Authors and Books

Greetings!
I want to share some authors and their books with you this week.
It is difficult to find books that span the ages of our children in grades 1 – 8, but Jerry Pallotta is able to do this easily. He writes alphabet books. I know that sound childish, but his books also include a lot of information about the subjects he is writing about. If you aren’t familiar with his books, I highly recommend them. I know of teachers that have their students make similar books for class projects and use these as a guide. Some of his titles are ‘The Underwater Alphabet Book, The Spice Alphabet Book, The Bird Alphabet Book, The Desert Alphabet Book, The Flower Alphabet Book, The Ocean Alphabet Book, and The Icky Bug Alphabet Book.’ He also has some math books that kids enjoy such as the “Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Fractions Book.” The fractions are shown using a Hershey’s chocolate bar.



Gail Gibbons writes and illustrates informational books for younger children. She researches her subject and simplifies it for her readers. She has many, many books out and you can find them online and choose the subject or subjects you can use best in your school. I like the one about apples and the one about berries, but the one about monarch butterflies is good, and the one about bees is great. You can see how much I like her books, can’t you. I really like the one about pottery. It is called ‘The Pottery Place’ and she has even made the endpapers look like splatters of clay slip. Gail describes the process of making things out of clay and the firing and glazing process. In her book ‘Stargazers’ we learn about stars, constellations, astronomers, telescopes and more. All that in 32 pages! There are many more books of hers, but you get the idea.


Aliki also has many books that she writes. She, like Gail Gibbons, researches, writes and illustrates her books. The first book I noticed of hers was ‘A Medieval Feast’. I love the descriptions of the preparations needed for a feast for a king and the illustrations are so colorful. There is a simple text for the story, but further information is included in the illustrations. In her book ‘How a Book Is Made’, she goes through the entire process of writing a book, the editing process, the publishing and the printing until finally the book is done and ready to read. ‘Corn is Maize’ tells the history of corn and how we use it today. At the end of the book she describes how to make a corn husk doll and corn husk wreath.

Beverly Cleary wrote the Ramona Quimby books and I hope you all have heard of them and even have them already in your libraries. If you don’t, it would be a good collection to have. The Beezus and Ramona movie that came out recently spurred a new interest in the books. They are also great read aloud books. Anyway, most people know about those books, but she wrote four books for young children about twins Janet and Jimmy which are wonderful. The Growing-up Feet, Two Dog Biscuits, The Real Hole, and Janet’s Thing-a-ma-jigs are all so good I could not tell you my favorite. Beverly Cleary has the ability to write exactly what a child would think and feel so the stories are very real. Other books of hers are about Henry and his dog Ribsy, and ‘Dear Mr. Henshaw’ with the sequel ‘Strider’. She wrote a few books that stand alone such as ‘Socks’, ‘Muggie Maggie’, ‘The Mouse and the Motorcycle’, ’Mitch and Amy’, ‘Ellen Tebbits’, ‘Emily’s Runaway Imagination’, ‘The Luckiest Girl’ and ‘Fifteen’. The last two books are about girls in their teens. I believe that you can’t go wrong with a Beverly Cleary book.

One last author that can span the grade levels is Peter Spier. His books are often wordless or nearly so and filled with pictures. Everyone will enjoy looking at the books and little ones learning to read will be able to ‘read’ the story for themselves. I am showing his book ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ which has the lyrics to our national anthem illustrated in great detail. However, my favorites include ‘Noah’s Ark’ (look for the comical end when many rabbits leave the ark), ‘Rain’ (somehow he makes the beginning of the book look a bit dustier than the end when the rain has cleaned it all up), ‘Christmas’, and ‘Jonah’. There are more, but these are good ones to start on.

I hope this information has been helpful to you and you got some good ideas of books to put in your library. I know I had a good time looking at these again.
Check out my blog at sdalibrarian.blogspot.com. All these weekly emails are archived there. I would be pleased for you to become a follower, too.
Have a great week!
Audrey