Rebecca Reads

My son is musical. As a newborn, his body would instantly start to relax if I started to sing to him. Now, at 13 months old, he doesn’t calm so easily. But if he hears music, he dances. He laughs when he hears any rhythm. His favorite toys make music. He likes to touch the [...]

In addition to the board books I usually read my son, I’ve also been reading a number of picture books with him this month. Because he’s still only a year old, he doesn’t pay much attention past the first few pages, but I’m having fun revisiting some old classics. Now I know what he should [...]

I admit: The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman is the first Neil Gaiman book I’ve read. And it is a clever one. While it’s clearly a children’s book, it has an element of spookiness to it and somber, spidery illustrations that make it just right for adults too.

In medieval children’s primers, the alphabet was the main tool of learning and was often portrayed in a way that also taught religion (Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature, page 61). Poems and teachings would be in the order of the alphabet. This had biblical precedence, as the 22 stanzas of Psalm 118 “use the twenty-two letters [...]

When I heard the concept of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz (monologues given by  medieval children), I thought it would be horribly boring. Monologues? I thought. What is fun about monologues? I thought children would be bored by these “Voices from a Medieval Village.”
To my delight, I found Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! [...]

The colorful illustrations, the rhythmic words, and the familiar animals make Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle a favorite picture book.

In honor of Book Bloggers Appreciation Week, I’m giving away my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For more BBAW giveaways, visit here and here.

Sandra Boynton’s children’s books are new classics. I first discovered her delightful picture books via my sister-in-law, who had an entire shelf of Boynton’s books for my nephew. Now, with my own little boy, I’m really enjoying them. Her books all claim “serious silliness” on the back cover. I’d agree: we all enjoy the light-hearted [...]

The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling contain much more than the story of the adopted wolf-boy, Mowgli, who is probably the most familiar of Kipling’s characters.
Kipling’s Jungle Books are collections of stories about animals and people from around the world. Each story seems to be rooted in traditional facts about [...]

I was dressing my 10-month-old son on his bedroom floor the other evening when he started reaching up. I saw his fingers brush the edge of the orange cover of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, which was on the edge of the second-lowest shelf. Once he was fully clothed in pajamas, I sat him [...]