Read Up! Summer Fun

Summer: a great time of year to bask in the glow of some great books!  Here are a few suggestions you can enjoy whether you spend the season at the shore, or by the pool, or wishing for a special garden, or dreaming of winter!

I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean! By Kevin Sherry

A fun game of under-the-sea one-upmanship featuring eye-catching art and quite a surprise ending.  Great silly fun!

A Beach Tail by Karen Lynn Williams and Flloyd Cooper
This sweet new book chronicles an adventurous day on the beach with a boy and his dad.  It's also a tale about a tale--the tail of a lion young Gregory draws-- and draws, and draws, and draws...

Froggy Learns to Swim by Jonathan London and Frank Remkiewicz

“Bubble bubble, toot-toot!  Chicken airplane soldier!” That’s the fun refrain your little ones will be wanting to call out both in and out of water after seeing the always-funny Froggy struggle to learn to do what most would think would come naturally.

The Great White Man-Eating Shark: A Cautionary Tale by Margaret Mahy & Jonathan Allen

It’s not safe to go back to the beach when little Norvin is around—but he’ll soon learn his lesson.  A story with a good moral and enough laughs to keep the big kids turning the pages, it’s worth biting into again and again.

Rhinos Who Surf by Julie Mammano

Want to have some radical fun with the tale of rhinos in beach jams?  Pull out your gnarliest surfer accent and shred on through!  At storytime, this one always presents ridiculous fun for the grownups, and ridiculous new vocabulary for the kids.  Tubular!

My Garden by Kevin Henkes

When I was little, I buried a fortune cookie—and boy, was I upset when nothing grew!  The little girl in this book fantasizes about a garden with jellybean bushes and chocolate bunnies, opening the door for fun conversations at home about what you & your kids would like to grow—real or imagined.

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Yes, a “snowy” book on a summer list—because there’s always someone out there (certainly not me) dreaming of winter!  Peter does just about everything he can think of in the snow—even collects some snowballs in his pocket to perhaps pull out in the summer.  I’d sure like to find a way to keep summer with me all year!