November's theme for #littlelitbookseries is food. Lemonade in Winter, written by Emily Jenkins and illustrated by G. Brian Karas, is about a pair of entrepreneurial siblings who decide to set up a lemonade stand on a cold wintry day. Do they learn about math and counting money? Yes. Do they learn a little about ingenuity and perseverance? Yes. Do they sell any lemonade? Read this delightfully frigid tale to find out. 😉
Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie dePaola is one of my all-time favorite wordless picture books. Its subtle humor draws you in and invites you to narrate the story of a hapless (but not hopeless) woman in her plight for a plate of warm, toothsome pancakes. The story is also a nod to an older, agrarian way of life, making it a wonderful teaching experience for its audience. And if reading it doesn't make you crave a tall pile of crispy-edged pancakes doused in maple syrup, I don't know what will! 🍁
Also, as a side note, wordless story books are invaluable tools. Telling and retelling a story multiple times with a wordless story book helps children learn a variety of vocabulary words, synonyms and sentence structures. It helps teach children the elements of a story--characters, setting, problem, resolution, etc. When you revisit stories and retell them, you talk about different little aspects of a story that you didn't talk about the last time you read it because you might pick up on other details in the pictures or nuances in the story. When different people tell a child the story, the child hears and is exposed to different narratives, points of view and different sets of vocabulary. Happy storytelling!
Check out our collection of delicious food books in this month's installment of #littlelitbookseries on Instagram.