Do your kids love surprises? Then they will love this book! The piggies are trying to whip up a culinary surprise for their mama, but they are making quite a mess. Papa comes to the rescue and helps them turn on the oven and get things cleaned up just in time. I love the rhyming in this book, too…it just adds so much to the book and makes it so much fun to read.
Several months ago I had the privilege of working with Kaaren Pixton as she worked with groups of children to create beautiful art. Her work is AMAZING and her books for babies and toddlers are not only gorgeous, but are meant for little ones who put everything in their mouths and don’t quite yet understand that books are for looking at and are not for ripping to pieces.
I love that this idea for her books came from a need she saw with her triplet grandchildren. Any book they were given was torn to shreds…not the best way to start a love for books when you can’t give the child a book without them eating it or ripping it.
She has several titles including: Jungle Rumble!, Plip-Plop, Pond! and Creep! Crawl!
All of her books are non-toxic and if you’d like to learn more about Kaaren or see more of her books and artwork, you can click here.
I am pretty sure that our boys have read just about every one of these this summer. Some of them we checked out from the library and some of them we bought for the two longer road trips we made this summer. These books are so well written and just fantastic in every way, especially if you have a little historian in your house. The series covers everyone from King Tut to Steve Jobs to Anne Frank to Daniel Boone to Walt Disney to The Beatles and many, many more.
They all have both text and pictures. They also have a timeline in the back of each book that shows events from the person’s life and then a corresponding time line that shows world events that happened during that person’s life. Again, your little historian will love these books. I would say if you have a second grader who is a really good reader that they could probably handle these. What’s so great about them though is that I think a child even in middle school would find these interesting as well.
Not ready to give up the Olympics just yet? This is an adorable story of a pig with a dream, about never giving up….dusting yourself off and trying again…and again…and again.
An interview with the author:
King Wilfred has three sons and he is raising them to be good at all things knightly: jousting, fighting with swords and giving orders. Then the queen has a daughter and since the queen dies shortly after the daughter is born, the king decides to raise his daughter the same way he is raising his sons.
Her brothers make fun of her because the armor and swords are too heavy, but she is determined. She practices in her own way and with a lot of determination and work, ends up being better at all things knightly than even her own brothers.
As the princess’ 16th birthday approaches, the king decides to have a jousting contest and whoever wins will win her hand in marriage. I bet you can guess who wins the jousting contest…
Princess Smartypants does NOT want to get married so she comes up with all kinds of impossible tasks for her suitors to complete. Of course, none of them succeed, but then comes Prince Swashbuckle who seems to be good at everything. He wins Princess Smartypants’ heart, but there’s a twist at the end.
I love that this book talks about all kinds of “princesses” and that it rhymes…I haven’t read a good rhyming book in a good long while.
I also love that there is a phrase that repeats throughout the book that your little book lover will soon realize they can “read” along with you when you get to that part each time which is super huge for children who are learning about books and how they work.
Some princesses, when they choose,
never pick out fancy shoes,
but soccer cleats for outdoor sports
with shin guards and some baggy shorts,
and a sparkly crown.
Little Princess Isabella is tired of being a princess. Princesses don’t get to do anything fun like climb trees and they always have to wear dresses and have their hair curled. The king decides to send Isabella to work in the kitchen for three days which she absolutely loves so he sends her to the pigsty to feed and clean up after the pigs and she loves that even more. The king finally realizes that he misses his daughter, so as long as she comes back to stay in the castle he doesn’t care if she wears her fancy dress or wears her crown or makes sure her hair is curled. The most important thing is that she is happy, not that she acts like a princess.
This is the first in a series of non-princess princess books I will be reviewing. This one starts out like many princess stories you may be familiar with. There are three sisters and the queen is dead. (There are no princes showing up to save the day in this one though.) The kingdom is not as great as it was when the queen was alive and the king wants each of his daughters to prove to him that they are the princess that should be chosen as the next leader. So the two older sisters come up with their own plans that don’t turn our so well, but the ever wise younger sister, comes up with a plan using some of the queen’s favorite things to make the kingdom look as beautiful as it once was.
There are children’s books that are cute, children’s books that rhyme, children’s books that are beautiful and (let’s be frank here) children’s books that should be put somewhere way up on a shelf so they don’t have to be read ever again. There are also children’s books that are smart and this is one of them. The language used in this book is absolutely beautiful to the ear. If your children have never ever caught fireflies they might almost believe they have by the time you are done reading this book to them…it’s so descriptive and the illustrations are almost magical.
