Summer Reading Challenge #1 – Kindergarten list

Kindergarten Reading List

Picture books are works of art, and like any art, are subject to differing opinion as to what is wonderful and what is not.  Looking over the list the school gave, I don’t have much to complain about.

I’ve read 90% of these.  I loved Where the Wild Things Are since I was a little girl, but after I attended a lecture by Matthew McElligott about how much care and design went into each page, I love it even more.  Reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar is a tactile, interactive experience for little ones.  The Napping House is a fun romp (but not actually good for bedtime reading).  Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten not only is a clever alphabet book in disguise (not only are the characters names in alphabet order, so are their species), it also shows how much work a teacher does to make a room welcoming.  Each Peach Pear Plum is a look and find using nursery and fairy tale characters.  I love Toot and Puddle-two close friends who are kind and loving.  Caps for sale was a favorite when I was little.  I don’t like Goodnight Moon, but that is just my taste- I find it too sappy.

They cover nonfiction with books about the senses, gardening, and animals.  Not bad, I suppose- though we have so much more to offer than this selection.  This list, as I said in my previous post, is to give suggestions.  There are so many wonderful books out there for Kindergarteners that teachers would have to give something the size of a telephone book to recommend them all.

Go to your local library and talk to a Children’s Librarian.  Bring your child!  The Librarian will be able to find picture books, both fiction and nonfiction, to delight your child.  If she loves trucks, we can find story books about cute talking trucks, but also books with lots of pictures of real trucks and little snippets of facts.  If he’s struggling learning concepts, we can recommend books about colors, numbers, opposites or time.  That leads me to my next thought- alphabet books.  Books like Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom embed the alphabet into the story.  True alphabet books have a letter per page.  I’ve seen so many of them that I now instantly flip to X and then judge them by that page.  Did they use X cleverly, or chicken out?  I really don’t like the artwork for ABC, I Like Me!  I find it too childish.

What I would add to this list:

• fairy tales
• Mother Goose and nursery rhymes
• books about your child’s favorite interests
• chapter books to read aloud
• audiobooks to listen to
• Bunny Money by Rosemary Wells
• Courage of the Blue Boy by Robert Neubecker
• Any Caldecott Award winner
• picture books of mythology or tales from around the world
• Tuesday by David Weisner
• Journey by Aaron Becker
• White Rabbit’s Color Book by Alan Baker
• Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer
• early reader books- gauge your child’s ability and don’t force it (Bob books to start)
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff
• the Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
• King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood
• Stellaluna by Jannell Cannon
• A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
• Bark, George by Jules Feiffer
• Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw
• the Mysterious Tadpole by Stephen Kellogg
• The Puddle by David McPhail
• Lola at the Library by Anna McQuinn
• How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight by Jane Yolen
• Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino
• Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton
• The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone (Grover!)
• The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie De Paola
• Superhero ABC by Bob McCleod

……wow- I could just keep going.  Go to a library.  Get a book.  Read it to your kid.  Repeat.