Reading With The Little One: Big, Bad and a Little Bit Scary

Today I'd like to introduce a new feature called "Reading With The Little One." I hope you find the title pretty self-explanatory! Basically, these posts will feature books that have really grabbed my Little One's interest and imagination AND that I think are worthwhile.

In other words, although my son is forever grabbing the Transformers books and ooohing and aaahing over them, I won't be writing about those books here. Instead, these posts will feature books that got both him AND me excited. (But one of my rules is to NEVER deny him a book that gets him excited. So even though I die a little inside when he gravitates to a book about Transformers or based on the Cars movie, I realize this is a way to get him involved with and excited about reading books.)

These posts will defintely skew toward books that catch my son's interests so I suspect you won't find a lot of "girly" books here. (He tends to reject anything he perceives as "for girls.") Also he is 5 years old so the books will tend to skew to that age bracket. However, I hope you will find something of worth in these posts for the children in your life and will just enjoy reading the posts as I hope to capture my Little One's reactions to the book, which is often quite cute.

I'm not going to do this weekly; mostly I'll just do these posts when we find a particularly worthy book to highlight. So enough yapping, on with the first book!

Big, Bad and a Little Bit Scary: Poems That Bite Back

Illustrator: Wade Zahares

Published by: Viking

ISBN: 0-670-03513-0

Recommended for Ages 5 and Up

The Little One's Thoughts: This book should be called "Big, Bad and A Lot Cool!" It deserves a medal.* I want to buy this book so I can have it forever.

*One day at the library, we saw a book that had a Caldecott sticker on it, which was silver and round. He thought it looked like a medal and wanted to know what it meant. I explained that sometimes they give books they think are worthwhile for kids to read these stickers. So now whenever he reads a book he really likes, he says "This book deserves a medal."

My Thoughts: I never would have imagined my son getting excited about a book of poetry, but the whole concept of "big, bad and scary" animals appealed to him greatly. The animals featured in the book include alligators, wolves, vultures, vipers, octopus, lions, bats, sharks, eels, barracudas, sparrow hawks, porcupines and panthers. Each page is lavishly illustrated with these wonderful drawings by Wade Zahares that give a sense of the menace of the animal but without being too scary. Each illustration is accompanied by a poem about the animal. The poets range from Ogden Nash to Eve Merriam to Maxine Kumin.

I loved that my son not only loved the illustrations but got into the poems too. It was fun to talk about the poems and "discover" the poet's meaning. Also, most of the poems led to a discussion of what the animal does that makes it a "little bit scary." Needless to say, my son just loved learning that vultures eat dead animals! In the end, reading this book together ended up being a lesson in poetry and science!

So let's explore the book a little more. Here are some of the illustrations and accompanying poems.

Always Be Kind to Animals

Always be kind to animals

Morning, noon and night.

For animals have feelings too,

And furthermore they bite!

-John Gardner

The Panther

The panther is like a leopard,

Except it hasn't been peppered.

Should you behold a panther crouch,

Prepare to say Ouch.

Better yet, if called by a panther,

Don't anther.

-Ogden Nash

This was a particularly fun poem to read. I got a kick out of the last line, and we had a great discussion about what the poet meant by the panther "hasn't been peppered."

Strippers

If you fall into a river that's full of Pirahna,

They'll strip off your flesh like you'd skin a banana.

There's no time for screaming, there's no time for groans.

In forty-five seconds, you're nothing but bones.

-Dick King-Smith

By far, this was my son's favorite illustration and poem in the book. He was fascinated by the idea of pirahnas, which led to a long discussion of exactly where they live (perhaps I should refer him to David Grann's The Lost City of Z?) and exactly how long 45 seconds is (which involved me counting to 45 while pretending to eat him with my hand). I have to admit I had fun rhyming "pirahna" and "banana." Sometimes I said it all "hoity-toity" like "BAH-NAH-NA" and sometimes I said it more liked "buh-nan-er." And my husband got a chuckle out of the title.

All in all, a fun introduction to poetry! Four stars AND a medal!