A few years ago I came across a book by Mary Ann Hoberman called A House Is a House for Me. When you read great literature, you just know it immediately. Within the first few pages I was really enjoying this book. When I got to the end I felt compelled to contact the author and tell her how fabulous this book is. It was first published in 1978 and has won the American Book Award. The book is recommended for ages 3-8.
Here is the link from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/House-Me-Mary-Ann-Hoberman/dp/0142407739/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251748840&sr=8-1
This book is so clever and really gets you thinking. By the time you finish the last page you will be thinking of houses for all sorts of things. My son and I went on for over 30 minutes naming houses for all sorts of things. I am a book lover. Let me rephrase that. I am a GOOD book lover. I like books that carry you away to a different place or make you think about them even after they are done. This is one of those books.
The other day I ordered some of my favorite read alouds from the library. I read A House Is a House for Me again and was once again, struck with a strong desire to contact Miss Hoberman and tell her how wonderful this book is. It may just be my favorite book ever. I typed her name in Google and found her right away. I left a message for her on her guest book and she responded to me today.
Here is her reply.
Comment: Thanks for your wonderful message! I love it when kids use HOUSE to take off on their own flights of imagination and they come up with such marvelous and unexpected ideas! To answer your questions: LLAMA is a collection of poems written over a period of about 40 years. I wrote the first ones for my own children when they were very small and kept making up new ones as the spirit moved me - eventually I went through the many hundreds of poems I’d written over the years, both published and unpublished, and chose 100 of my very favorites for the collection. At the same time there were many of my poems still in print in other books, so I had to leave them out of LLAMA. I’ll be posting some of them on this site from time to time. And good luck to you with your own writing.
If you like to read great books, get a copy of Mary Ann Hoberman’s book. She also has a great book of poetry called The Llama Who Had No Pajama. It is filled with great poems for little children.
View my blog at www.teachingbabytoread.com