Dr Seuss's Seusscase by Dr Seuss

It's been a real Dr Seuss week in our house and this is largely due to the fantastic Dr Seuss Seusscase!

The Seusscase is a fantastic collection of ten Dr Seuss stories. It has all the popular hits: Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, Oh, the Places You'll Go!, The Lorax, Fox in Socks and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; plus a whole lot more less well known Seuss titles (well less known to me anyway!) like I Wish that I had Duck Feet, Dr Seuss's ABC, etc.....

And the best part is all the books are packed together into a fantastic little suitcase (or Seusscase!) There is nothing cuter than Maximilian grabbing his little Seusscase and coming up to me saying "book, book!"

Maximilian received this great compendium of Dr Seuss books as a gift for his first Christmas, but it is only very recently that he has started to sit through and enjoy books by Dr Seuss. I hadn't remembered just how long many of the stories are but now, at 20 months, Maximilian quite happily sits through over 40 pages of Dr Seuss, which is pretty impressive I think.

The back of the books in the Seusscase are also colour coded: blue for sharing with your child, green for children just beginning to read on their own and yellow for fluent readers to enjoy. Dr Seuss books are full of rhyme and repetition to help early readers recognise the words and are also full of crazy nonsense words which are just plain fun to read aloud!

Maximilian loves to open his Seusscase and choose a book for us to read together. His first favourite was Oh! The Places You'll Go! - which I'm sorry to say I didn't know very well before but now adore. Green Eggs and Ham is also a huge hit and, this weeks favourite read by a long way, Fox in Socks - although I, like Mr Knox, have trouble reading the tongue twisters aloud! He has also just started to enjoy One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, which was a childhood favourite of mine.

If you're looking for a book gift for a child, you could do far worse than a Dr Seuss book and you probably can't do better than a whole box of them!! We love our Seusscase!

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss

The story of Sam's quest to get a grouch to eat green eggs and ham is a well deserved classic of children's literature and has always been one of my favourite Dr Seuss books.

This is such a funny book. Who doesn't love the interplay between Sam and the grouch?! The way the grouch gets more and more exasperated and the way that Sam's suggestions get more and more outrageous is nothing short of hilarious!

The fantastic rhyming, rhythmic repetitive text in Green Eggs and Ham makes this a terrific story for kids learning to read independently.

This is also a perfect book for parents to read aloud to their child. Unlike some Dr Seuss books, this one is easy to read, with simple plain language and no real tongue twisters!

I've used Green Eggs and Ham as a library storytime book lots of times and the kids always love it. It is especially good for reading out loud with a partner as you can have so much fun as either the increasingly grumpy grouch or the wheedling pleading Sam.

I've also been surprised when rereading Dr Seuss just how many themes and morals are contained within these simple stories - the moral in Green Eggs and Ham being try new things even if you think you don't like them as you may just be surprised! And what a great book for parents to quote to their child during those wonderful dinner time discussions about eating one vegetable or another - try it and you might like it :-)

It wasn't until I started reading Dr Seuss with Maximilian that I realised just how long the books actually are. We tried One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish a few times but he hasn't taken to it at all yet (although it is my childhood fave). Green Eggs and Ham though was a hit from the first reading and we now read it every other day! In fact, Sam is the second book character that Maximilian now recognizes and knows by name - the first was Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

At 20 months, Maximilian doesn't truly understand the humour in this book. It is lovely though how he earnestly shakes his head and says "No" along with the grouches refusal to eat the green eggs and ham and how he claps at the end when he tries and likes them! And the rhythmic text keeps him totally riveted through the whole book.

Green Eggs and Ham would be a great addition to a food themed storytime session - team it with I will not ever never eat a tomato by Lauren Child, and you are guaranteed to have lots of fun!!

Along Came a Bedtime by Ian Whybrow and Guy Parker-Rees

Bear and baby bear are having a bath before bedtime when along comes a cheeky duck. Duck isn't ready for bed and so begins this romp of a story!

Along Came a Bedtime is a playful story featuring lots of fun animals and animal sounds that Maximilian really enjoys. All the favourite animals are here - bear, duck, cat, dog and cow!

The cheerful illustrations are perfect for this fun story - simple and colourful.

This book has great rhythm and rhyme. I love to read it aloud and Maximilian loves to chime in with all the words he knows. There are lots of animal sounds to engage your child throughout the story and I really love the way the baby bear talks in baby language - 'dop' for stop etc. I think this would really engage young children just learning to talk. We also love the repetitive counting : 1, 2, 3, go! Maximilian loves to count on his fingers then shout Go!

A simple but really fun book that we were lucky enough to stumble across at the library. Definitely one we'll add to our home library!

The Very Hungry Bear by Nick Bland

The Very Hungry Bear by Nick Bland definitely qualifies for Day 3 of the Book-a-Day challenge: A book you love to read aloud.

This is a terrific new instalment in Bland's books about Bear. He's been cranky, itchy and now he's hungry! I will look at the other titles later, but I think The Very Hungry Bear is my favourite so far.

Bear is not impressed when he reels in a polar bear while fishing for his breakfast - especially when the polar bear is eating all his fish! The polar bear's iceberg is shrinking and he cleverly persuades (bribes!) Bear to help find the polar bear a new home.

The reason I love to read this book aloud is the wonderful rhyming throughout it. There is a real rhythm to Bland's storytelling, and it really does make this book a pleasure to read aloud - Maximilian is always totally transfixed by it.

"Now a fish to a bear 

is like a chocolate eclair, 

it's INCREDIBLY hard to resist

So the thought of a pile

that would last for a while

was an offer too good to be missed!"

Lines like these simply roll off the tongue. The illustrations throughout the book are also extremely engaging: bright and colourful with expressively drawn characters. Bland uses decorative font and bold text to great advantage, and I found this really helpful with reading the text out loud - the bold text helps the reader to emphasise the syllables well for great effect when reading out loud (I'm not sure if Bland intended this, but is very clever and effective!) I think this would be really helpful for parents not used to reading books out loud.

Another wonderful book by an Australian picture book author - Nick Bland will definitely feature in other posts as we have many of his other titles too. He is a favourite in our house and definitely a name to remember.