The classic tale of a boy who loses his mitten while gathering wood in the forest. Several animals, including a mouse, a frog, an owl, a rabbit, a fox, a wolf, a wild boar and a bear all squeeze into the mitten to keep warm. It’s only when a cricket tries to climb in that the mitten rips in two. The boy does finally find his mitten, but luckily his grandmother makes him another pair.
There are many versions of this story and they all contain a mitten and a bunch of animals trying to get into the mitten to get out of the cold snow. This version is a little different than the uber-popular Jan Brett version in that the grandmother in this story is more than happy to make her grandson a new mitten and the grandmother in this version also doesn’t make the mitten the same color as the snow. It would be fun to read several versions with your child and see how the stories and the illustrations compare and contrast. Being able to make connections between books is a great reading skill for children to have.
A collection of Arctic animals….10 caribou crunching, 9 muskoxen munching, 8 ravens raving…you get the idea. The clever twist on this book is that on the first page with the caribou it’s not snowing at all, but as the countdown continues, it starts snowing more and more. By the time you get to 1 moose, silent in the falling snow, it’s practically a blizzard. This would be a great book for practicing counting backwards and also talking to your children about how animals use camouflage….it’s awfully hard to see 2 snowy owls swooping when there’s snow all over the place.
Okay, this book about made me cry. It is SO sweet and is such a good example of doing for others and not asking for recognition. LOVE it! Sarah, an elderly widow, notices a boy dressed in blue at the bus stop who has no mittens. She knits him a pair of blue mittens and hangs them on the tree by the bus stop. He finds them and is then able to throw snowballs with the other kids. Then Sarah notices a little girl who has mittens that don’t match, so she goes home and knits a pair of mittens for her and hangs them on the tree. She knits and knits and knits and soon has enough to fill up the tree with mittens for all the children, but her knitting basket is empty. Somehow though, someone figures out she is the one knitting the mittens and leaves a surprise for her on her front doorstep. Super sweet!
This is one of my favorite Jan Brett stories. Nicki’s grandma makes him some mittens and he promptly loses one of them in the snow. A mole finds it though and thinks it’s nice and warm and just his size, so he scoots on in to make it his home. Then a snowshoe rabbit moves in with the mole and then a hedgehog and the list goes on and on until the mitten is definitely stretched to the max with animals trying to keep warm. A bear sneezing is what eventually gets all of the animals out, Nicki finds his mitten and heads home. His grandma is pleased that he has not lost his mittens, but is a little puzzled as to why one of them is much larger than the other. Brett’s illustrations on the side let children see which animal is coming up next…so much fun!
In this version of the classic Gingerbread Man story, the Gingerbread Baby escapes from the oven and by the end of the book it seems as if the whole town is chasing him. What readers get to see with Jan Brett’s extra illustrations on the side is that Matti (the boy who made the Gingerbread Baby) is devising a plan to catch him. By the end of the story the Gingerbread Baby has been caught, but only Matti knows where he is…safe inside the gingerbread house Matti was making while everyone else was chasing him.
A family decides to go sledding on the best sledding hill in the “whole wide world”. They all pile on, go zipping down the hill and hit a big bump which send them sailing into the air…WAY up in the air. They land with a thud and the littlest member of the family declares, “Again!”
Annie’s cat is acting strangely…eating more, sleeping more and hiding in strange places and then one day she is gone. Annie is lonely and decides to leave a corn cake at the edge of the woods to see if she can get a small furry pet to come and eat it and then it would be her pet. Instead she gets a moose and then a wildcat and then a bear…not what she had in mind. As all of this is going on, the illustrations that border the page not only tell what animal from the woods Annie is going to meet next, but they also show what Annie’s cat (and her kittens) are doing. By the end of the story, it is spring and the forest animals have returned to the woods where they can now find food and Annie’s cat comes back with her new brood.
Little Nell keeps being told by BIG Mama, BIG Sarah and BIG Lizzie that she can’t do anything because she’s too little. Little Nell goes out into the snowy woods to spend time with her friends Reindeer, Hare and Bear Cub who ask her to show them how to make a snowman. She says she can’t because she is too small. Her friends insist that she can and so she gives it a try. With the help of her friends they end up making a VERY BIG snowman and BIG Mama, BIG Sarah and BIG Lizzie are very surprised when they go see it. They also realize that maybe Little Nell can do a lot of things they didn’t think she could do.
You can try to read this, but you will end up singing like I did.
There were ten on the sled
and the caribou said,
“Slip over! Slide over!”
So they all slid over,
and Seal spilled out.
There were nine on the sled
and the caribou said….
Super cute and so much fun to read…or sing. 🙂
