Great Reading: Bookmark It!

Volume 29, Number 5, June 2002

Friends
Grades PreS-4

Ruth Cox

Bear snores on. Karma Wilson.
McElderry/Simon & Schuster, 2002. $16.00. 0-689-83187-0. While “bear snores on” (the repetitive refrain in a rhyming text) his forest friends have a party in his cave until he is awakened and passes the rest of the stormy night spinning tall tales.

The boys’ team. Amy Schwartz.
Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, 2001. $16.95. 0-689-84138-8. Five-year-old Jacob narrates the antics of three boys who do everything together, from chasing girls in the playground to trying to outdo each other.

Dumpy La Rue. Elizabeth Winthrop.
Holt, 2001. $15.95. 0-8050-6385-4. Everyone in the barnyard, except for Dumpy La Rue, knows that boy pigs don’t dance. Dumpy doesn’t care – he dances – and soon all his barnyard friends are dancing too.

Wish, change, friend. Ian Whybrow.
McElderry/Simon & Schuster, 2001. $16.00. 0-689-84930-3. Little Pig is content with his bookish life until he reads three new words: wish, change and friend. He then wishes for change and a friend, and gets a snowstorm. Little Pig creates a friend, a snowman, and they find a penguin that introduces them to another new word – together – which they all like the best.

Ruth Cox is assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. She can be reached at Cox@cl.uh.edu.