Welcome to Episode 2 of Librarians of Littles. I'm Patrick Adams.
And I'm Caroline Leger. We are both librarians in North Texas. I have 17 years of experience
with pre-K students. Five of those are in a pre-K library.
And I have also got 17 years of experience. The last nine of them have been as a librarian.
I have been for the last two years a librarian at a pre-K through fifth campus. And before
that I was a librarian at a pre-K only campus.
And today on the podcast we are going to be talking about some fun Valentine's books that
can be used as Valentine approaches. These books are some fun enjoyable stories that
our early learners will be able to jump right into and enjoy.
And first we are going to be talking about Mr. Goats Valentine. It's published by Sleeping
Bear Press in 2016. The author is Eve Bunting. And the illustrator is Kevin Zimmer.
So we'll jump right in with the author history. Born in McGeerra, Northern Ireland in 1928.
Eve Bunting attended Methodist College in Belfast, Northern Ireland and graduated in
1945. Then she attended Queen's University where she met her husband. After marrying
the couple moved to Scotland to start a family. The family moved in 1958 to the United States
which her family included herself, her husband and three children at that time. In 1959 Bunting
began attending Pasadena City College taking writing courses. She wrote over 250 children's
books her first of which was the two giants in 1971. And she passed away October 1st of
2023 of pneumonia at the age of 94. Other books that Eve Bunting has written, a few
of them because there are so many, but How Many Days to America which was illustrated
by Beth Park. Moonstick, The Seasons of the Sioux, illustrated by Jonathan Sanford. Smoky
Knight, illustrated by David Diaz. And Knight Tree, illustrated by Ted Rand. And this book
is illustrated by Kevin Zimmer and he attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand
Rapids, Michigan during his training at Kendall. The Society of Illustrators honored Kevin
by publishing three of his oil paintings in their 1993 and 94 issues. While completing
his award-winning thesis for Kendall, his career was launched with the American Greetings
Corporation where an internship soon evolved into the position of creative developer. In
2002, he took the leap into a freelance career based on his hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Kevin specializes in developing greeting cards and children's books and magazine illustrations.
Some of his other books include another one by Eve Bunting which was Little Yellow Truck,
Clownfish and Crab by Liza Charlesworth, and Buster the Little Garbage Truck by Marsha
Berniger. So this was a really fun story. The summary for the book is that Mr. Goat realizes
it's Valentine's Day and he must get a gift for his first love, his first Valentine. As
he makes his way through town, he stops to make different purchases from some unique
characters. He purchases a ragweed salad and a rusty tin can to give to his first Valentine.
He purchases some rotten eggs and finally he decides that he needs to write his own
song to present to his very special first Valentine. And at the end of the story, we
find out who his very special Valentine is. It's his mom.
So I thought this was a really cute story. I love that it's not a traditional Valentine
between like a couple or anything. I love that it was from a boy to his mom pretty much.
I really like that it's, with Valentine's Day in particular, especially with our little
ones, I like to stress that it's like, it's just to tell anybody how much you love them
and to kind of show your appreciation for other people. So I thought this was a really
cute way to do it. And I loved all the interesting things that he collected for his mom since
he's a goat. It was kind of a fun way to get some giggles in there for our little kiddos.
Absolutely. I think this is a really fun story about Valentine's Day and a lot of times when
it's about Valentine's Day and it's the mushy like love stories kind of thing, it has a
lot of our, a lot of the boys, the young boys will check out kind of. And so the fact that
he was getting these kind of gross and ridiculous gifts kind of keeps their attention and keeps
it going. And like you said, yeah, the fact that it's just his mom, it's not like romantic
love kind of like that. It's just a caring about this person who's taken care of you
for so long and showing gratitude and love and appreciation for everything that they
do is just a sweet way to celebrate the day, not make it be something about romance where,
you know, the kids are just really young and kind of checking out on that. And so they
know it's an important day, but being able to share this book and show them it can be
just a day where you're showing anybody that you care about them is really nice. The artwork
in the book, Kevin Zimmer uses some really cool digital artwork that it's vibrant and
a really cool, the kids love to look at all the different animals and the rotten eggs
and the gifts that he's getting. So it's very vibrant eye catching, which is really nice
also.
Yeah, and it had that illustration style where it had some blank parts of the page for the
text. And then like the illustrations like around it kind of. And I personally really
appreciate it when they do when they do that because then you can kind of for our kids
who are learning to read, you can kind of point to the text a little bit more and it
makes it stand out a little bit more so they can focus on that as well.
Yes, very much. Because yeah, when the words either go over the pictures or like the pictures
are kind of blocked out because of the words, it makes it not necessarily as engaging. And
so that's really nice the way they they spread it out and spaced everything. So this was
a great story and my students tend to love this story a lot. What I find is always funny
to me is that when you get to the end, it's clearly an older goat, which it's his mom.
But so many of the younger kids automatically assume like grandma, which is just kind of
funny to me because they forget that as adults, your parents get older too. And so just because
she's older doesn't mean immediately grandma. But a lot of the kids immediately assume that
and that's when when you read that page where it says Happy Valentine's Day mother and they're
like, Oh, wait, it's the mom. I just think that's kind of funny also. Because that's
not usually the first guess that the kids have. They go straight to grandma, which is
not a bad idea. But when we get older, our parents get older too. So that's not something
that always clicks for for the younger kids. Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't thought
about that part before. So if we're going to rate this book out of five bookmarks, what
do you think you'd give it? Hmm. I think maybe a I was I want to say four, but I'm not really
sure why. Honestly, I think I might I can't think of a reason to knock it down. I'm being
honest. I think it's really cute. Pretty engaging. Pretty simple story. Kind of funny. Yeah,
I like it. Absolutely. Yeah, I was going and I don't know why either. But I was saying,
I was thinking in my head somewhere between three and a half and four. Because it is an
engaging story. It's got great illustrations. The kids love it. So yeah, I think a four is
a fair, fair score for it. So four bookmarks out of five. And if we're going to use this
in the library and we want to connect it with makerspace activities, a makerspace activity
that I'm going to try out this year with my students with the younger kiddos, I'm going
to put out some construction paper and some writing utensils crayons colored pencils markers.
And I'm also going to put out some stickers. And we're going to have the students create
their own Valentine card for a parent or an important person in their life that they want
to just give a little extra thanks to. I would definitely put up some generic keywords for
the students because being younger, they're not going to be able to spell them correctly.
But if we go over them and have a couple words on the board, they might try and write those
down. If they draw a picture, you can help them. You can help by dictating. They can
dictate to you. You can write it down so that they can share their message of love and caring
and thanks to their special person in their life.
Love it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great, pretty simple Valentine's Day activity.
And they get to walk out of the library with something in hand that they can take home
and show their families and share. So I really like that idea.
All right. So now we get to move on to our Library of Littles Management Tips and Tricks.
So this week, I thought since we've discussed last week, we talked about how to kind of
set the routines when they come into the library, coming to the carpet to get sitting. This
week would be a good week for us to share our Storytime Song with everybody because
I think it's a great way to get the kids engaged and then get... It's like something
that the students expect. It gets them to be able to participate right away and then
we can get into the actual lesson.
My Storytime Song is to the tune of London Bridge and the lyrics are as follows.
Welcome friends to Storytime, Storytime, Storytime.
Welcome friends to Storytime in the library.
We will share a book or two, book or two, book or two.
We will share a book or two. Are you ready?
And I always, after we sing the last song, and the first couple weeks, I explain to the
kids that I'll sing it by myself but that we don't really want to hear that. So I will
always explain to them that as soon as they learn the words, I want them to help me out
so that it's not just me singing and that they're helping me out. And they pick it up
pretty quickly, especially when you do it every week, to the point where if I am like
running short on time and almost forget to do the Storytime Song, I get called out on
it because they get really into that part of the routine and wanting to make sure that
we do that.
But once we sing the Storytime Song, it ends with, are you ready? And I remind my students
at that point that to be ready, they should be showing me by having a calm body, which
means that they're not touching their friends, they're keeping their hands to themselves,
they're not wiggling all around so that they can focus and pay attention. That they're
listening ears are working and that means that while I'm trying to read the story, their
mouths are quiet. When I ask questions or if they have a question, they can raise their
hand and we'll listen to what they have to say at that point. That their eyes should
be looking up at the book so that they can see those pictures because so much of their
comprehension is connected to the visual images that are in the book. And that their brains
are working so that when they're thinking about the book and when I'm asking questions,
they can come up with answers that make sense to what I'm asking and not just random thoughts
or anything else. Because other times we'll get things like we're reading a book about
Mr. Goats Valentine and then I find out that someone's baby brother just had a birthday
or something random, you know. So I'm trying to keep that, trying to rein it in and keep
it connected to what we're talking about at the moment.
But I do the same thing when I start my library lessons. It takes a couple of weeks for the
kids to learn the song. But after a couple of weeks because they do know that when they
hear that it's time for them to get their bodies ready for learning, they kind of, even
if everybody's chatty and not even really sitting down yet and kind of all over the place,
if I start singing it, then that's their auditory cue to like, oh, I have to get ready now.
And they kind of automatically stop whatever nonsense they were doing and kind of get into
gear and get ready for story time. And as a bonus, like if I'm not feeling well or something,
if I'm sick and maybe losing my voice, I can just later on the year, if I just start singing
welcome, then they can usually finish it for me. I don't even have to say a word. It's
fabulous. Yeah, that's really nice. It's also nice because
that's also something that the teachers learn the song as well. So if you're needing to,
either if you're, like you said, losing your voice or like when there's a sub, the teachers
can also help or the assistants, whoever's in the library with you, they they've learned
the song as well. So they can always help you to begin that if you need it also, which
is always nice when you have some backup help. Absolutely. All right, well, our second book
that we're going to talk about today is QPig, The Valentine's Day Pig. It's published by
Flamingo Books in 2023. The author is Claire Tattersfield. And the illustrator is Rob.
I think you say his last name, say, I don't know. I'm guessing. I think that's correct.
Okay, excellent. This book has not won any awards, but it does have some good professional
reviews out there. There isn't a whole lot about Claire Tattersfield online. She this
is her very first book. She started out as an assistant editor at Viking Children's Books
and Flamingo Books. She started out at Penguin Young Readers in 2019 after graduating from
the University of Vermont with a degree in political science and a global studies and
a minor in Spanish. She supports Flamingo and Viking with picture books and a little
bit of young adult middle grade. So primarily an editor right now, but she is moving toward
being more of an author. This is her very first book, but she does have QPig Saves Christmas
coming out in October of this year. Excellent. And so our illustrator Rob lives in San Francisco.
He is a former toy designer who later became an artist and an illustrator. He draws inspiration
for stories and art by collecting vintage toys and exploring San Francisco. He frequently
does school visits both in person and virtual and the visits are about 45 minutes. And there's
a form on his website if you're interested in setting up a school visit with him. Some
of the other books that he has worked on, he has written and illustrated Love Tales published
in 2015. And he provided the illustrations for 14 other books that are all listed on
his personal website, including I'm Not Scared, You're Scared by Seth Meyers. Arlo
draws an octopus live by Lori Mortensen and One Summer Night by Tammy Salzano. So in
this book, QPig is a pig who loves love and looks forward to Valentine's Day every year
when she shoots her heart shaped arrows and helps others fall in love. Unfortunately,
this year the weather was horrible and it causes some of her arrows to go astray. Some
of the mishaps include peanut butter falling in love with anchovies rather than jelly and
salt falling in love with trash rather than pepper and dog falling in love with xylophone
instead of bone. And at first QPig decides to give these new love matches a chance, but
then she eventually decides it's best for her to own up to her mistakes and fix everything
back to the way it was before because you just can't have salt without pepper, right?
I did like that there was a lot of rhyming words in this book. So for our younger readers,
sometimes those rhyming words can kind of keep their attention like that nice cadence
of just hearing the rhythm of the words can kind of keep their attention even if they're
not necessarily, they don't necessarily understand the storyline itself. Just the rhythm can
help keep them engaged. So this did have kind of a nice cadence for younger readers to
hear. I did like that there were not a lot of bigger vocabulary words, but there were
some like discombobulated was in there. That's a fun one to teach. So there was it was enough
basic words that I don't think any kids would really get lost with the story with having
a bigger word like discombobulated thrown in there. But it was nice to have for older
students or for even for our younger ones who have a bigger vocabulary who might be
really listening in to kind of learn some new words there. The illustrations were fairly
simple. I loved that it wasn't like too overwhelming to look at. So that kids could kind of focus
in on the different pairings of like, when you see like peanut butter and jelly, like
you can really tell where they are on the page, it wasn't like overwhelming. I did for
younger kids, though, it does kind of assume that you have the background knowledge of
who Cupid is and that Cupid is somebody who does go around shooting, you know, couples
or whatever on Valentine's Day to make them fall in love. And that I think there's a lot
of I think there's a lot of younger kids who wouldn't have that background knowledge.
It didn't like explicitly say why Cupid would be randomly shooting people with hearts, you
know. So I think that might be a little bit confusing for some of the younger kids. But
other than that, like for older kids, they would probably have that background knowledge
and be able to pick up on that a little bit quicker. But yeah,
Yeah, sure. And knowing that if you preteach a little bit and just kind of mention, hey,
there's this mythological character named Cupid and here's what he does real quick kind
of thing, and then introduce the story that that would be fine too.
That's true. Just in case. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because even if you just kind of put
up a picture of the actual Cupid like on the screen on a screen or pull out a picture of
him and just kind of ask what they know, you'd find out a lot of whether they know or not,
and then you can kind of give a quick explanation and go from there. Yeah, I thought this was
a super cute story. I hadn't read it until you suggested it. And it's now going to definitely
be part of my Valentine's rotation with my students because I think that they'll get
a kick out of it. I think that some of the mismatch pairs were really silly. And that
the kids will enjoy that. I also found the that the author has a Barnes and Noble story
time on YouTube where she reads the book, and she mentions that all of the little word
bubbles that are in the book were Rob Sehe's the illustrator's idea. So he is the one that
kind of put those in. And so any of those little thought bubbles, they're his just kind
of quips and punny ideas that he decided to add into the pictures, which is kind of fun.
One of my favorites is the pen on the iceberg as it's kind of like on a piece of ice that's
floating away. And he says, I'll never let go. Because it's just like adult humor, like
reference to Titanic kind of thing. I just thought that was kind of amusing. So yeah,
it was really fun for both for me. And I think my students are going to really enjoy it when
I read it this year with them. The pictures were great. And it was just a cute, cute little
story that, you know, I think everybody should read and enjoy.
Yeah. So I think for this one, I think I would go ahead and give this one a four out of five
bookmarks. Again, probably just because of that, the pre teaching piece that you mentioned
there, that is a really good idea to pre teach the like get the picture of Cupid and kind
of figure out the kids even know who that is or anything. But I think that's the only
thing that would stop me from making a five out of five. Yeah, what did you think?
Yeah, I agree. My thoughts were four out of five. I think the the illustrations are amazing.
The story is really great. There might not be like a deep, meaningful kind of thing behind
it other than maybe that, you know, some you can like, you don't have to necessarily be
pigeonholed to who were expected to care about kind of thing. But so yeah, I think four out
of five bookmarks is a solid rating. Yeah.
And then for a makerspace activity, again, just creating those valentines and specifically
making valentine cards or poems that rhyme this time because this one focuses a lot more
on those rhyming words. Yeah.
Yeah. And I was even thinking that you could use some of those like if you have the the
magnetic poem words like that you can put on your refrigerator and stuff like those words
where you can just kind of create your own poem. You could use something like that and
have the kids kind of make their own poetry that way. You could use you could just print
like some rhyming pictures and have them kind of use those to make a rhyme or a poem. And
then the other thought I had was that if you wanted to have like a tactile like a physical
activity, you could pull out the Legos and have the kids either use the Legos to build
a mismatched pair from the book or they could make their own mismatched pair like maybe
instead of the cat falling in love with his ball of yarn, he falls in love with a mouse
or something like that and they could build those things with the Legos that way to tell
their own story. So that would give the like a physical activity building. So yeah, I
think I think both of these are really great Valentine's stories. I'm looking forward to
using them this year with my pre-k and Kinder and first grade students because I think they're
going to enjoy them as well. Yeah, I agree. I'm looking forward to reading these this
year. Thank you for listening to this episode of librarians of littles. We hope that you've
enjoyed it. Check back each Wednesday for a new episode.
Librarians of littles is a podcast produced and hosted by Patrick Adams and Caroline Ligier.
Editor Patrick Adams. Our theme song is performed by JD Adams. You can follow us on Instagram
at librariansoflittles. You can follow us on Blue Sky at littleslibraryan.bsky.social
and you can send us your emails at librarianoflittlespod.gmail.com.