Synopses & Reviews
Are children reading enough? Not according to most parents and teachers, who know that reading aloud with children fosters a lifelong love of books, ensures better standardized test scores, promotes greater success in school, and helps instill the values we most want to pass on.
Esmé Raji Codell--an inspiring children's literature specialist and an energetic teacher--has the solution. She's turned her years of experience with children, parents, librarians, and fellow educators into a great big indispensable volume designed to help parents get their kids excited about reading.
Here are hundreds of easy and inventive ideas, innovative projects, creative activities, and inspiring suggestions that have been shared, tried, and proven with children from birth through eighth grade.
This five-hundred-page volume is brimming with themes for superlative storytimes and book-based birthday parties, ideas for mad-scientist experiments and half-pint cooking adventures, stories for reluctant readers and book groups for boys, step-by-step instructions for book parades, book-related crafts, storytelling festivals, literature-based radio broadcasts, readers' theater, and more. There are book lists galore, with subject-driven reading recommendations for science, math, cooking, nature, adventure, music, weather, gardening, sports, mythology, poetry, history, biography, fiction, and fairy tales. Codell's creative thinking and infectious enthusiasm will empower even the busiest parents and children to include literature in their lives.
Synopsis
"An exuberant treasure trove for parents."
--Publishers Weekly
Are children reading enough? Not according to most parents and teachers, who know that reading aloud with children fosters a lifelong love of books, ensures better standardized test scores, promotes greater success in school, and helps instill the values we most want to pass on.
Esm Raji Codell--an inspiring children's literature specialist and an energetic teacher--has the solution. She's turned her years of experience with children, parents, librarians, and fellow educators into a great big indispensable volume designed to help parents get their kids excited about reading.
Here are hundreds of easy and inventive ideas, innovative projects, creative activities, and inspiring suggestions that have been shared, tried, and proven with children from birth through eighth grade.
This five-hundred-page volume is brimming with themes for superlative storytimes and book-based birthday parties, ideas for mad-scientist experiments and half-pint cooking adventures, stories for reluctant readers and book groups for boys, step-by-step instructions for book parades, book-related crafts, storytelling festivals, literature-based radio broadcasts, readers' theater, and more. There are book lists galore, with subject-driven reading recommendations for science, math, cooking, nature, adventure, music, weather, gardening, sports, mythology, poetry, history, biography, fiction, and fairy tales. Codell's creative thinking and infectious enthusiasm will empower even the busiest parents and children to include literature in their lives.
About the Author
A nationally renowned advocate for literacy and literature-based instruction, Esmé Raji Codell is today "one of the nation's most sought-after voices for empowering teachers" (
People) and a "Superstar of Education" (
Scolastic Instructor). Esmé has been interviewed on
CBS This Morning, CNN, C-SPAN's
Book Talk, and NPR. The author of
How to Get Your Child to Love Reading as well as award-winning books for children, Esmé lives with her husband and son in Chicago, where she spent many years as an educator in Chicago public schools and now runs the popular children's literature Web site PlanetEsme.com and the unique literary salon, the PlanetEsme Bookroom.
Table of Contents
Beginning your adventure in the world of children's literature: Potato power, the art of using what you've got -- Children's book basics -- Raise your hand if you want to volunteer in your child's school! -- Connecting books with the littlest bambinos: Great expectations -- Barely beyond baby, supporting emergent literacy -- Beaucoup de book-coups: Reading and eating -- Page-turning parties for fund-raising and just plain fun -- Have book will travel-history, social studies, and geography: Crash course in time travel safety procedures -- Reading time travel history and social studies -- Location, location, location -- Math and science of reading: Science magic show -- Mother Nature's library -- Math magic -- Now playing in a book near you; broadcast and performance: Radio, television, and the cinema -- World is a stage; literature-based performances starring your children -- Inside the gingerbread house; fairy tales, wonder tales, and fantasy: Fairy tales -- Fables and fantasy -- Got a light? sharing the spirit of Hans Christian Andersen -- Add wonder where you read; enchanting housewares you can make -- Very, very literary; nurturing book lovers and book creators: Poetry readings -- Literature circles -- Author/illustrators -- Studies; the best project ever -- Nurturing the artist within -- Storytime central: Picture books worth a thousand words -- Gender benders; books for both boys and girls -- Must-reads by the time you're thirteen -- Teen angst; the classic young adult problem -- Cyberspace; the last (?) reading frontier -- Last lines; connecting readers.