Summertime and the Reading is Easy

Walker and I spend a lot of time at our local library. We go to read with kids (or whoever!) once a week. During the school year we go in the evening – because during the day we all have to be at school!

But during the summer we go in the morning. I like that better. This week we started our new summer hours and had a really nice turnout! The newspaper lady even came and took pictures. We made the front page of the Glen Rose Reporter! Ms Amanda is a nice lady who has put us in her paper a number of times. We appreciate her!

This week for our 1st summer morning, Ellie came to visit. Ellie will soon be turning 2 and she mostly likes to walk us around and show us all the books. Ethan came as well and Ethan is a READER! He just finished kindergarten and will be moving on up to 1st grade! He chose several books to read with us.

I Feel a Foot is an odd little book by Maranke Rinck, illustrated by Martijn van der Linden. It was published by Lemniscaat in 2008. Ms Rinck and Mr van der Linden are Dutch and this book was originally in Dutch. When I tried to find something about them, everything is in Dutch. I don’t read Dutch but I will give you a link to Ms Rinck’s website here in case you do! And Mr van der Linden’s website is here.

This is a nighttime story so all the pages are black. And the characters are all bright colors. They are really eye catching against the black background — even for me!  The story is a mystery that must be solved! It begins with 5 friends asleep in a hammock. Turtle, Bat, Octopus, Bird and Goat. Ethan thought it was very strange for an octopus to be in a hammock in a tree! Suddenly they hear a noise and in the pitch black night, they go to investigate.

On each of  the following pages one part of the noise maker is encountered and revealed, but each animal has a different idea as to what it is. Turtle first feels a foot! A great big foot. And he thinks it must be a great big turtle. Ethan knew what it was from the beginning, but those animals sure didn’t! The story makes for quite a guessing game! I thought this book was great fun!

Next we read The Red Lemon by Bob Staake. This book was published by Dragonfly Books in 2006. Another quirky book. Bold, geometric illustrations. Lots of circles. Rhyming verse. Farmer McPhee grows lemons. He LOVES lemons! “Bright yellow lemons for miles and miles! Bright yellow lemons give farmers big smiles!”

But one day, he spies up in a tree — a RED lemon! It can’t be! He is struck by the horror of a world with red lemons! So – he throws the offending red lemon over the sea where it lands on an island. Then 200 years pass and Farmer McPhee’s lemon orchard has become nothing but weeds. Over on the island the red lemon seeds have sprouted and red lemon trees are everywhere! And the red lemons are loved by everyone. People come from all over the world to eat the sweet fruit of the red lemons. The End. A story about evolution. About not judging a book by its cover, so to speak. You never know what might be on the inside. About the benefits of thinking “outside the box”, about being creative. As this book is creative! Ethan and I both loved this book. It made me drool on Ethan’s knee.

And I’ll leave you with a little trip through Europe with a lemon!