I have been talking with various parents about finding good books for advanced early readers. Now I know there are various book threads but was hoping to get some suggestions for picture books with advanced vocabulary. The books that arent dumbed down in the words chosen. the books that you read out loud and have to explain a word or two, or the books that are just really well writing with inviting language for young readers.
So my suggestions to kickstart the thread
Fancy Nancy ( all of them are great!)
Giraffes can’t Dance, Giles Andrede. Rhyming and words like bandy…my favorite read aloud for kindy 
Commotion in the Ocean, hmmm can’t remember but same series as above.
Henry and the Fox, Chris Wormell ( age 4 and up)
The Pear in the Pear Tree, Pamela Allen. Actually buy anything she writes she has lovely vocabulary and delightful flow. Great fun to read aloud.
One Blue Sock, Stephen Michael King. ( the font might put off early readers but it’s clever and the language invites imagining.)
A Particular Cow, Mem Fox, again almost anything she writes is great. The vocabulary is interesting but the stories are short, great for beginning readers reading with mum or dad.
So which author has the best use of vocabulary in your country? We always need more books :biggrin:
Mandabplus3!
Fantastic, thanks so much…I just ordered about 30 books by Mem Fox and by Cynthia Rylant. Absolutely cannot wait. Alex is a bit of a vocab nut, and one of the first things I read in the Mem Fox reviews was that she refused to not incorporate longer, more advanced words “insisting that kids can understand more than we think.”
Some more favorites from US…
Almost anything by Karma Wilson…
Tickle Monster and Boogie Monster by Josie Bissett
Stand Back Said the Elephant, I am Going to Sneeze! By Patricia Thomas
The Pout, Pout Fish by Deborah Deissen (sp?)
And not American, but almost anything by Julia Donaldson, Tony Mitton, and Lynley Dodd…
Mandab, I read “Slowly, slowly, slowly,” said the Sloth last night and the last page is filled with great vocabulary which I plan on looking up with the kids today and explaining. Also the book Rapunzel has some nice vocabulary as well. I have been thinking of you and your question while I am reading to the kiddos. I will make note of the good books and let you know.
I think the Beatrix Potter books are pretty rich as well.
Krista - oooh I love the Beatrix Potter books. They’re so beautiful, I can’t help but feel they must be a part of every child’s library. I’m referring to the little books - the way they were originally published, not the big books with all the stories included.
I’ve got a thing for hard cover books with pretty bindings… 
I agree. My 12 year old just read a biography of Beatrix Potter and then ordered all those beautiful little books from the library. We have been reading them lately. They are timeless stories.
Thought of a couple more USA originated books!
Grandma bought her TWO by an author called Judy Sierra!
Seriously designed for parents doing Early Learning!!!
One is entitled ‘Born To Read’ (gorgeous!, can’t recommend enough, and another…
Wild about Books! By the same author!
If you are in the USA and haven’t encountered the Hairy McClary books by Lynley Dodd?! Ooohhhh, completely missing out!
Here is my kiddo, Alex, reading one at just before 2.5 years! Please excuse poor lighting (ready for bed! And the fact that I had to ‘bribe’ her with m&ms to get her to read it a second time! I came out of the bathroom to discover her reading her new book and called daddy with the camcorder lol
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvpxTzElwUo&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I guess we will see if the link wrks-- of not… BabyBibliophile channel, Rumpus At The Vet!
Anybody have suggestions for books of a similar nature/llevel? Getting pretty desperate!
Delightful! Go Alex I watched it again and loved it even more!. Will have to go through my books again for you
Kerileanne, what a great reader. I love her enthusiasm over woes! So cute. I just got Wild About Books from the library, again, because we like it so much. I have some lists of our favorite books on my blog. I will include the link to the post below. Maybe you will find some that you would like to read.
http://teachingbabytoread.com/2010/03/23/top-10-favorite-childrens-books.aspx
http://teachingbabytoread.com/2010/08/02/list-of-books-to-read-to-baby.aspx
http://teachingbabytoread.com/2011/07/04/100-picture-books-everyone-should-know.aspx
http://teachingbabytoread.com/2011/09/04/list-of-funny-childrens-books.aspx
Amazing, she is so comfortable with big words! My kids loved it too :yes:
If your child is into poetry ( my 3 yo is 
) I would recommend A Child’s Book of Poems http://www.amazon.com/Childs-Book-Poems-Gyo-Fujikawa/dp/1402750617/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340845380&sr=8-1&keywords=a+child’s+book+of+poems+by+gyo+fujikawa
And A child’s garden of verses by robert louis stevenson ( I cant find on Amazon the one that we have, it has beautiful illustrations, it is conceived and collected by Cooper Edens, classic Illustrated Edition, it has beautiful illustrations, we love them!!!)
The problem is that neither one of these have big enough print, but after a while it works ( for the lack of better option 
), however my kids love the illustration and poems
Thanks everyone, for both the compliments and the recommendations!
Still LOVE to hear about books by foreign (non-us authors!) unfortunately, many US authors tend to ‘dumb down the word usage,’ 
Krista G- thanks so much for the links! We regularly follow your blog and monthly reading lists as many of the books we read seem to coincide! I am sure that you have many of the same problems finding great, fun literature for your kids :yes:
Skylark- I am going to try the poetry based upon your recommendation…we have been using various children’s literature to learn literary concepts. They are AWESOME for teaching…she knows how to recognize metaphors, similes, rhyming, consonance, assonance, personification, portmanteau, and her absolute favorite, onomantopeia! Children’s lit is the very best at these concepts, and I am slowly working on a LR lesson to incorporate them all! ( as well as parts of speech, punctuation, grammar, etc…!) I think poetry might truly help her with this as she giggles loudly and incessantly when she ‘discovers’ an element on her own!
Please keep the recommendations coming! If your kiddo (or you!) has a fav, I would LOVE to hear!
Awesome Kerileanne! Cant wait for those LR lessons. We would be the first ones to download them :yes:
We do a lot of poetry, I believe it is very important and E loves it. I also pull separate poems from British classical poetry, we print them our and read throughout the day – I have not seen the book that had all the titles I wanted to read with her… Vocabulary development alone is worth the trouble But I believe it also develops an innate feel of rhythms, times, encourages her to play and experiment with words and forms. Now when her little brother does his LR lessons, she runs in to listen to rhyming words ( pattern phonics :yes: ) and she just started composing her own songs – of course they are simple kiddo songs, but I would say they have a pretty good rhyme and rhythm feel…
Haha, I can suggest some awesome non-US books we read, but they are in Russian, hmmm, that is not what you meant, right :biggrin: :closedeyes: But honestly, it has been a huge part of our reading times, and again we used a lot of classical poetry or pieces of classical literature there.
Skylark-
So glad you like he idea! I was worried that many people would find the idea of teaching literary concepts with children’s lit ridiculous…but seriously, the examples abound in every book, on every page. We were recently re-reading a Stuart J. Murphy MathStart book called Monster Musical Chairs. When the words 'Smash, boom, bang, crash! Were read out she stood up in bed, literally jumped up and down, and shouted “those are ontomantopeia words”!!! Were YOU that excited to learn about them in HS or college? I think not lol
Hoping to finish some of it this weekend–will be on yet another bed rest, enforced work time lol Really am hoping to get the Scholastic Parts of Speech, Grammar Tales, and Punctuation Tales put in! Whilst I am not sure why kiddos like these so much, they really seem to! Does anybody have the vocabulary tales? I think Alex would go nuts for these, she Adores new words!
We have a vocab word of the day, and I CANNOT fail to find a new one everyday!
The MINUTE she is ready to get out of bed, she raises her arms in the universal ‘what’ sign, and says, " what is the very first thing we DoOOoOO!!!" what is today’s word?! Before we get dressed, eat, anything, we have a look at a new word…we then giggle all day as we try to use it properly, keeping a tally for the whole family! She is in charge of tallying at bed time to determine the ‘days winner’!
Anything anybody is hoping to add, please PM me and I will tell you if I have already incorporated it or not! Always looking for new ideas, and know some of you might be English profs/majors/buffs!? Any ideas?
Krista G-
We share so many of our book ideas, but I haven’t seen much on your lists via Julia Donaldsom (UK!) if you have not seen these, oh, you are in for a literary treat!
Here are some of our favorites, although pretty much anything by her is FANTASTIC!
The Gruffalo
The Grufallo’s Child
Room on the Brrom
The troll
StickMan
A Squash and. Squeeze
Tiddler
Monkey Puzzle
The Snail and the Whale
The Smallest Giant in Town
There may well have been some IMISSED?!!
Kerileanne,
Love your posts. Very inspiring. I have read some of the Julia Donaldson books. We just read The Gruffallo’s Child, probably because you mentioned her. We read Stick Man, The Gruffalo and The Snail and the Whale. They are great books. I will look for more at the library. Thanks for the recommendations. I LOVE recommendations. We have read some books that we really liked this month. I will be posting those in the beginning of July.
I just remembered a poetry book we are reading that I really like. It has some lovely vocabulary in there. Lots of big words. Alex might like it. It is called I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus. The poems are silly but incorporate some nice vocabulary. I highly recommend it.
When my older kids were little I went through my Chambers Synonyms and Antonyms book and looked up synonyms for common words we use frequently. I wrote them on an index card and told the kids that instead of saying the word hungry, they would need to use one of the different synonyms for that word. It was such an easy way to learn new words. I need to start that again with my younger group. Where do you find your new words? What a great game. I like your ideas for teaching grammar as well. Anything learned young is easier to learn and much more fun!
we love Shirley Hughes english author , i have big collection of her books , stories , poems …
viv
Krista G-
I loved your synonym and antonyms game idea, I keep a slew of preprinted ‘BINGO’ charts ready, and today wrote in many of her vocab words…we started out with, I am thinking of a word that means…and finally progressed into finding synonyms and antonyms. It was so successful that when it was time to get ready to go to gymnastics, which she LOVES, huge bout of screaming, crocodile tears, and big pouty lips ensued!
We try to choose most of our words from books we are reading, everyday life, or experiences as it seems to help cement them for her. So much so that she will often say, oh, that word was in book X.
I also have a vocabulary in fifteen minutes book that a dear friend shared
In a pinch we have an SAT prep app for vocabulary on my IPad! Very, very, very sad that a Uni prep list has loads of ‘challenging’ words my toddler uses!
I think the biggest input comes from daddy and I actively trying to use larger words in place of smaller, more mundane words…for example: when she plays the Stack the States/countries apps, she sometimes makes a verrrry precarious tower. When she wouldn’t cooperate with getting dressed, she gets an option of right leg first, left leg first, or simultaneously. Whenever I do laundry, she insists on watching the drum fill so that it can ‘agitate’ the clothes to clean them. (this is great because we were able to teach her that the microwave ‘agitates’ the water molecules to heat food…a bit simplistic, but she wanted to know.)
I also have this book that I take many ideas from! It is by Scholastic and provides ideas on how to teach literary topics using picture books…
http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Literary-Elements-Picture-Books/dp/0439027993/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340943504&sr=1-1&keywords=teaching+literary+elements+with+picture+books
Oohh, one other gem of a series is a set of animal tales done by Reader’s Digest for Families in the 1990s…I think they are out of print, but you can still find them and lots of libraries have them…very good with a bit of a moral lesson (more Golden Rule) than anything. They also have a nice EK facts sheet at the back about the animals featured in the story.
They are called Little Animal Adventures by Reader’s Digest Kids. Two of our favorites are The Hungry Duckling and Be Patient, Little Chick.
Totally forgot to mention. A couple of months ago we had an opportunity to try some of the Oxford Read and Discover Readers.
I could not figure out how to order them in US yet ( and not sure we will be doing it, if it is too much trouble), but a friend of mine who is a primary ESL teacher uses them and when she was visiting she let us use some.
Not as good as poetry :biggrin: or classics :nowink: but both my kiddos liked lots of realistic pictures ( they use actual photos to illustrate) and lots of facts. It is written in a simple sentences, great for beginner readers, and gives lots of facts on the subject of the book.
This thread is inspiring!! Thanks for the ideas. I need to get busy incorporating some new vocabulary ideas, It is fun if we make it fun. So fun that she (Alex) cried when she had to stop. I love it!
Keri, we just read What the Ladybug Heard by Julia Donaldson. It was so cute. We loved it!! Did you know there is a movie called The Gruffalo? We haven’s watched it but I saw it advertised online. Thanks for the recommendations.