Books and the Kids Who Loved Them

When I think about my favorite books, many of them are tied to a certain person. Sometimes it's the person who recommended the book to me and sometimes it's a person who read the book and discussed it with me. When I think about some of my favorite picture books I think about certain kids who loved the book with me.

This book will forever remind me of one of my first graders. He was a super smart, cute kid who sometimes had some very negative behavior. When I read Enemy Pie to the class, the book quickly became this boy's favorite. He would often be reading it in the reading area during literacy stations. The book actually went missing from my classroom that year. I have no idea what happened to the book, but I remember thinking this student took it. I kind of like the idea of him liking the book so much he wanted to take it. I never found the book.

One of my first graders who had autism loved this book and all the funny sounds it contained.  He would carry the book around and ask me or my classroom assistant to read certain pages. His favorite sound to repeat was, "dibble dibble dop dop".

This one was a favorite of another kiddo with autism. He pretty much had this book memorized and liked to act it out. The cool thing about this kiddo was that he was open to reading other Elephant and Piggie books with his therapists. Today I Will Fly was another one of his favorites. He liked these books so much that he would often try to draw pictures from them and make props to carry around so he could act out the story.

My 15 month old nephew has been favoring this book for probably six months now. It has been cute to watch him learn to lift the flaps and see how he reacts to us reading the book with him. He smiles every time a flap gets opened.

We bought this book for one of my cousins for Christmas a bunch of years ago. It's a funny book about a farty dog who saves his family from robbers. I don't know that her parents appreciated how many times the word FART was in the book (the girls used to say they "gassed" not farted) but I like to think my cousins got some fun out of the book.

                                                     

We gave this book to a cousin and a few weeks later we got the cute video below from her mom. I love it. She totally got the "pop...oh no!" part of the book.

There are a few other books that are tied to people for me. Strega Nona reminds me of the school librarian who first read that book to my class. The Happy Man and His Dump Truck reminds me of my dad. The Boxcar Children reminds me of my second grade teacher who shared that with our class. The Night Before Christmas reminds me of my mom reading to us and pretending to "throw up" when she read "threw up the sash". All these memories put a smile on my face. I hope there are a few kids out there who can remember a time I read a good book to them in class and put a smile on their faces.