A Fun New Children's Book

Wilbur, my stuffed pig and one of the illustrations from the book

       A Pig 

Parade is a Terrible Idea

                 Some of you may ask yourselves why is this blog called a teacher AND a geek when we only ever hear from the geek!

Well I decided to post about a few teaching things. As someone who is around children for a large number of hours each week, you can bet that I love children's books. I love all the old classics like Dr. Seuss' Go Dog Go, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff . They are all great preschool reads, but I'm always keeping my eyes open for new books that maybe the kids haven't seen before. I was at our University Library when a new book caught my eye, it was called A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black and Illustrated by Kevin Hawkes.

What a great read!

 When looking at book for preschoolers one of the most important things I look at is the illustrations. Paging through this book I was amazed at the bright colorful silly illustrations. The book is a tad long if your reading it to a group younger than preschool but if you summarize a few pages they'll get it just the same. Reading this book to the children was a joy. They laughed at the pictures and asked questions about new parade vocabulary they had never heard before. The ending is a little silly and they kids loved it. While I was reading the story I brought my stuffed pig Wilbur along with me to help tell the story. At the end of the story I asked Wilbur what his favorite picture was. Make sure to ask the children what their favorite illustration in the book was and why, this will help them think back on the book and will help them verbalize why they may like something within the book. I was very impressed with this book and wanted to pass it along to all of you! So next time your in the neighborhood of your nearest bookstore or library check this one out! It's sure to be a hit with the kids in your life.