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You are here: Home / Archives for Homeschool / Our Book Diet

Our Book Diet

The Biggest Bear and other picture books for older children

January 12, 2012 by amanda 4 Comments

The kids and I have been working our ways through both the Newbery and Caldecott medal and honors lists as part of the #nerdbery and #nerdcott challenges. We’ve already found dozens of new books to love. Sometimes we all agree, and sometimes our reviews are mixed.

Today I’d like to share our opinions on The Biggest Bear, Snow White, and Baboushka and the Three Kings. Each of these books had strong points and weaknesses. My 7-year-old and I had different opinions about The Biggest Bear, so I’ve also included her review here.

The Biggest Bear

My review:
I was really excited when I first picked up The Biggest Bear. The illustrations are beautiful and instantly caught my eye. Despite this first impression, I was a little disappointed once I started reading. The story really shows it’s age. There are many parts of the book that could seem shocking to young kids, particularly those who live a suburban or urban life.

The story follows a young boy who wishes to shoot and kill the biggest bear. He goes into the woods with his gun, but he finds a cub rather than a large bear. Instead of killing the cub, he feeds it and brings home. As the bear grows, he starts to cause mischief, and the boy tries unsuccessfully to lose the bear. The point comes when he must kill the bear. Right before the bear is shot, the bear becomes afraid and runs into a trap. This trap was set by men at the zoo, who are thrilled to welcome the bear into their exhibit. The story ends with everyone happy about the bear going to the zoo.

This book is so gorgeous, but the content is probably a bit above the level of the average picture book reader. Parents who wish to avoid images of children with guns will want to skip this book. I was very disappointed that the consequences of the boy’s choice to feed the bear are never explored. I think this was a missed opportunity. It seems to end on a happy note and the boy’s actions are not questioned.

On a positive note: This book fueled good conversation with my older kids. I initially started reading it with my 1 1/2 year-old (who was drawn to the beautiful illustrations of the boy and the bear), but I decided to bail and distract her once we came to the part where the boy was taking the bear out to be shot.

My 7-year-old daughter’s review:
I like this book. It is a story of a boy who adopts a bear. The pictures are very realistic. I wish that I could draw that well! I thought it was really funny when the bear swam for 2 miles and didn’t get very wet. I like that the bear doesn’t get shot and gets put in the zoo.


Snow White
Also as part of the Nerdcott challenge, we recently read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by the Brother’s Grimm. There are many editions of this book, and several have won awards. We decided to poke through a few of them and see what we thought.

One edition particularly caught my eye. It was illustrated by Tina Schart Hyman. She won the Caldecott Medal for Saint George and the Dragon, which is another family favorite and an Ambleside Year 1 selection. This particular retelling of Snow White is darker than most, and I wouldn’t recommend it for younger children. If your kids are a bit older and enjoy classical tales, I think this is a great book.


Baboushka and the Three Kings

And, finally, a book that differs in pretty much every way from the previous two. Baboushka and the Three Kings is a story with very simple illustrations, but it would be appropriate for any age. It is far shorter than the previous two books, and toddlers should have no problem sitting through it. It would be a great read-along with young kids around Christmastime when you are discussing traditions in different parts of the world.


I’d love to hear your opinion on these picture books or any others that you’ve read. Some of the other books that we’ve all recently enjoyed include Sam, Bangs and Moonshine, The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, Hide and Seek Fog and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. How about you?

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Filed Under: Book Talk, Homeschool, Our Book Diet

Our book diet – Day 4

October 30, 2006 by amanda Leave a Comment

It is amazing to see my children’s attention spans already lengthening after only a week of consistantly cutting back tv and increasing their book intake 🙂 They are begging for more books, and we are now taking daily (rather than weekly or bi-weekly) trips to the library. My daughter (2 1/2) likes to re-read her favorites, but my son (4 1/2) loves the adventure of a new book. He has started checking out non-fiction books about dinosaurs, boats, and airplanes, and now that’s his new favorite category. They are both back to reading books while we drive around town, which was a habit they had started to lose.
Not only can they pay attention longer, but their imaginative play is increasing by leaps and bounds. They seem to be making up for lost time! My kids didn’t even watch that much, and yet still we are seeing a dramatic improvement. May I also mention that they are much less frustrated and getting out a whole lot more energy. Something about reading for half an hour really calms them down. Watching TV for the same amount of time leaves them all revved up.
My quote for the day, as I reflect back on the amount of Dora and The Backyardigans my kids were watching , from The Read-Aloud Handbook:

The vocabulary of television is lower than nearly all forms of print, from comic books to children’s books and newspapers and magazines. A study of the scripts from eight programs favored by teenagers showed a sentence averaged only seven words (versus eighteen words in my local newspaper). Since TV is a picture medium, a fair comparison would be with children’s picture books:

  • 72 percent of the TV scripts consisted of simple sentences or fragments/
  • In Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, only 33 percent of the text is simple sentences.
  • In The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, only 21 percent of the text is simple sentences. (p. 203-204)

Thus one can say even good children’s picture books contain language that is at least twice the complexity of television’s. Imagine how much more complex the novels are.

Its only a little past noon, and here’s what we’ve read so far:

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Book Diet – Day 3 (Weekend)

October 29, 2006 by amanda Leave a Comment

Here’s my weekend edition of our book diet 🙂 We’ve read more books than this, but this gives you a good idea. Here’s my thought for the day, courtesy of The Read-Aloud Handbook

NAEP studies reported the more printed materials found in a child’s home, the higher the student’s writing, reading, and math skills. (NAEP 1992 Trends in Academic Progress)

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Filed Under: Our Book Diet, The Read-Aloud Handbook - Trelease

Book Diet – Day 2

October 26, 2006 by amanda 2 Comments

Its a snowy day, so we’re having lots of time to read! I’ll update it later once we’ve done all of our reading for the day. Here’s our list so far:

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Our Book Diet – Day 1 (10/25)

October 25, 2006 by amanda Leave a Comment

As many of you know, I am working through Trelease’s The Read-Aloud Handbook. It has really inspired me to make sure that I am not just reading to my kids at bedtime, but rather making read-aloud time a big part of our day. I have decided to focus from now until Thanksgiving on making sure that my kids are getting a healthy “diet” of great books. We’ve slacked a lot due to our impending move, and this is something that I don’t want to see fall by the wayside.

Feel free to join me! I’m going to try to post at least 10 books a day that we’ve read. That’s my minimum. My kids would probably read 100, but 10 is a good goal for me, as it is a reasonable amount of my day to spend on reading to them without it being too overwhelming for us right now. 🙂

Yesterday was almost all chapter books (Winnie the Pooh especially), so today is lighter fare 🙂

Today’s picks: (2 of these were read to me by my 4yo…)

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Filed Under: Our Book Diet, The Read-Aloud Handbook - Trelease

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