we finish up books-a-go-go with a local author (well, to me, anyway), janet morgan stoeke.
do you have a four-year-old hanging around the house? then run, don’t walk, to your local library and pick up some books from the minerva louise series by Janet Morgan Stoeke, an author who actually lives in the next town over. i would lovelovelove to run into her in the supermarket and ask her how she gets into the brain of preschoolers!
the thing i loathe about books for preschoolers is that there seems to be so many that veer off into the direction of either books for boys or books for girls. you know — you end up reading about trucks or cars or dinosaurs when you’ve a guy, or princesses or fairies for girls. not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but it gets a bit wearing. i mean, after learning about 50,000 ways to talk about a fire truck, a parent can wish that they’d spontaneously combust.
but the minerva louise books — BC loved them when she was 4, and now, jools adores them! (in retrospect, it’s probably a sign of the apocalypse when they both agree on anything.)
minerva louise is a very silly, and possibly nearsighted, hen. she ends up mistaking a baby for a bunny; a school for a farm; and mittens for a hat. the illustrations make it quite clear to anyone why she would make her errors, and yet the fact that she makes these errors make little kids giggle and giggle. i love to read stoeke’s minerva books with my kids, if only because i love to hear my kids laugh 🙂
a new one just came out about christmastime; i’m jewish, but you can bet i’ll be out there looking for it.
Minerva Louise and the Colorful Eggs
oooh, these sound right up the Unreliable Narrator’s alley! i really want to encourage him to read and like books that have a female protagonist. it’s my pet peeve when boys won’t read stories that revolve around girls.
admittedly, these are chickens we’re talking about…but still!