A Treasury of Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Gilman

Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Gilman was a favorite of my first three children.  We read the book often and I had the privilege of sharing it with Little One recently.  She, too, loved it.  On our next visit to the library I came across Jillian Jiggs to the Rescue and couldn't resist bringing it home to share with little one.  What a great book!  We loved it!  I remembered also reading The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs to my first three children so I looked for that the next time we went to the library.  I didn't find it but I was delighted to find A Treasury of Jillian Jiggs in our local library during a recent visit.

The Treasury is a collection of all five of Gilman's books about the Jillian Jigg character - the three mentioned above as well as Jillian Jigg's and the Surprise and the Jillian Jiggs and the Great Big Snow.  Also included is background information on each of the books and clues of things hidden in the books.  It would make a great addition to any book shelf.

Phoebe Gilman moved to Canada in 1972 and married and settled in Canada.  She died August 2002.  She considered herself as more of an artist than a writer and she did the illustrations for all of her books.  Her first book was The Balloon Tree, which I am yet to read, but will definitely be looking for.  She also wrote 5 other books, besides the ones already mentioned here.  We already read The Gypsy Princess but have yet to find and enjoy the other 4 titles.

Phoebe Gilman did a really neat thing.  In each new book that she wrote, she included some kind of pictorial reference to all her previous books.  It is fun to look for those in the books.

Look Who Lives in the Arctic by Alan Baker

I absolutely love this book!  The design of this book is so great!  Look Who Lives in the Arctic is a great book for a study on the Arctic, specifically arctic animals.  It is engaging enough for a preschooler but can be used to prompt further learning for an elementary student.  One site gives it a reading level of ages 4-8.

Apparently this is one of 4 books in a series of "Look Who Lives In" books, with there being one about the Desert, the Ocean, and the Rainforest.  I will definitely be trying to get my hands on the others.

Perfect Snow by Barbara Reid and our plasticine pictures

The Golden Goose is the first book by Barbara Reid that I read and noticed her amazing plasticine illustrations.  That sent me on a search for more books by her.  The search eventually led me to Perfect Snow, a book little one and I really enjoyed.  The illustrations in the book are amazing!


While talking to Little One about how amazing the illustrations were and the fact that they were made with plasticine, which is something like playdough, I thought that it would be fun to try our hand at making pictures with playdough.  I decided to try to find out more about Barbara Reid and her illustrations and a google search lead me to Barbara Reid's website - what a great find!  I was thrilled to discover that she had videos showing how to make plasticine pictures.  The girls and I watched the videos and were even more excited about trying it for ourselves.

I didn't have any plasticine so I decided to make playdough, using this cooked playdoh recipe from a friend, and try it with that.  Here's what we created:

Little One's creation (age 4)

Mom's creation 

Sis's creation (age 17)

We had fun and were pretty pleased with our creations but we wanted to give plasticine a try so we made a trip to the local dollar store and got some Crayola Modeling Clay.  The modeling clay was much better to work with.  Here's what we created with it:

I printed off the picture and Little One filled it in with plasticine.  We only had four colors but I did some mixing to get other colors.

Little One drew a picture of her doll and then filled it in with plasticine

Sis did this beautiful scenery from her head.  It's a row boat in the water on a sunset evening and there's a moose almost up on the shore.

I pointed out the Barbara Reid books to our librarian and suggested doing a Barbara Reid themed story hour and having the children make plasticine pictures.  It went over quite well!  Here's what Little One made at the event:

I see many more hours spent enjoying Barbara Reid books and playing with plasticine in our house in the future.

What Will the Weather Be? by Linda DeWitt

Little One and I really enjoyed What Will the Weather Be?.  It is a great way to introduce weather concepts.  There is a lot of material packed into the little book and we will need to revisit it many times to wrap our heads around it all but we loved it so much that revisiting it will not be a chore.  I'm definitely adding it to my science resource list for the next few years.

Young Authors Day at Pokeweed Public School by John Bianchi

This is great book to use as part of a special week of reading and writing. The book tells about just such a week at Poke Weed Public School, where the teacher, Ms Mudwortz shows the importance of reading with FRED (Free Reading Every Day).  I used to do the same thing with my older children when they were younger but I never thought to give it a cool name.  Little One got a kick out of the illustration showing all the students of Pokeweed Public school enjoying their FRED time.  Ms. Mudwortz also has a Young Author's Week where the first day is writing day.  The students have to start with an idea, come up with a beginning, a problem, and a solution).  The second day is picture day when the students turn words into pictures and do illustrations for their book.  The third day is Book Day when they create a title and cover for their book and then bind it all together.  The fourth day is RAT (Read Aloud Time), because as Ms. Mudwortz says, "A book is just a bunch of paper stuck together until someone reads it".And the last day is  Young Authors Day when they have a visit from an author and are surprised to find he is so different from how they imagined.

Inspired by 

One is Canada by Maxine Trottier

I just finished reading One is Canada to Little One.  I did not particularly enjoying reading the book but Little One was quite smitten by the illustrations.

The book was illustrated by Bill Slavin and we were part way in the book when Little One exclaimed "He is a good drawer!  Who drew the pictures?"  She is 4, remember, and I was a bit shocked with this exclamation.  I hadn't noticed the pictures at all.  I turned to the front of the book and told her the illustrators name and continued reading the book, but I kept getting interrupted with her exclamations about how great the pictures were.  At one point she exclaimed, "I have to tell him he's a good drawer."  :)  I think I'm going to have to look for more books illustrated by Bill Slavin.

Maxine Trottier, though not born a Canadian, became a Canadian citizen in 1974.  She lives in my home province, Newfoundland and Labrador.  I skimmed a list of her books and I will be making a point of checking out more of them.

This book caught my eye during our recent library visit because it is a Canadian book and it is a book about numbers.  I've been making a conscious effort to expose Little One to numbers and math concepts lately because it's something I haven't really put much effort into so far.  As I said earlier, however, I did not enjoying reading the book.  After reading it I read on the inside flap of the dust cover on the book that it is "a rhythmical read-aloud".  It may just be me, but I didn't find it rhythmical at all. Having said that, however, I do think I will go back to this book again.  There is a lot of history and geography wrapped up in this picture book.  It would make a great jumping off point for further learning.

This book counts towards the following reading challenges:  Canadian Authors Challenge, Newfoundland Authors, and Young Readers Challenge

The Dangerous Voyage by Gilbert Morris

The Dangerous Voyage, by Gilbert Morris, is book #1 in The Time Navigators fiction series, written especially for preteens (ages 11-14). In the series Danny and Dixie travel back in time and experience "unforgettable moments in history". In The Dangerous Voyage they are transported back to 1620 in England and they explore the Mayflower.

I found this book on my book shelf last week and decided to re-read it because it fit the requirements for a couple of reading challenges I am participating in - the First in a Series Challenge and also the Young Readers Challenge

I remember buying the book for my children to read after I had read many of the books in Morris' House of Winslow series.  I really enjoyed Winslow's writing and was thrilled to check out his writing for children. Also, as a homeschooling mother, I was always looking to squeeze all the learning I could out of a book and the fact that these books had an historical element to them made them more appealing.

If you are interested in seeing the books in each series you can check out Gilbert Morris' page on Fantastic Fiction. I think that both of these series can be used as additional reading for pleasure in an American history learning unit, the Time Navigator series for younger readers and the House of Winslow series for older readers. Children could be encouraged to record mentions of historical events and people and use this as jump of points for further study. While reading the book this time around I was wondering how it compared to the first book in the House of Winslow series and I wished I had it on my shelves to do the comparing.

I am not a fan of the whole sci-fiction travel in time concept, but I do see how it can be fun for children and it can help them to see things from a different perspective.

I already quoted one passage for the book in my Admit You Need Him post and I'd like to end with another one:

"Are you sure you want the truth?" Dixie asked. "Or do you just want to prove what you already have decided to believe?"