BookBairn: Touring Picture Book

Showing posts with label Touring Picture Book. Show all posts

Coming into Summer there are lots of wonderful books to encourage little ones to get outside so the Touring Picture Book team have chosen one of the very best for our latest post. If you're new to the Touring Picture Book: welcome! The team love to share a fun new release and a follow-up activity you can do with your children or a connection that we have made to the book that you might find helpful to think about.

Sunflower Shoots and Muddy Boots by Katherine Halligan & Grace Easton is packed full of brilliant activities as well as fascinating facts about starting your own garden (indoor and outdoor!). So if your little ones loves to dig in the dirt and get messy, wants to learn more about what to plant, then this book is a great place to start. Especially if you are a garden-novice parent like me!

Before I share my thoughts on the contents of the book, I just wanted to share that this book is ingeniously spiral bound meaning that it can lie fully flat on the grass, patio or workspace where you are and the pages are a heavy gloss making them wipe-clean and also heavy enough that they aren't flapping around in a breeze. It has really been designed to be used outdoors and whilst gardening!

But under the cover is a treasure trove of ideas for getting you started! It gives you top ten plants for little gardeners, guides to garden flowers, herbs and creepy crawlies as well as a list of great projects like creating a pea-pod tee-pee, a mud kitchen, creating magic garden imaginative play areas. It also has lots of facts scattered throughout the pages and vocabulary builders too so that children can take about the tools they need, the plants they want to grow; and also it has lots of tips for keeping safe. I really liked the fact that it has a small section on small, indoor gardens too meaning that there is a space for everyone to grow their own little garden.

The illustrations in this book are utterly charming - with beautiful floral images it really brings to life the wonders of a garden. And they are definitely inspiring for creating your own garden! It's an absolute delight and the perfect gift for budding little green fingers.

Flower Pressing

When I looked through the book in the early Spring for a project to do I was very much drawn to the flower pressing 'Making Memories' section as I loved doing this as a kid! (Quite a few of the other projects are more suitable for now the weather is becoming more summer-y so we will try them out too.) And BookBairn loves to pick flowers so it seemed like a nice way to keep them. It's really easy too and involves very little preparation but does require some patience!

BookBairn and I went out to the garden, and out local footpath, to collect some flowers (some might be considered weeds but we know that weeds are just flowers that are growing in the wrong place) and brought them home. We have a little flower press that I picked up for the project but you can just as easily put some flowers between paper/card and then weight then down with some heavy books. (Make sure they are dry before you do this - you don't want your book pages soggy and ink bleeding). Then leave them for a week and when you open them up, hey, presto, pressed flowers!

We have turned ours into a garden picture but they make lovely gifts, especially in a frame, or some bookmarks. Such a fun activity.

Check out the other activities happening across the Touring Picture Book Club and pop over to our Twitter to be in with a chance of winning a copy of Sunflower Shoots and Muddy Boots of your very own!

Acorn Books - Dinosaur Garden

Mamma Filz - Mud Kitchen

And look out for our next touring picture book which will be Super Duper You by Sophy Henn! Hooray!

And if you've popped over from one of the other fabulous blogs - hello! And our regular readers - hello to you too! We would love to hear if you have any signed books that you love!

Happy Reading!

Mummy, BookBairn and the Touring Picture Book Team!

Disclaimer: all four bloggers were sent copies of the book after we reached out to the publisher and requested them and we were provided with an additional copy for the giveaway. Words and opinions are each of our own.

If you click on the title or image of the book you will be sent to Amazon.co.uk using an affiliate link. This means that if you choose to purchase on Amazon.co.uk, I will receive a small sum (around 20-70p per book) from amazon at no extra cost to you. And by using our Audible links I receive what is called a 'bounty' but is also a type of commission. I understand that you may not want to use an affiliate link, but if you like reading our blog please just think of it as a small tip for a tip-off to an awesome book. And know that your support means I can buy more books! For more information check out our 'For Our Readers' section.

A quick turnaround since out last Touring Picture Book post but when there are such wonderful books to share it's no wonder we had to get this one out to you quickly! If you're new to the Touring Picture Book: welcome! The team love to share a fun new release and a follow-up activity you can do with your children or a connection that we have made to the book that you might find helpful to think about.

And it has taken us a whole month to come up with the next couple of books as there have been so many interesting new releases already this year! But we are starting with an inspirational one!

A little frog sat in the night-time air

in the swamp by the light of the moon.

He sat all alone in the little green pond,

singing his little frog tune.

But all by himself his voice was so quiet

so he stopped and he let out a sigh.

"Singing alone is not much fun,

what a lonely wee froggy am I."

In the Swamp by the Light of the Moon by Frann Preston-Gannon is the story of a little frog who is singing to himself in the swamp one night but he finds that his song just doesn't seem right. It's incomplete. He is missing something - or someone? So he invites the other animals to join in. And so in pour the beats of the crocodile, the melodies of the mice, the harmonies of the fish, the tones of the birds but still something is missing. The tiny voice of the bug. But bug feels that her voice is too small and not pretty. So frog has to convince her that he voice is beautiful.

And as the song spread all through the swamp,

each voice blended in with the rest.

Now everyone knew that the song of the swamp

needed everyone's voice to sound best.

To describe this book as a lyrical picture book just doesn't seem to do it justice! With a message of inclusivity, that all voices - no matter how small - should be heard, this is a picture book that will resonate with readers of all ages. And I love that the little bug (who turns out to shine a light on the problem!) is on every single page - probably ignored by older readers but definitely something little children will spot! And doesn't that support the message too. The colours in this book are incredibly evocative of a beautiful swamp (if there is such a thing as a beautiful swamp) with a fairytale-like quality. The characters are enchanting and will have your little ones wanting to join in with the song. (If you are looking for ideas on how to do this check out my fellow TPB bloggers linked at the bottom of this post.) An absolutely outstanding and heart-warming picture book!

Origami Frogs

When I was in Girl Guides I learned how to make an origami frog and it's a skill that has stuck with me - I can still make them by heart! And what's more they are a great little trick to have up your sleeve with children as this particular frog has a folding mechanism that means he can literally jump across the table - meaning you can have frog jump competitions etc. But I've never written a tutorial like this before so I've taken lots of photos to help and hope I can make it clear for you.

1. You need a square piece of paper.

2. Fold it in half.

3. Fold it again to make a small square but then undo that fold so you have a nice clean crisp. From here on we work on the top half and then the bottom half to make things simpler.

Are you still with me?

4. On the top half of your rectangle, fold the top left hand corner half way, and crease. Unfold it. And repeat on the top right corner. When you unfold you should have a cross at the top.

5. This is the trickiest step. Put your left finger under the left triangle and your right finger under the right triangle. Push them together and downwards to create a fold. Then flatten the top piece to make a triangle. Press all these creases nice and firm. That's the top part (almost) finished.

If you managed that you're over the worst!!

6. Working on the bottom square now. Fold it in half upwards.

7. Fold the left and right edges in towards the middle. This should make an arrow shape.

8. Fold the bottom square upwards in half again.

9. Fold the top rectangle edges over to make two small triangle shapes. Just watch here as the paper gets quite thick!

10. Gently pull these edges outwards to make a boat shape.

11. Fold those edges down to make the legs of the frog.

12. Fold the ends of each 'limb' to create feet for your frog.

13. Fold the frog's bottom all the way up so that it covers the head using the existing crease. Then create a fold in the middle of the bottom to create a hinge that you can use to flip your frog.

14. Flip him over, pull back on the spring and watch him hop.

I hope that all makes sense and the photos help explain my instructions! And you have a lovely little jumping frog! You can let the kids add eyes and decorate them and then have a jumping competition.

If you did manage to follow those ramblings please do tag me in your froggy photos!!

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A post shared by Kim & the BookBairns (@bookbairn) on Mar 15, 2019 at 2:40am PDT

Check out the other activities happening across the Touring Picture Book Club and pop over to our Twitter to be in with a chance of winning a copy of In the Swamp by the Light of the Moon of your very own!

Acorn Books - Drawing Activity with Author-Illustrator Frann Preston-Gannon

Along Came Poppy - Exploring Sounds

Mamma Filz - Musical Shakers

And look out for our next touring picture book which will be Sunflower Shoots and Muddy Boots by Katherine Halligan & Grace Easton.

And if you've popped over from one of the other fabulous blogs - hello! And our regular readers - hello to you too! We would love to hear if you have any signed books that you love!

Happy Reading!

Mummy, BookBairn and the Touring Picture Book Team!

Welcome to a new year for the Touring Picture Book, we took a short break over Christmas and it has taken us a couple of weeks to line up some truly awesome books to share with you. If you're new to the Touring Picture Book, here's a short recap: four of us, all parents, blogging predominantly about children's books, share one of the most interesting new releases that we have lovingly selected from a very long list. We all share our reviews of the book from our own perspectives - I love this part as we all see something a little different in the books, showing, to me, that one book can be many different stories to different people - and then we share a follow-up activity you can do with your children or a connection that we have made to the book that you might find helpful to think about.

And it has taken us a whole month to come up with the next couple of books as there have been so many interesting new releases already this year! But we are starting with an inspirational one!

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold & Suzanne Kaufman is a must for every children's bookshelf, classroom and library. And I don't say that lightly! (We were accidentally sent a second copy from the publisher which I immediately donated to BookBairn's nursery as I want as many children as possible to have experienced this book!)

This is certainly a book to experience as well as read. It's a celebration as much as it is a story! Following a group of children in their school and throughout their day in school, this book shows a school where diversity it's at it's heart. Everyone is welcome no matter their race, religion or background. this story shares an uplifting celebration of cultural diversity and belonging where all children are welcome in the classroom. With children wearing hijabs, patkas, baseball caps and yarmulkes playing and learning side-by-side the illustrations in the book create a world where all the children belong. With scenes of the children pointing to their family's countries of origin, and the children gathered on the floor in a circle drawing illustrations of families of all sizes and colours and a playground full of happy children having fun together this is a really welcoming book! You will want to jump into the illustrations. The accompanying poem (it's definitely more a poem than a story) lets readers know that what they see in the illustrations is reinforced by the language of the school and community: everyone is welcome, they all have a place, they all have a space, no matter what. The school also has children of a variety of abilities including a blind child who carries a whitestick and a child in a wheelchair, reinforcing the lovely message of inclusion. I particularly like this quote from the lyrical text:

"We're part of a community.

Our strength is our diversity.

A shelter from adversity.

All are welcome here."

That, for me, sums up what I want a school, and a wider community, to be and to cherish. This book is so wonderfully executed and really lives up to it's important message! If you would like to watch a video of the story being read aloud I've linked that here. Such a wonderfully uplifting book!

Multicultural People Craft

BookBairn and I haven't done much craft since before Christmas so I thought it would be fun to make some people inspired by the characters - particularly using the cover illustration.

I picked up some coloured paper in a pack of different skin tones and cut out some people shapes for her to choose from. We then raided our craft box for coloured paper, felt, buttons, ribbon, googly eyes and a whole manner of bits and bobs and got cutting and sticking. Such an easy set-up and would be great to do in a classroom as the kids could work on it independently.

BookBairn had very clear ideas of the sorts of characters that she wanted to create - mostly girls (I had to persuade her to make a couple of boys! She is only three!) and she really enjoyed the freedom to create rather than replicate. I found this really interesting to watch. She required quite a lot of help with the cutting but she did have a go so this is going to be a sort of activity we revisit, under different guises, to encourage her to develop this skill further. But mostly it was lots of fun to do together!!

On a side note, if you are planning on using this book in the classroom, I have seen some great teachers at the start of the year getting each of the pupils in their class to create their own personalised pot of skin tone paint. A whole lesson dedicated to mixing just the right shade for your particular skin tone - showing that each tone is valued in itself and also creating a resource that the children can use all year. This is definitely something I would do with my class! Cassie Stephens has a great tutorial for this lesson here.

Check out the other activities happening across the Touring Picture Book Club and pop over to our Twitter to be in with a chance of winning a copy of All Are Welcome of your very own!

Acorn Books - Lego Braille Activity

Along Came Poppy - People Paper Chains Activity

Mamma Filz - Homemade Crafted Food

And look out for our next touring picture book which will be In the Swamp by the Light of the Moon by Frann Preston-Gannon.

And if you've popped over from one of the other fabulous blogs - hello! And our regular readers - hello to you too! We would love to hear if you have any signed books that you love!

Happy Reading!

Mummy, BookBairn and the Touring Picture Book Team!

We have been very lucky in the Touring Picture Book Club, so be able to choose the very best of the best books for our posts and this latest one is a beauty! Not only is it by one of my favourite children's writers, it's illustrated by one of my favourite illustrators.

The Boy and the Bear by Tracey Corderoy and Sarah Massini is the magical story of a little boy and a very special friend. The little boy in this story is very lonely. He just wants to play but he has no one to play with. When he receives an invitation to play from across the pond in the form of a paper boat he seems to have found the best friend he is looking for. But really it's just Bear - not quite the friend he imagined. Bear doesn't know how to play hide-and-seek or see-saw or catch. But perhaps what Bear can bring to their friendship might mean so much more. When he starts building a treehouse, the boy becomes fascinated and a magical summer begins and an autumn full of fun. But as the snowflakes start to fall, Bear knows he must go. And one day he disappears. It is with this disappearance that Boy realises what their friendship meant to him. As the season changes to Spring, they pair are reunited with a big friendly bear-hug.

A story about unlikely friendships, and belonging. With beautiful illustrations that capture the changing seasons and the gentle relationship between Boy and Bear. And the lyrical text makes it a joy to read, and to listen to. A perfect story for enjoying on a frosty winter's day to warm up with the enduring power of love and friendship.

Audiobooks with Children

Did you know that most picture books that are published by Nosy Crow, like The Boy and the Bear, have a QR code inside them that you can scan and listen to an audiobook version of the story for free? And many are also available to download on their podcast? It's such a great bonus extra.

We love listening to audiobooks! Especially ones that we have the picture books to hand so we can look at the pictures as we listen. It's great for us because sometimes BookBairn really wants a story but I just don't have my hands free - perhaps it's the middle of cooking the tea or because we are in the middle of eating tea - but I can pop my phone on the table and press play and her favourite stories are read to her without me having to look at the pages whilst trying to do one of the 12,864 things I try to juggle at once!

Here's some ways that audiobooks work for us:

In the car - we like to listen to stories in the car and often borrow audiobooks on CD from the library or play through my phone on the cars speakers. It's great for longer journeys when you've all had enough of the same songs on repeat. Sometimes we take the book along with us too so BookBairn can turn the pages as she listens. We listened to both What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson and Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers so many times that BookBairn learned them both by heart.

In the kitchen - at dinner time BookBairn can sometimes find it hard to focus on eating her tea and it can be a long slog through the whole process so we listen to the Nosy Crow podcast of books that she is already very familiar with and doesn't require the pictures to follow along with the story. Our favourites are Neon Leon by Jane Clarke and Lionel and the Lion's Share by Lou Peacock.

Together - sometimes it's just nice to curl up together with the book and listen to the story together. When we are both the listeners. It's a great skill to be able to listen and it's good practise for BookBairn but it's also nice for me to get to listen too.

As I said we use the library to get audiobooks, and listen the Nosy Crow ones but we also have quite a few on through Audible. I have a subscription to Audible as I enjoy listening to audiobooks myself but you can also use it to download children's stories. At the moment there is an offer on for Audible where you can get the first four months for £3.99 which is a bargain deal and you can use your 1 credit each month to download any book. But the children's books are often incredible value - many Julia Donaldson books are less than £5, the Oi Frog series are less than £3.50 and most Oliver Jeffers books are £1.74! I mean that's less than a children's magazine or a coffee and you get to keep the audiofile forever. It's yours! Also you can use your credit for a book for yourself and then pick one up for the kids when they are on sale. (And another tip with Audible is that you can return a book if you don't like it and get your credit back.) You can also purchase these audiobooks through Amazon as a one-off fee without a monthly membership and I'm working on a shopping list of our favourites for my Amazon shop.

If you are interested in a free trial of Audible here's a link.

And if you are interested in the limited time deal of four months for £3.99 (which is less than my current membership fee - reminding me to take up the offer!) here's a link for that!

Check out the other activities happening across the Touring Picture Book Club and pop over to our Twitter to be in with a chance of winning a copy of The Boy and The Bear of your very own!

Acorn Books - Ice Sensory Play and Experiments

Along Came Poppy - Origami Paper Boats

Mamma Filz - Crafying a Wooly Hat

And look out for our next touring picture book which will be in the New Year!

And if you've popped over from one of the other fabulous blogs - hello! And our regular readers - hello to you too! We would love to hear if you have any signed books that you love!

Happy Reading!

Mummy, BookBairn and the Touring Picture Book Team!

We have already had our first autumn storm and when I took this book out for a walk to take some photos of it amongst the autumn leaves that feature on the cover, I discovered that one of the trees along the river which runs through our local park had lost a huge branch into the river in the last storm. So when we were choosing our latest book for Touring Picture Book Club, we felt that this one was the most relevant book for the moment!

Storm by Sam Usher is the final installment in the quartet of seasonal books which highlight the special relationship a boy has with his grandfather, as well as beautifully depicting the changing weather and landscapes around us. In this book, it's blowing a gale and the boy and his grandfather decide that it's perfect kite-flying weather! (Now personally I think it's a don't try this at home sort of story as it's far too stormy to actually fly a kite but we will let this book have some artistic license because it makes for a wonderful and atmospheric story.) But, of course, they can't find the kite. Isn't this always the way? As they search through the cupboards for their beloved kite, they happen across a whole cacophony of items that allow them to reminisce of wonderful memories of their days out together and the special bond that they have. And each page of the search is interspersed with the increasingly stormy weather developing outside, including a rather hilarious elderly gent who gets more and more swept up by the storm! When they do eventually find their kite and make it outside, they have their best adventure yet. So much so that they actually take flight!

The magic of this book, for me, comes from the incredibly dramatic illustrations of the stormy weather, so much so that as you gaze at the pictures you can almost hear the wind blowing (or perhaps that's just me because it's blowing a gale here as I type). The colour-palette of the greys of the sky is truly perfect when set in contrast against the bright rainbow of kites that tear across it in the breeze. The selection of autumnal leaves which swirl on each page are crafted so beautifully you can feel their movement. This book really is a wonder! And it's a perfect read for autumn which is why it made our 15+ Autumn Reads to Cosy Up With list.

Conker Crafts

After the last storm we went on a woodland walk along the river near where we live to the best conker tree in town and collected over 100 conkers that had tumbled to the ground in the gales. BookBairn loves collecting conkers, especially if she can find ones that are still inside their shell that she can help out. I love having a shiny flat-bottomed one to keep in my pocket, so this is fun for us both but my pockets can't possibly store all those conkers - thank goodness for her brother's buggy. But we have so many I thought we would try our hand at crafting with them!

This is the best conker tree in our local area!

Before I share some of the craft ideas I just wanted to say that collecting conkers is a great way to keep the spiders in your house at bay. As someone who lives in a cottage built in 1760 there are plenty of opportunities for spiders to sneak in but whenever we have conkers lying around for the kids to play with they don't. The only spider I have seen recently (and it was blooming huge!) was when we collected this whole bag of conkers and I suspect it was promptly leaving after being dissuaded by the conkers.

If that's not reason enough to have conkers in your house, I've got a few ideas for how you can use them to keep the kids busy during the next stormy day.

Why not add a play tea set and some water and make conker tea? BookBairn loves doing this and can spend a whole afternoon coming back to this activity over and over.

Similarly you could add some water, wooden spoons and a pot (or witches cauldron) and make conker soup or potions. BookBairn enjoys adding other ingredients too such as large colourful buttons or food from her play kitchen.

Stick some mini googly eyes on the conkers and create little critters that with a little bit of imagination can get up to all sorts of mischief. BookBairn likes to play hide-and-seek with them.

Add some play dough and googly eyes and have lots of fun making snails and then playing with them afterwards - you could even paint the conkers to look like shells.

Create a small world play in a big box by adding some of your other toys. The Wee Page Turner likes to move them around with his diggers. And last year I made a small world for BookBairn with some woodland creature toys and a bit of leftover astroturf from our garden makeover.

Why not set a challenge to see who can make the tallest tower? We used playdough as cement to glue to the conkers together but you could try other things too - even glue! As you can see we didn't manage taller than five conkers that didn't quite last long enough for our photo!

Some other things we are going to try:

Currently we have some water and conker muffin trays and bowls freezing in the freezer and I'm going to give BookBairn lots of different tools to crack them open.
I like the idea of painting with them by putting some splodges of paint on paper in a large box and rolling them around to create a masterpiece!
I think I will try pairing some of the rounder ones with our ball run for The Wee Page Turner.
I saw on Instagram when I searched for #conkercrafts that you can use cocktail sticks and florists oasis to make a conker tree which I think would make for a lovely autumn display.

Of course, you could always just drill a whole in them, thread them on to a shoelace and play traditional conkers too! Hope that has inspired you to go and collect some conkers!

Check out the other activities happening across the Touring Picture Book Club and pop over to Along Came Poppy's Twitter to be in with a chance of winning a copy of Storm by Sam Usher of your very own!

Acorn Books - Autumn Sensory Basket

Along Came Poppy - Sensory Playdough for Autumn

Mamma Filz - Autumn Globe

And look out for our next touring picture book - "The Boy and the Bear" by Tracey Corderoy and Sarah Massini.

And if you've popped over from one of the other fabulous blogs - hello! And our regular readers - hello to you too! We would love to hear if you have any signed books that you love!

Happy Reading!

Mummy, BookBairn and the Touring Picture Book Team!

If you click on the title or image of the book you will be sent to Amazon.co.uk using an affiliate link. This means that if you choose to purchase on Amazon.co.uk, I will receive a small sum (around 20-70p per book) from amazon at no extra cost to you. I understand that you may not want to use an affiliate link, but if you like reading our blog please just think of it as a small tip for a tip-off to an awesome book. And know that your support means I can buy more books! For more information check out our 'For Our Readers' section.