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By Mom Unplugged, May 6, 2007 9:32 pm

At a garage sale, we stumbled upon the original hardcover version of this story and one of the other stories in this series, Moongame. My 6 year-old girl, but particularly my 4 year-old boy love these!

Mooncake is the story of a bear who wants to taste the moon. He builds a rocket ship out of junk, falls asleep during “launch” and wakes up during the winter thinking he is on the moon (since bears normally hibernate, he has never before seen snow).

This simple tale subtly introduces the concepts of hibernation, bird migration, and the seasons. Plus, the relationship between bear and his little bird friend is sweet.

The illustrations are very basic and use only a few colors, but the story seems to captivate!

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By Mom Unplugged, April 19, 2007 10:01 pm

I found this little book at a garage sale for 10 cents. Even if you are not that lucky and have to pay full price for it, it is well worth it!

This is a book of poems all about penguins, that are both very amusing and educational. This is not high literature, but these poems are so clever, that even I enjoy reading them! Kids will learn a lot about penguins as they laugh.

To give you an idea, the titles of the poems are the following:

• A Hatchling’s Song
• Mother Penguin’s Vacation
• My Father’s Feet
• Regurgitate (my kids’ favorite)
• I Am Looking For My Mother
• Penguins’ First Swim
• Predator Riddles
• Diary of a Very Short Winter Day
• Belly Sliding
• Be My Penguin
• Antarctic Anthem

If you have a penguin-lover in your family, then you MUST get this book! Also, check out this very cool live wild penguin webcam from Antarctica that I found recently!

Gentoo Penguins, Base O’Higgins, Antarctica

Isn’t the Internet amazing? It looks pretty cold there, doesn’t it!

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By Mom Unplugged, April 7, 2007 11:07 am

As an animal lover and a “sucker” for taking in strays and rejects (how do you think we ended up with eight cats?), I think this is a wonderful story! My kids and I really enjoy reading this over and over again.

This Caldecott Honor Winner is a true story of how a family discovers a stray dog while on a picnic and how that dirty little dog becomes part of their life.

The text is quite simple and minimal. The illustrations are wonderfully sweet and funny yet very effectively convey the emotions of the family members, and even the dog.

I guarantee that you and your kids will love this one, especially if animals are a big part of your life.

Awards: Caldecott Honor Book.

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By Mom Unplugged, March 22, 2007 4:04 pm

We read this book every Easter and often at other times too. Country Bunny is an old book that still fascinates today’s children.

This book, first published in 1939, actually has a modern feminist message! It is an Easter tale of a Mommy cottontail-bunny (lucky mama to 21 children, poor Mama Bunny!) who is chosen, against all odds, to be one of the five Easter Bunnies. She beats out the fast boy jack rabbits, and handsome male white bunnies.

But that is just the beginning! The story continues with her adventures delivering eggs as an Easter Bunny, and some special magic shoes.

The illustrations, vaguely reminiscent of Margaret Wise-Brown, are sweet and in a style typical of older children’s books.

A major theme is that kindness is what counts in life. But what I really like best, is the all-important message that we moms can do anything!

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By Mom Unplugged, March 10, 2007 5:50 pm

I just finished reading this book to my son’s class, and I whole-heartedly recommend it!

Anatole is a Parisian mouse who decides it is wrong to be stealing scraps to eat from people’s houses and decides to earn his cheese by being an anonymous cheese taster at the local cheese factory. The story and illustrations are so cute that children today enjoy this book as much as they did in the 1950′s when it was first published.

A Caldecott Honor Book.