Entries Tagged 'books' ↓

Ezri has been really enjoying photos lately, so I pulled out some photo albums and we flip through them and point at the people in the pictures.

She’s also been enjoying her Babybug magazines and will sit through the short rhymes and stories. Her ability to point and turn pages has really upped the fun at our storytimes around the house. She used to be more interested in chewing Babybug, and while that still holds appeal, she is more captured by reading together than ever before.  Babybug has fingerplays we can do together which I appreciate.

Also, she did her first drawing today. Clearly she is an artiste. This work was done on a magnetic doodle toy, but soon she’ll be working in oils and pastels – or possibly we will start with crayons. I signed her initials at the bottom for her.

This week Ezri and I went to Anderson’s Bookshop and gave a gift to their holiday Angel Tree. I’ve been giving to this book charity since I moved to Downers Grove in 2001.  We found a girl about Ezri’s age (8 mos. named Dorothy) and picked out a book present for her. She got a Very Hungry Caterpillar toy (because at 8 months you need something fuzzy and mouthable) and the board book of The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. I picked out a teenager and got some paperbacks for her. I am hoping we can pick a child in need around Ezri’s age each year and eventually she will help me pick out the books to give.

In her own reading habits, Ezri is still all about fuzzy and textured books this week. A current favorite is Quack! Quack! Baby Touch and Feel from Priddy Books. It features textured barnyard animals and as a bonus some of the text on each page is also fuzzy. It’s like they created a fuzzy font just for Ezri.

She’s also become a big fan of pointing these days including pointing at books and things in books (especially the cats for some reason).

Here she is pointing.

Since I posted about Ezri and books earlier this week, I thought I’d let you know about her online reading habits. We check friends’ baby blogs and Ezri loves looking at photos of other babies. She thinks Charlotte, Eleanor, and Evelyn are all very exciting. I’ll admit she is self-centered enough to enjoy her own blog quite a bit too. She has also learned about keyboard banging in the past week or two. She used to just hit the spacebar, but now she’s all over the keyboard. It makes unusual windows and dialog boxes I haven’t seen before pop up.

I can’t help but mention one book.  We’ve been reading I Went Walking by  Sue Williams and illustrated with charm by Julie Vivas.  It is just the right length and has a great repetition.  Also, as you meet each animal on the walk the child takes, there is the opportunity to make animal noises.  Ezri is still very fond of the sound of “mooooo!”  The illustrations are big and the pages are not busy with a lot of detail giving it a clean look that is easier for Ezri to focus on.  It is a great early read aloud.  Highly recommend it to people reading to a baby or toddler.

I know it isn’t Wednesday, but with the holiday we missed last week.
Grandpa Mark even noticed there was no book post last week.
So, I am posting early to say that Ezri is all about the fuzzy pages of books this past week.
Favorites of the past week have included:
Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings by Matthew Van Fleet most especially the fuzzy yellow circle page and the woolly white rectangle pages.
and
Two books from DK Baby Touch and Feel series – one entitled Animals and the other entitled Puppies and Kittens.

Yes, Ezri is looking for furry books these days as her primary reading appeal. Is it the plot? The character development? The illustrations? No, it’s the fuzz factor.

She loves turning pages and is decreasingly likely to try to teeth on the book. It warms my librarian heart to see her crawling enthusiastically over to the bookshelves to look for a fun book.

Ezri is petting the page with the fuzzy bunny.

Remember the Peekaboo books I talked about last week.
Well, Ezri has a favorite page in one of them and she won’t let you turn to other pages sometimes. It is all about the peekaboo page with the fuzzy orange kitty on it. She just wants to open and close the flap on the kitty page over & over in the book Baby Loves Peekaboo! from DK publishing.

This week she also has been picking up board books from her stash and flipping through them by herself. She doesn’t go in page order or anything, but she knows about opening the book and looking at the pages.  More often than not she even has the books right side up.  I can only assume this is because my baby is a genius.

Ezri is really enjoying the Peekaboo series in from DK Publishing in their “For baby” line of books.

In the photo she is reading Bedtime Peekaboo. We’ve also enjoyed Bathtime Peekaboo and Baby Loves Peekaboo! All were checked out from the Downers Grove Public Library.
The books have photos of real babies which hold her interest. In the photo she is pointing at the baby’s face.
They feature very sturdy flaps that even Ezri can operate, so she can actually play peekaboo on each page.
The books also feature fuzzy, textured, and sparkly pages. She likes to pet the fuzzy bits. Ezri would also like to put them in her mouth, but these are library books so it isn’t allowed. The bright colors are appealing and the sparse page layout keeps her interest without being overwhelming like highly decorated books seem to be.  She will sit through the whole book more than once which is pretty amazing for a 9 month attention span.
The series also includes:
Playtime Peekaboo
Farm Peekaboo
Dress-up Peekaboo
Eyes, Nose and Toes Peekaboo
Baby says Peekaboo
So, we’ll be checking out more of these books at the library.

She found the book her grandpa wrote. Is she going to read it?

No, she’s going to try to chew the corner, but I took it away.
I gave her a chewy teether instead.

I have read aloud to her sections of Adventures in Yellowstone: Early Travelers Tell Their Tales. She enjoys listening to me read, especially the parts where there are bears or Indians.

Our favorite book lately for me to read aloud to her is
Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young selected by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Marc Brown (of Arthur book fame).
It’s filled with rhymes by the likes of Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss, but most of our favorites are by Anonymous (she comes up with the cleverest rhymes). Today we read a page featuring chicken and duck rhymes.
“Quack, quack!
We have two ducks. One blue. One black.
And when our blue duck goes ‘Quack-quack’
our black duck quickly quack-quacks back.
The quacks Blue quacks make her quite a quacker
but Black is a quicker quacker-backer.”
That one is from Dr. Seuss.
I’ve been reading to her from this book for a long time and with 4 -8 rhymes a page and around 100 pages we can keep reading for a long time to come.
We’ve read everything up to page 43 with some rereads on favorite pages like the ones about the weather.

Ezri has started to crawl. Just a few forward moves at a time, but she will work herself towards a goal. She crawled over to this open book to look through the pages of Alien Opposites.

Her favorite book of the week is Funny Face by Nicola Smee.
It has a plot which occurs on the left hand pages and on the right side a big face of the boy character’s reaction to the plot. A bear comes and steals the boy’s ball. He makes an ANGRY FACE in response. When the bear returns with more bears. He makes a WORRIED FACE. In the end the bears play ball with the boy – HAPPY FACE. The final page is a mirror for you to practice your own faces. Ezri loves the mirror. She puts her face very close – sometimes close enough to lick the mirror.

Another Wednesday means it is time to talk about what Ezri is reading.

Ezri likes books with human faces both those with photographs and those with drawings that are relatively realistic.

Eric read her Look at You! A Baby Body Book by Kathy Henderson.  She enjoyed pointing at and smiling at the faces in the book.
This leap of recognizing not only photos as people, but also drawings as people is exciting.
This book has a number of faces that are looking out at the reader and not in profile. These faces looking out at Ezri got the biggest response.
The book shows babies going through their day – playing, eating, bathing, crawling, dressing, getting their diapers changed and sleeping. It will be a good book for Ezri to recognize the activities that are part of her day as she gets a bit older.

I know you’ve been wondering about what books Ezri likes.
So, I’m going to try every Wednesday to highlight something from her library or the public library that she enjoys.

This week it’s Flip-a-face Big Little by SAMi
Animal faces flip to show BIG EYES on an owl and little eyes on a chicken. (BIG NOSE on an elephant and little nose on a skunk – you get the idea)
Ezri is a big fan of toy books with punch outs, crinkly pages, textured pages and even teething corners built in.
This book held her interest with the changing animal faces which we flipped back and forth over and over.
I liked that it taught the parts of a face. SAMi (yes that’s what the author/artist calls him/herself) has a series of “flip-a-something” books and we’ll be checking out more.  They are published by Blue Apple Books which has a catalog with a lot of high quality baby books and toddler books.

This is the page showing the chicken and the fact that every face has two eyes.
Also, Ezri’s gorilla doll based on the book Goodnight, Gorilla by Peggy Rathman is next to her.