Dogs and Cats, Part 1

A Ball for Daisy
It is almost guar­an­teed that chil­dren will respond favor­ably to ani­mal sto­ries, espe­cial­ly sto­ries with dogs and cats. Two-thirds of Amer­i­can house­holds own dogs or cats. Nine­teenth cen­tu­ry British illus­tra­tor Ran­dolph Calde­cott seemed to under­stand the nat­ur­al affin­i­ty between chil­dren and ani­mals. Before sci­ence doc­u­ment­ed the impor­tance of pets in children’s lives, he includ­ed ani­mals in most of his illus­tra­tions, and they added to the frol­ick­ing fun that ani­mat­ed his scenes.… more

Sense of Wonder

Wild Berries
In her book A Sense of Won­der, Rachel Car­son wrote: If I had influ­ence with the good fairy who is sup­posed to pre­side over the chris­ten­ing of all chil­dren, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of won­der so inde­struc­tible that it would last through­out life, as an unfail­ing anti­dote against the bore­dom and dis­en­chant­ments of lat­er years, the ster­ile pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with things that are arti­fi­cial, the alien­ation from the sources of our strength.… more

Brenda Sederberg and Her Reading Team
September 2019

Bookol­o­gy read­ers first met Bren­da Sederberg’s Read­ing Team part­ner Sylvie when she was only two days old. At that time the two were shar­ing one of their very first read-alouds. Now Gram and Sylvie have had the chance to share a whole won­der­ful year of read­ing together! To cel­e­brate Sylvie’s first birth­day, Bren­da is high­light­ing the three books that have become Sylvie’s favorites over that spe­cial year.… more

Connecting Kids to Nonfiction:
Personal Experience Matters

Aimee Bissonette
Per­son­al pref­er­ences and expe­ri­ences guide our life choic­es. They impact what we wear, eat, do, even the peo­ple we spend time with. It should come as no sur­prise, then, that per­son­al pref­er­ences also affect what we read— maybe even whether we read. Stud­ies show that young read­ers who feel a per­son­al con­nec­tion to what they are read­ing demon­strate bet­ter com­pre­hen­sion and derive greater enjoy­ment from their read­ing.… more