Favorite Picture Books for November

Fat Cat: A Danish Folktale retold by Margaret Read

**** I think my son liked this one more than me because he got to burp out loud to help out with the story. I like the spunky mouse in the story.

What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

*****A very fun book that shows pictures of a part of a body of an animal (you are supposed to guess what kind of animal). The next page shows you the animal and how they use that part of their body (tail, eyes, ears, etc).

A Child's Calendar - Poems by John Updike, Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

**** A poem for each month of the year. Fun poems describing outside conditions and holidays. My son had fun letting me know what the next month would be after each poem. The illustrations are beautiful (but don't get this book if you have a real problem seeing a bare bottom of a child at the beach in August).

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

**** This is clearly my pick. The illustrations were fantastic - leaves are used to represent animals and other things throughout the story! My son wanted the book to be over though.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Lauren Child

***** I did not think my son was going to sit through this one with the photographs of dolls and stuffed animals throughout the book. I was wrong. The story is very fluent and well told with some words written smaller and larger depending on how you would naturally stress them. A fun read-aloud book.

Cowboy Slim by Julie Danneburg and Margot Apple

*** This cowboy doesn't quite fit in with the others - he wants to write poems. At the end of the story he finds out his poems are useful. Very fun. This book has a lot of text but kept my son's attention.

A Million Dots by Andrew Clements

***** Just a fun book to look at. You get to look at a million dots over the course of the book (the dots are inside the pictures on each page). Fun facts about numbers. Everyone at home loved this book!

Poetry for Young People by Robert Louis Stevenson

***** These poems are taken from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson and are very imaginative. My husband and I used to read only silly and funny poems (like Shel Silverstein) to our children with the thought that they would not like any other kind. Not so.

There are several titles out there with collections of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson (author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped). But I particularly like the illustrations in this version.

The Wizard, the Ugly, and the Book of Shame by Pablo Bernasconi

*** This ended up on my favorites list but now I can't quite remember why other than it was fairly clever and funny. Both my kids laughed while reading this.

Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson

***** This is my favorite Halloween picture book ever! Look for it at your local library next October.

If you Give a Pig a Party by Laura Numeroff

*** I love these cute stories by Laura Numeroff that come right back to where they started. Just like dealing with a three-year-old!

The Pumpkin Man From Piney Creek by Darleen Bailey Beard

**** Very nice fall-time story about a girl who wants to make a jack-o-lantern and learns about honesty.

Child's Guide to Common Household Monsters by James Otis Thach

**** This is a very cute monster story, especially if you've got a child who is scared of them. Reall, they are quite scared of us!

Now and Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin by Gene Barretta

***** Fun and educational for the entire family - I did not realize he invented so many things. Cute illustrations. Can't wait to read Neo Leo (about Leonardo Divinci).

Turkey in the Straw by Barbara Shook Hazen

**** The kids thought this story was funny. I was expecting the book to actually go through the words of the song "Turkey in the Straw," but it didn't.

Imagine a Day by Sarah L. Thomson

***** Get this book! The paintings are stunningingly beautiful and full of imagination. This is one of those books that you can spend an hour just looking at the pictures and allowing yourself to enter the world of "what if..."