Bethany Roberts

Four mice are in charge of delivering valentines to all the woodland creatures. Along the way, one of the mice goes missing! Can the other three find him?

This is a fun book to share with young readers (preschool-first grade would probably be best), even if it only touches on Valentine's Day slightly. There's a lot of energy on every page, with illustrations of the feisty mice and short, quick sentences that come at a rapid pace. Many of these simply use a single verb - throw, hop, slide, show more glide - so that you can turn the reading of this book into a movement activity as well, provided that you have an audience of children who can listen well enough to know when to stop wiggling and return to the text. Even if you don't do that, the energy of the book is bound to come up as you read the text in an excited voice, making this a good book for those less attentive listeners. show less

Cute book about camels adventuring forth only to return to the safety and comfort of home at the end of the book. It gradually becomes clear that this is a pretend / not-realistic book when we see the camels riding bicycles. Children enjoy the outlandish means of transportation---outlandish for camels, that is.

Nice story about a grandfather and grandson in front of a fire as they imagine adventures based on what they see in the fireplace; it ends with their falling asleep.

Counting book teaches ordinal numbers. Each two-page spread shows eleven elephants on succeeding floors of a department building. Text is minimal, usually:
"Xth floor: ." on left
and
" elephants." on right.
Pictures are colorful, a bit cluttered for my taste, but children can count eleven elephants on each floor and pay attention to lots of details: Good for small Nursery or Kindergarten reading group.