Moving Beyond ABC: Recommendations for the Pre-K Set

Reading is fun; perhaps most of all when you're reading to a child. Silly voices and fantasy lands and ABCs are the DNA building blocks of all future learning...ah, I can get lost in the grandeur of it all. A few of my long-time favorite and other, more recent picks are listed here for a pre-K, just-about-to-learn-to-read audience. Enjoy-add recommendations of your own-just read!!!!!!!!!!!

A is for Salad by Mike Lester
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
George Upside Down by Meghan McCarthy
ABC3D by Marion Battaille
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin - see fun related activities here and enjoy the superbly sung version here.

Of course the Dr. Seuss books are wondrous and rollicking reads, but in our house they were so well read, to both kids, that I consider them early preschool rather than pre-K/kindergarten books.

Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel, is a classic I still enjoy, as are several of the other older titles I remember reading (or being read to?) as an young page-turner:


My daughter enjoyed the Bob books series during kindergarten, and I think their simple method can truly help young readers practice basic skills. I bought 'em from Scholastic, 'cus i love the fact that when you buy books through the school program, teachers get credits they can use to buy new books for their classrooms. That said, the Bob books also appear on this
handy list at Amazon.com.

Happy reading out loud!

Sunrise Over Fallujah = War Lite

Walter Dean Myers' Sunrise Over Fallujah describes the war in Iraq from a soldier's point of view, with a minimal amount of killing and "misting." (Explanation not for the faint of heart, or queasy of stomach.)

The 280+ page book bears a copyright date of 2008, and although the book is timely it's not quite up-to-date - the "war is over" theme repeated throughout might have seemed almost possible while Myers was writing it...but we know better now.

I have no real comparison at my disposal, as I'm just not into war books. As I recall I gave up on Catch 22 before I made it halfway through that dreary work. All I can really say for this book as a YA is there's no sex, and only enough killings to make it seem really, truly a book about soldiers on the ground. There are no answers, no characters that are all right and all wrong, and fortunately, Myers stays out of politics.

Too bad more folks don't.