Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Concept Books

Concept books are ones that teach a specific concept and usually tell a story along with it.

Examples of concepts are the alphabet, colors, or numbers.






Alphabet Mystery
Audrey Wood

Characters: Alphabet letters
Setting: Nighttime
Summary: Every night, the alphabet letters say goodnight but little x is missing! The other letters converse, noticing that a pencil is missing as well, and get on another pencil to fly away and find him. They see a pencil in a castle below, and knock on it to see if he is there. When they find x, he says he doesn’t want to leave because he is never used at home. They wake up the big letters, who threaten to make them into alphabet soup. The little letters say they just want to go home to be used for their owner Charley’s mom’s present tomorrow. They invite some of the big letters to go with them, and fly back home, where they are used on her birthday cake. X is happy because he is used 4 times to make kisses.
Theme: Love yourself, You are important, Alphabet

 



Counting Kisses: A Kiss and Read Book
Karen Katz
Characters: Baby and family
Setting: House
Summary: The book counts down from 10 to 1 about the number of kisses the baby gets before she falls asleep in the end. The numbers range from 10 kisses on her toes to 5 on her nose to 1 last kiss on her head.
Theme: Counting





Goodnight Moon
Margaret Wise Brown

Characters: Bunny
Setting: Green room
Summary: In this simple story, the reader/author is saying goodnight to all the things in the bunny's room. It starts out with the things in the room being named, and each thing is clearly illustrated in the pictures, so you could point to each as you mention it. Then, the reader says goodnight to most of the items that were named before, as well as some new ones. The story rhymes, which brings it all together, as well as the darkening of the room.
Theme: Bedtime

 



 How Much is a Million?
David M. Schwartz
Characters: n/a
Setting: n/a
Summary: In this book, it shows how many a million, billion, and trillion is. If 1 million kids stood on each other’s shoulders, it shows how tall they’d be. It would take 23 days to count to 1 million, and it would take 7 pages of the book to have 1 million stars shown. It also goes through similar experiences to show a billion and a trillion. The last few pages are about how they calculated the numbers!
Theme: Math





K is for Keystone: A Pennsylvania Alphabet
Kristen Kane
Characters: Various
Setting: Many places in Pennsylvania
Summary: This book goes through the letters of the alphabet, highlighting key places and naming people that are important or indigenous to Pennsylvania. Each page has a rhyme to it, and it also has more in-depth information for the adult reader or for reader to explain more to the listeners. “E is for Easton, a town where you can see, the birthplace of crayons and markers, in the Crayola factory” is just one example, along with A is for Amish, G is for Gettysburg, and H is for Hershey.
Theme: Pennsylvania
 



Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives
Ruth Heller
Characters: n/a
Setting: n/a
Summary: This book describes adjectives. It tells what an adjective is while using them to describe the illustrations on the page, such as, “a weary, wounded, bearded and bandaged tennis ace.” There are simple and hard adjectives, ones that order, and suffixes that make words adjectives, like lovely, flawless, and gleaming.
Theme: Adjectives





On Market Street
Anita and Arnold Lobel
 Characters: Little boy, cat
Setting: Market street
Summary: The little boy goes to market street to buy gifts for his friend. The book’s focus is on the pictures more than the words. Each gift he buys with his coins corresponds to the letters of the alphabet- apples, books, clocks…playing cards, jewels, ice cream. Each item he buys, the illustration shows him dressed up in an outfit made entirely of that.
Theme: Alphabet

 



Punctuation Takes a Vacation
Robin Pulver
Characters:
Setting: School
Summary: Punctuation marks do their job every day, so Mr. Wright tells the class that they deserve a vacation. The marks didn’t know what to do and each remark while the book states what they are, like the colon says, “it’s 11:00.” They run out the door when they’re done talking. When the class comes back, Mr. Wright can’t read a story because the marks are all gone. The next day the marks send postcards using their marks and saying what they’re up to on vacation. The kids all guess who the postcards are from but they can’t write back. They try to, but all the punctuation is messed up in a funny letter. The marks come back and each do their job. The end of the book tells what all the marks do.
Theme: Punctuation





Shape Capers
Cathryn Falwell
Characters: Kids
Setting: n/a
Summary: This is a book that goes over shapes and what they can make, with a rhyme to it. Kids play with circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and semicircles while describing them. Then, they make things with all of the shapes like vehicles, a spaceship, a dinosaur, a boat,  and a party! The last two pages invite the readers to find each shape on the page and to create their own shape designs out of magazine cut-outs.
Theme: Shapes





The Dangerous Alphabet
Neil Gaiman
 Characters: Children and the pirates and monsters in the world
  Setting: World of pirates, monsters, etc.
Summary: This book goes through the alphabet to tell the story. Each page is a dark and kind of creepy illustration with a range from pirates to monsters to weird creatures and the same couple of kids who are traveling through this world after finding a treasure map. For example, F is for fear and G is for “good as in hero and morning” and N is for “night, nothing, and never” or U is “the reader who shivers with dread.” The pages rhyme.
Theme: Alphabet





The Deep Blue Sea: Book of Colors
Audrey Wood
Characters: n/a
Setting: Outside
Summary: This book is one that adds onto the previous sentence on each additional page, such as, “There’s a deep blue sea. There’s a red rock in the deep blue sea.” Many things are added with the colors brown, purple, orange, and black. Yellow, white, and gray are the sun and clouds turning into storm clouds. It also includes fish playing and a rainbow coming out.
Theme: Colors

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