, this one has rhyming text, which make this book fun and easy to read aloud. But unlike most other books in this genre, this book also offers a surprise ending and a reason for the little mouse to run, run, run away. I liked the unusual 1950s color choices used in the illustrations, and the humorous and sometimes unsettling jab at poor housekeeping practices. Jim Aylesworth clearly wasn't visiting Martha when he dreamed up this delightful  little wonder.

Giraffes Can't Dance, Or Can They?

Giraffes Can't Dance

 

Who wouldn't be amused by a whirling, twirling giraffe, waltzing warthogs, and chimps doing the cha-cha? This story by Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees sports electrifying colors and a plot that many children can relate to. At the heart of silly illustrations is a more serious topic, bullying.

The other animals laugh at Gerald during the jungle dance in the middle of a forest clearing. Gerald wanders off sadly, but on his way, makes a new friend who helps him to find the special music that inspires Gerald to move. In the end, Gerald finds his own path, and he transforms into the Billy Elliott of the animal kingdom.

I like this medium-length children's book with rhyming text. In some places the rhyme scheme is a little stilted, but overall the text of the story lends itself to reading aloud. The illustrations are bright but not too cutesy. And the authors' light-handed approach keeps the book from weighing down too heavily on an otherwise serious topic. I would recommend for preschool ages four and up.

More read-aloud book picks

Moo, Baa, La, La, La by Sandra Boynton and Hilda Must be Dancing by Karma Wilson are two more fun and lighthearted books that feature dancing animals. For elementary-aged children, pair this book with the longer story, Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, which is about bullying in kindergarten.