I bought this book a month before my baby was born. I originally purchased it because of the rhythm and rhyme. I knew I wanted Harper to be exposed to lots of rhyming books because of what research says about reading books (especially rhyming books) to babies early on. 

I loved the bouncy rhythm and fantastic vocabulary.
Everyday, everywhere, babies are dressed~ in diapers and T-shirts, in buntings and sleepers, in playsuits and dresses, in sweaters and creepers. 

That's it. That's why I bought the book. 

It wasn't until recently (about 18 months after I purchased the book) that I realized how amazing this book is. It wasn't until Harper started bringing the book to me, asking me Weed? Weed?  Up. Up. (Read? Read? Up. Up.- meaning pick me up and put me in your lap.)

Here is why I love and Harper loves this book:

1. Bouncy rhythm, fantastic rhyme, great vocabulary. 

2. The Lapbook edition is a supersized board book which makes the illustrations bigger and the perfect size to read while a child is snuggled in your lap.

3. The Illustrations! I have to be honest. When I first bought the book, the illustrations didn't catch my attention. I was so impressed with the words that I didn't even bother looking at the illustrations. (Sad. I know.)  It took my child staring at them and pointing at images and naming them. Baby! Daddy! Ma! Tree! Lights! Hat! Easy! (Easy is the name that Harper calls our dog and every other dog in the world because when he was little we would tell him "easy" when he would roughly pet Sam.) Or when he would purposely turn back to a page because he wanted to stare at it longer. 

3.a. Richard Scarry-esque. These illustrations are so great because they remind me of those old Richard Scarry books I used to stare at as a child. An intricate world with so many details it would take hundreds of rereads and hours before you could ever notice all the details. 

3.b. The Diversity. What's amazing is that there is so much diversity in this book. Yet it is subtle in a good way. It's there and it's everywhere! But I say it's subtle because it's almost like it's a book about diversity without being about diversity. It's there. It's everywhere. It's the way the world is. It's the way we live together. This book is a version of everyone's "normal."

4. Great re-read-ability! Which is why I'm writing a review of a book twelve years old. Rereading it never gets old because as previously mentioned the details of the illustrations allow you to discover something new each time. 
5. It's a book about babies! Babies love to look at other babies! I had no idea. 

So even though this review may be a decade and a half too late, I'm re-promoting this book because my baby absolutely loves it, which makes me love it even more.  

Because we have our very first middle grade writing and illustrating course coming up, I wanted to share one of my very favorite middle grade novels, the hilarious yet meaningful Blood Diaries: Tales of a 6th Grade Vampire by Marissa Moss. However, here’s a wee disclaimer, I know and love Marissa and her work. Also, because I want to be able to use these quickie videos to more actively help authors and illustrators support themselves through their work by also posting them elsewhere, I have to shorten them to less than 4 minutes (making brief videos are not one of my super powers) so I'm hoping my skill with brief videos will improve. I'm calling this new series The Quick Peek series. So here goes.

Marissa is pretty brilliant but she also shows in this clever 129 page novel (which is somewhere around 1300 words) how doable and fun writing middle grade novels can be. We'll be looking at this book and others in our Middle Grade Mastery course. Meanwhile, here are some of her many other books - did I mention that she's quite brilliant?

One of the best things we have done this year in our elementary school is a program called Creating a Community of Readers. Our students are challenged this year to read and complete at least 25 on level novels. But the teachers are challenging themselves as well. I'm amazed at the power a teacher holds in transforming a nonreader into a reader. It's really one of the simplest things you can do. And you don't need a reading degree in order to do it.  The simple act of actually reading books and genuinely talking about books with students and other teachers has more power than any skill based commercialized reading program ever will. 

Before we started this program, I knew it would be powerful. But little by little we are starting to see the effects of it. 

Just the other day, one of the teachers I work with told me a story about one of her students. The student used to hate to read. And this year, she told her teacher that she loves reading and that she has read more books in the first 5 months of school than she has read her entire life. 

I found the student later that day and asked her what the difference was. How did she become such an avid reader when she used to hate reading. She said, "It's because I was reading the wrong books. Now I've found books that I want to read."

She told me that before she only read because she was assigned reading. Now she loves getting book recommendations from her friends and teachers. Plus she has learned how to try a book out by reading the book jacket and first few pages to see if it's something she is interested in. 

Our principal takes a book (middle grade novels that he will be able to recommend to students later) to lunch with him and reads in the cafeteria as the students are eating lunch. Kids have asked him about the books he reads and they want to borrow his books when he is finished with them. 

Teachers post what they have read and are currently reading outside on their door. Just the other day our principal stopped in and asked me if I had an extra copy of Wonder because he overheard a girl saying she really wanted to read it, but all the copies were checked out of our library. 

In one room, the students are bringing in their personal copies of books that they want their teacher to read so they can talk about the book together. 

It's amazing that just by simply reading and talking about books with students and teachers can transform nonreaders into real readers. 

Often in education we make things so complex. We spend millions of dollars on remediation programs and workbooks and computer programs that give us reports and data all so we can "cure" the literacy problem in America, when in reality the answer is so simple. 

Just read. (And talk about what you are reading.)

Here is my current list:

25 Book Challenge:

Completed:
1. The Crossover
2. When You Reach Me
3. Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
4. Fish in a Tree
5. The Fourteenth Goldfish
6. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
7. Wonder
8. Roller Girl
9. Out of My Mind
10. El Deafo

Currently Reading:
Matilda

Want to Read:
The War That Saved My Life
Class Dismissed
(Reread) The One and Only Ivan
Long Walk to Water
There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom
The Graveyard Book
Whatever After Series
Rules
The Thing About Jellyfish
Echo
The Year of Billy Miller
The Great Gilly Hopkins
Smile



What books are you looking forward to reading in this upcoming year?