Mom Read It

Media Review: Jake and the Neverland Pirates (Episodes: The Golden Egg/Huddle Up) (Walt Disney Studios, 2011)

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Directed by Kelly Ward. Disney Junior, 22 minutes. Walt Disney Studios. 2011

Recommended for ages 2-5

Jake and the Neverland Pirates is Disney Junior’s answer to Dora the Explorer. Jake (voiced by Colin Ford) and his friends, Izzy (voiced by Madison Pettis) and Cubby (voiced by Jonathan Morgan Heit), are a multicultural group of children playing pirate games along with their parrot friend, Skully (voiced by David Arquette). Disney favorites Captain Hook and his mate, Smee, always seem to find a way to show up and meddle in their fun. Each 11-minute episode involves a quest of some sort, and Jake and his friends interact with the viewer by asking them to help out and solve problems and cheer them on. Each episode’s close rewards the team – and the viewer – for their teamwork by providing them with “pirate doubloons” that goes in the group treasure chest, which the viewers help Jake count. In The Golden Egg, Jake and his friends find a gold-colored egg, and set off to find who it belongs to. Captain Hook (voiced by longtime Captain Hook voice actor Corey Burton) and Smee (voiced by Jeff Bennett) are hot on the team’s trail, thinking the egg is an actual gold egg. Huddle Up finds Jake, Izzy and Cubby playing a game of “pirate football” until Captain Hook steals the ball, believing it has special powers. Jake and his friends set off on a quest to get the ball back from Hook.

The series is highly interactive, and children familiar with Dora will enjoy the familiarity. Like Dora, each episode resembles a video game, with tasks to complete; the team collects gold doubloons that float in the air to put in their treasure chest at the end of each episode. Members of the pirate rock band, Captain Bogg and Salty, end each episode with a pirate song.

Captain Hook and Smee are similar to Dora’s Swiper, the wily fox who tries to swipe Dora’s objects. Jake and his friends go on quests and provide the viewers with prompts to help them along; there are musical interludes throughout each episode, and a celebration at the end. It’s a good introduction to mainstay Disney characters – Peter Pan has appeared in at least one episode – for younger viewers, and Captain Hook and Smee are goofy here, less threatening than they are in the movie Peter Pan. Each episode emphasizes the importance of teamwork. With the Disney name on the cartoon, caregivers know the production values will be high. The animation is computer-generated, with bright colors and fluent action to keep viewers’ attention. The main characters have expressive, happy faces while the antagonists have exaggerated features that make them less menacing, more caricature-like.

Each episode runs roughly 11 minutes, which makes this a good addition to a pirate story time or a teamwork story time. The show is a pleasant way to keep children entertained while reinforcing lessons on preschool basics and teamwork, and the musical ending provides an opportunity to get the kids up and dancing. Learning a pirate jig would be a fun way to conclude a library program showing a Jake and the Neverland Pirates episode. The Jake and the Neverland Pirates section of the Disney website offers free printables that attendees can color and take home, and the Oriental Trading catalog and website has a wealth of pirate supplies that can be bought in bulk for relatively low cost, including fun pirate eye patches to hand out.

Media

Media Review: The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie (DVD, Universal Studios, 2008)

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Directed by Mike Nawrocki. 85 minutes. DVD. Universal Studios. 2008. $ 9.99 ISBN 000013830397

Recommended for ages 2-8

VeggieTales is an American series of computer animated family movies featuring anthropomorphic vegetables. The stories convey moral themes; many retell Bible stories. The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything was the first VeggieTales movie released theatrically through Universal Studios. Taking place between the late 17^th century and the present, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything follows Veggie characters Elliot, George, and Sedgewick (“played” by popular Veggie characters Larry the Cucumber, Pa Grape, and Mr. Lunt, the Gourd). Working as servers in a pirate-themed restaurant, they wish they could be heroes rather than cabin boys; after they discover a “Helpseeker” sent back in time by Princess Eloise, they are transported back in time, where they become actual heroes and learn that being heroic has nothing to do with how someone looks, but in his or her actions.

The computer animation is well done. The VeggieTales franchise has been around since the 1990s; creators Mike Nawrocki, who voices main characters George, Sedgewick and Bob the Tomato , and Phil Vischer, who voices main character Elliot – have built a successful book, movie and merchandising business, and reinvest money into it to keep it fresh and well-produced. The animation is rife with bright primary colors, and the Veggies themselves have expressive face with large eyes. The movie stumbles with its dialogue, which, while delivering an honorable message, does so with lackluster dialogue. The pacing is also a problem; the movie tends to drag as characters get caught up in dialogue over action, which may lose young viewers’ attention. It can also be confusing to those viewers new to VeggieTales that the characters are “acting”, and therefore playing other characters.

The movie’s positive message and popular characters make it a good choice for a movie day or evening at the library. The tone of the film is relentlessly positive; when the characters are feeling down, they lift one another up and always look for the bright side. The villains are never truly scary or horrible; they appear goofy more than anything else. A viewing, with a discussion about what makes people heroes, and how actions speak louder than words or appearances, would be a good way to communicate the values demonstrated in the movie. The VeggieTales webpage provides free downloadable printables that viewers can color and take home.

Media, TV Shows

Media Review: Yo Gabba Gabba: The Dancey Dance Bunch (DVD, Nickelodeon Studios, 2008)

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Directed by Scott Schultz and Christian Jacobs. 99 minutes. DVD. Nickelodeon. 2008. $14.98. ISBN 097368925847

Recommended for ages 1-5

Yo Gabba Gabba is a fun Nickelodeon series that teaches children social skills. The Dancey Dance Bunch DVD packages four episodes from Yo Gabba Gabba’s first season in 2007: Eat, Dance, Friends and Happy. Each 23-minute episode features human host DJ Lance Rock (Lance Robertson) and his costumed character friends, Muno (voiced by Adam Deibert), Brobee (voiced by Amos Watene), Foofa (Emma Jacobs), Toodee (Charme Morales), and Plex (voiced by Christian Jacobs). The group sings, dances, and plays together while teaching children lessons about friendship, eating healthy, and respecting one another. The show is live-action, with animated sketches and segments featuring real children dancing and playing. Celebrities including Elijah Wood, Mya, and Mark Mothersbaugh teach dance moves and give drawing lessons. The music, while geared toward a very young audience, is set to pop, rock, and hip-hop beats, and the songs stick with you long after the episodes are over. The sets are simple, almost stripped-down, so the emphasis is on the characters.

Color is an important part of Yo Gabba Gabba. DJ Lance Rock’s costume is bright orange, and the characters are all brightly colored. Children appearing in sketches often wear colorful clothing with Yo Gabba Gabba characters on them, and the backgrounds where the characters sing and dance range from bright green grassy fields to icy blue glaciers to 8-bit computer backgrounds. The characters’ voices are high-pitched like a child’s, but the language never speaks down to the audience; rather, it takes concepts like learning how to lose gracefully and simplifies the concepts through song and conversation to reach their viewers on their level: “We play games to have fun, not to win or lose”.

The episodes in this video can be used to teach toddlers and preschoolers alike about forming good habits early in life. In the episode Eat, for instance, the character Muno has a party in his tummy that carrots and string beans want to be invited to. Space and cleanup permitting, this could be a great idea for a healthy eating workshop, with finger foods like baby carrots, celery sticks, and sliced up fruit for preschoolers to invite to the “parties in their tummies”, while dancing and singing along with the video. It would be a great teaching tool for teachers and librarians alike, particularly with episodes that teach the joy of playing, that it’s more important to enjoy a game rather than worrying about winning or losing, and how to be a good friend.

Preschool Reads, Toddler Reads

Book Review: Green, by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook Press, 2012)

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 2-6

This award-winning concept book provides an illustrated explanation of the many shades of the color green, with beautifully depicted scenes in painted oils interpreting the color’s many nuances. The text, written in rhyme, explains the shade illustrated in each spread: “forest green, sea green, lime green, pea green”. There are references to what is “never green”, like a stop sign, and there are “wacky” greens like a green zebra. Die cuts on each spread add a level of complexity and playfulness, making the leaves in the “forest green” spread the outlines of the fish in the “sea green” spread. The white and black bold text simply describes each scene. Little hands will enjoy exploring the pictures and diecuts, but it could lead to accelerated wear and tear on the book.

Green received 2013 Caldecott Honors and has been designated as a Kirkus Best Children’s Book of 2012 and a Booklist Editor’s Choice for Youth.

This would be a great addition to a color-related read-aloud. Bright Hub Education’s and Preschool Express’ websites offer songs about color, many sung to the tunes of popular nursery rhymes, which children will enjoy. Printing out pictures of various objects – an apple, a leaf, a banana – and letting children color them in would be a fun coloring craft. Enchanted Learning has free printable color books that children can color in and take home.

The author’s website offers information about the author and her books, with some interviews and book trailers.

Preschool Reads, Toddler Reads

Book Review: Mr. Cookie Baker, by Monica Wellington (Dutton, 2006)

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 2-4

Every day, Mr. Baker makes cookies for his crowded store. When the day is done, he gets to have one, himself.

The story takes the reader through Mr. Baker’s day, most of which is devoted to baking cookies. He counts and measures his ingredients, mixes the dough, rolls out the dough and cuts shapes with cookie cutters, bakes the cookies, takes them out and decorates them, and greets his customers. When the customers go home and all of the cookies are gone, his day ends and he enjoys a cookie. It’s a simple story that features gouache and colored pencil artwork. The flat, bright colors and clean lines, along with the fun shapes of the cookies framing the text page of each spread, adds interest to the page. Ms. Wellington’s pages are busy – there are cooking utensils and ingredients, children, sprinkles, and cookies on every page, giving the eye many places to look. The font changes color to contrast with its backgrounds – white for darker backgrounds, brown and red for lighter backgrounds. There are four recipes at the end of the book for any parents and/or guardians interested in baking.

This book would be part of a fun cooking and baking read-aloud. With permission, parents and guardians could receive copies of the four recipes included in the back of the book. A fun storytime craft would allow children to “make” their own cookies by using precut cookie shapes and “sprinkles” (stickers).

The author’s website offers some printable activities and recipes.

Preschool Reads, Toddler Reads

Book Review: Circle Dogs, by Kevin Henkes/illus. by Dan Yaccarino (Greenwillow Books, 1998)

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 2-5

Circle dogs live with their family in a square house with a square yard, eat circle snacks, and dig circle holes. Created by popular children’s author/illustrator duo Kevin Henkes and Dan Yaccarino, Circle Dogs provides a fun lesson in shapes wrapped within a story about two fun-loving dachshunds, referred to as “circle dogs” because they twist themselves into circles when they sleep. The story takes place over a day in the life of the circle dogs and their family: they wake up in the morning, along with the sun, alarm, baby and birds; kiss their family members; play; eat; nap; eat, and go to bed for the night. Dan Yaccarino’s artwork has shades of Lane Smith’s retro feel here; his brightly colored gouache pictures look like cutouts on white space and will attract a young reader’s attention with his contrasting colors. The bold text is black on lighter spaces and white against black spaces, standing out and making reading easy.

This concept book provides a great opportunity for a read-aloud on shapes. The book invites interactive reading by using repetitive sounds to communicate the dogs’ day: their tags go clink-clank, their tails flip-flap and swish, swoosh, and they eat their dog food with a kibble-clatter, kibble nibble. Circles, squares and triangles are easily identifiable and plentiful throughout. This would be a great opportunity to use a felt board with shapes for young audiences to identify and create pictures with – a square can be a house, a sandwich, a window; a circle can be a sun, a face, or a table; a triangle can be an ice cream cone, a hat, or a dog’s ear, as in Circle Dogs. The DLTK website offer a Shapes Buddies webpage with printables including a Shapes Bingo game and Buddy Shapes to color.

The author’s webpage offers information about more of his books, plus downloadable guides and printables for parents and teachers.

Preschool Reads

Book Review: Dim Sum for Everyone, by Grace Lin (Dell Dragonfly, 2003)

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 2-5

A child describes her dinner at a dim sum restaurant with her family, explaining what dim sum is – little dishes of different foods – and what each member of her family chooses from the little carts that bring food to the tables. Perspective changes to feature each family member as they choose a different food. Multicultural audiences will appreciate learning about new and different foods, and many families will identify with the experience. The illustrations are brightly colored, with the restaurant’s red carpet serving as the background for each spread; the bright silver carts and vibrantly colored foods and clothing add to the visual interest. The front endpapers feature food, condiments and tableware against a bright green background and the back endpapers illustrate almost two dozen dim sum dishes. The bright yellow font creates a nice contrast from the red background, and occasionally, the text curves around the picture, adding to the visual appeal.

This would be a strong addition to a multicultural read-aloud or a Chinese New Year read-aloud. Preschoolers will be intrigued by the bright colors and names of the characters (Ma-Ma, Ba-Ba, Jie-Jie, Mei-Mei); the interesting new foods could start a fun discussion on other types of ethnic foods. If space permits and the food is available, perhaps there could be a small selection of foods available for audiences to sample. A Chinese New Year read-aloud could also offer printables of the Chinese astrological signs, with explanations for each sign. Oriental Trading’s website offers many affordable Chinese New Year crafts for little hands, and there are free lantern crafts available online that parents/guardians could help children create.

The author’s webpage offers printables, crafts, Chinese lessons, and recipes.

Preschool Reads

Book Review: All You Need for a Snowman, by Alice Schertle/illus. by Barbara LaVallee (Harcourt, 2002)

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 3-5

A group of children list all the important materials you need to create a snowman, beginning with the first snowflake.

The process of building a snowman takes on a life of its own in cadence and rhyme in this story, which builds excitement as it goes along, teasing the reader with each spread. “One small snowflake/fluttering down—/that’s all you need/for a snowman” begins the first spread, but the word EXCEPT on the lower right hand corner of the page tells the reader there’s more to come. The next spread brings the next adds more snowflakes: “two more snowflakes…/three flakes… four…/five… six… seven thousand…/eight million more…”, followed by the rolling of the snow into a ball, then two smaller balls, then choosing a hat, until the snowman stands, towering over the group. The word EXCEPT shows up on every other spread, pushing the reader to continue the story and building anticipation in the listener. The artwork brings an interesting look at a multicultural group of children by emphasizing the children’s profiles and shadowing one half of each face as if the children possess both light and dark skin. Ms. Lavallee’s watercolor and gouache paintings use light blue snowflakes as a background to the children’s snowman building activity, and she changes perspective from close-ups to full scenes that work with the pace of the text. The plain black font plays with the space, never interfering with the story and yet becoming part of it as it stacks to the side of the artwork or teases at the bottom of a page.

This would be a great story to read during a winter/snow read-aloud. The rhyme and cadence of the text would be soothing to listeners even as they became excited to learn what comes next in the snowman-building process. There are many printables and fingerplays available featuring snowmen, and a fun craft would allow children to create their own snowmen with cutout shapes that mirror some of those mentioned in the story: big snowballs, smaller snowballs, hats, “bottle caps” for eyes, “carrots” for noses, scarves, earmuffs, boots and belts. The Perry Public Library has many suggestions for Winter read-alouds.

The Children’s Literature Network offers an author webpage for Ms. Schertle with a biography and featured covers of some of her works.

Preschool Reads, Toddler Reads

Book Review: Minerva Louise, by Janet Morgan Stoeke (Puffin, 2012 edition)

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 2-5

First published in 1988, Minerva Louise is the story of an inquisitive hen who goes exploring and finds a house with all sorts of interesting things to see. The book speaks to toddlers’ and preschoolers’ natural curiosity about the world around them; they can follow her as she wanders into new situations and sees things from her own unique point of view. In this first Minerva Louise adventure, she explores a farmhouse and sees a perfect nest for her (a fireplace), a comfortable chair (a flowerpot), friendly cows (a sleeping cat), a tractor (a tricycle), and more. She encounters a rubber duck in a bathtub, which she sees as a new friend inviting her to play in a pool, but decides to go play in the yard with her friends instead. The artwork is uncluttered; simple but eye-catching: Ms. Stoeke uses a crayon-like line, drawn onto heavy vellum paper and traced onto watercolor paper, filled in with gouache paints and occasional watercolor washes. She uses large, simple shapes and bold, flat colors inside soft black outlines, against a white background. The plain, black font makes for a good read-aloud book that will keep audiences interested in the pictures.

This would be part of a fun animal read-aloud. For a slightly older audience, I would also suggest an Amelia Bedelia companion story, as Minerva Louise tends to see things with her own unique point of view, similar to Amelia Bedelia. There are many farm animal printables that children can color, and there are many farm animal songs and fingerplays.

The author’s website offers links to more of Ms. Stoeke’s books, her art, and information about school visits. The Minerva Louise series includes A Hat for Minerva Louise; Minerva Louise on Halloween; Minerva Louise on Christmas Eve; A Friend for Minerva Louise; Minerva Louise at the Fair; Minerva Louise and the Red Truck. Minerva Louise won the Dutton Picture Book Contest (1988).

Preschool Reads

Book Review: The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats (Viking Press, 1962)

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 3-5

In Keats’ beloved classic, a little boy enjoys the wonder of his first snowfall. Peter wakes up to see snow covering everything as far as the eye can see. After breakfast, he ventures outside and plays in the snow, making snow angels, playing with footprints, making a snowman, and climbing a mountain. He goes home and tells his mother about his day, takes a warm bath, discovers that the snowballs he saved in his pockets are gone, and goes to sleep, only to wake up to another snowy day. The groundbreaking book was the first picture book to feature an African-American child as the hero of his own story and is still popular with audiences of all cultures and backgrounds today; it is the story of a child enjoying a snowy day – preschoolers will enjoy thinking about their favorite snowy day and appreciate moments that Peter experiences that may be familiar to them: the feeling of snow hitting him on the head, getting hit with a snowball when he tries to play with older boys, and the feeling of a nice, warm bath when he gets home.

Mr. Keats used illustrations consisting of cut-outs, varied textures, strong watercolors, geometric shapes, and collages, was also considered an artistic breakthrough. The images are not outlined, giving making for a softer appearance and will keep young audiences interested while the plain black font allows for a read-aloud that will keep audiences interested in the pictures while the reader weaves the tale. The endpapers provide a comfortable lead-in and phase-out to the story, with multi-colored snowflakes on a sponge-like background. Peter also appears in Keats’ books Peter’s Chair; A Letter to Amy; and Goggles!

The Snowy Day has won numerous awards and accolades over the last 50 years, including the Caldecott Medal (1963) and the Child Study Children’s Book Committee (1995).

This would be a great anchor story for a winter/snowy day read-aloud. There is a board book version available for even younger audiences; it may be a good idea to have copies on hand for toddlers who want to follow along. Multicultural audiences will appreciate the African-American main character. The author’s website has an interactive version of the story with narration and a soundtrack that should be accessible on library computers. The Perry Public Library’s Snow & Winter storytime offers ideas, fingerplays and songs; children can talk about their favorite snow days and could color snow-related printables available on many children’s websites. Children could use precut shapes to make and decorate their own snowmen.