Color Zoo was a Caldecott Honor book in 1990. This is a wonderful book for teaching the concepts of color and shapes. The heavy paper pages are turned to reveal different animals. The first page is a tiger, but when the page is turned the circle is taken away, along with the tigers circle ears, to reveal a mouse within a square. The turned page now reveals the shape against a black background along with the written name of the shape. The last pages show all of the shapes and colors. I would often use this at story time and the children loved shouting out the shapes and guessing which animal would show up next.
I use Leaf Man every fall for story times. My favorite thing about the book is to point out that the illustrations are all made from leaves. Ms. Ehlert collected colorful leaves and then color copied them to form the wonderful collages. The story follows the leaves as they blow and I love when the children guess what animals the leaves are forming - cows, butterflies, etc. Some are easy to recognize, others may have you take a closer look. I always point out that this would be a fun activity to do with autumn leaves and sometimes I have the children make a leaf man of their own for a craft.
Snowballs is my winter go to story. A family tells us "We'd been waiting for a really big snow, saving good stuff in a sack. Finally it was a perfect snowball day." The family makes a family of snow people, along with a snow cat and dog, using a variety of natural and found materials. The snow dad wears a cloth cap, has a face made of raisins, strawberry and popcorn kernels and is covered with popped pop corn. These little touches make the snow family a place for winter animals to find food. I love that the snow family shows so much creativity - it moves beyond the usual carrot nose - and also shows caring for the environment. Hopefully this book will encourage you to create some wonderful snow sculptures.
Check out these and all of Lois Ehlert's picture books at the library.
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