Gingerbread baby (Brett, Jan)
My friend is sad (Willems, Mo)
Casey back at bat (Gutman, Dan)
My daughter has now read My friend is sad more than once. Now that she is familiar with the words and the story, she has started to pay attention to the punctuation and the way Willems uses font and the illustrations to express the characters' feelings. It was quite a spirited rendition this evening. It's fun to watch her develop as a reader.
As for Casey back at bat....I loved it, then I was disappointed. I love the newsprint illustrations, the effortless verse, and the fact that it could classify as a fractured fairytale (of sorts.) But once the ball left Casey's bat and then headed across time, space and history, I realized that I have read this book already, and it is called Hurray for Snail! Except that Snail succeeds where Casey flies out. And to be honest, the part about knocking off the Sphinx's nose and causing the dinosaurs to become extinct was just plain silly in a distracting, disjointed way. I would have preferred it if Joe Stoshack had managed to travel into literature to visit Casey. That would have been more convincing--and relevant--than the ball's excellent adventure.
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