Great Read-Alouds

I have a confession. I am addicted to book shopping. The rush of adrenaline that I get when I walk into Barnes and Noble is indescribable. Oh, the smell of a new book! It's pure heaven! With that said, I made it in and out of Barnes and Noble today in record time.. 2 hours. Hah! I have a baby shower to go to and the girls hosting requested that instead of a card, we each bring a book and sign that instead. I love this idea!

Obviously, it took me for-ev-er to pick out a book because I spent a lot of time browsing for the perfect book. I didn't want a classic because I figured that everyone else would get one of those. I didn't want a "baby"book because, again, everyone else is sure to bring one of those to a baby shower. Plus, I kept thinking, what do you do when you receive multiple copies of the same book and people already signed the book and wrote a message in it?? 

Picture me sitting on the floor in the kids section, devouring picture book after picture book. I read all my faves, Corduroy, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Tar Beach, Stella Luna, No, David!, Dot, Ish, Thank you, Mr. Falker, Pirates Don't Change Diapers, Fancy Nancy, Make Way for Ducklings, Knuffle Bunny, and the list goes on. The couple does not know what they are having, so it was a bit more challenging but here's what I ended up with.

I love, love, love Mo Willems. I discovered his books while I was taking a Children's Lit class as an undergrad. This book is too much fun and preschoolers just eat it up. He also has some more in this series, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, and The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog are two more great ones. The little pigeon is so dang cute and when you use it as a read aloud, the kids love to shout out, NO!! the whole time. I hope they enjoy it as much as my kiddos did when I was teaching the younger grades. Plus, unless there are other teachers there or parents with preschool age children (which I don't think there are) there's a good chance that no one else picked up this book.

I also couldn't resist this one..

This book is literally just the lyrics from the song, Forever Young, with illustrations of it being performed in New York. The baby's parents are fans of his music and the baby's dad is from New York, so when I saw the adorable illustrations, I knew it had to be a part of this sweet baby's new book collection. Again, I think this is another one that no one else will get. (I have no idea why I was stressing so much about multiple books showing up at this shower!)

I couldn't resist picking up this book for my classroom..



because I love David Shannon, I don't read aloud from pictures books enough to my kiddos now that I only teach math and science, and this book has a great lesson behind it for kids of any age. Jodi from The Clutter Free Classroom did a great project and adorable bulletin board with this book and I hope to do something similar. This will be a great read aloud now that we've started our anti-bullying program, Steps To Respect, because it is all about being yourself and not caring about what other people think about you.

It's amazing that I only walked out of there with 3 books. Although, my heart was aching thinking about how much I miss teaching the little ones. Strangely enough, whenever I picture a change in grade level, I always consider moving up, until I find myself sprawled out on the floor of the kids section of Barnes and Noble!