The Tinkerbell Effect: I Think I Can by Karin S. Robbins

As Tinkerbell in Peter Pan told the children, to see fairies, you have to believe, and if you believe, clap your hands.

Reading is like that, too, and in Karin S. Robbins' I Think I Can (Schiffer Publishing, 2019), it all begins with believing, when Aardvark says...

"I think I can!"

She thinks she can sing.

"What do you think you can sing?" asks Mouse.

Why, a song, of course. But first Mouse must look at Aardvark and listen to Aardvark and sit down in a listening chair, and get ready for the Surprise Song!

Sing along with me.

Oh, happy we will be.

Read along with me.

Read together, you and me.

Oh, happily we'll read.

Author and Romper Room teacher and puppeteer Karin Robbins knows that it helps to hold children's attention. Learning to read is an interactive activity that involves repeating sounds and words which are more effective if sometimes done together as a song or chant, and artist Rachael Brunson makes sure to hold attention by setting her engaging aardvark and mouse front and center on bright white backgrounds, and author Robbins gives young emerging readers their chance to CLAP a round of applause for believing they can learn to read, too.

Eyes on the Prize? Look! by Jeff Mack

LOOK!

What's a guy got to do to get somebody to read to him?

Great ape gyrations ensue when a gorilla tries un-glue a boy from the boob tube.

Gorilla Guy balances a book on his nose. He balances on one foot on top a stack of books.

He balances a huge stack of books on his head! But not for long.

C-R-A-S-H!

Down they come, one landing open on top of the boy's head. Without removing his eyes from his screen, the boy walks over to open the door with one word:

"OUT!"

Okay. If it's drama the boy wants, drama he'll get!

Gorilla Guy crashes a book-laden trike through the door. This time the books come down like an avalanche and smash the television set. Ooops! Unintended but ironic consequence of book promotion!

"OUT! OUT! OUT!"

Now what? All alone, the boy looks down sadly at the remains of his entertainment devices, and his eyes fall on an open book. Hey! This book is worth a...LOOK!

It's not long before boy and Gorilla are sharing a read-in on the floor, in Jeff Mack's Look! (Philomel Books, 2015). With a minimalist vocabulary of just two words, repeated with various emotional connotations, Mack sneaks in a stealthy comical plug for books and reading. The author's salesman for the joys of reading may not be the most subtle, but hey, he IS a gorilla and besides, he's got a point. Mack's silly book spokesperson will get youngsters' attention, and the simple and super-sized vocabulary will have its audience reading along despite themselves before the book comes to its sleepy end. In a clever bit of book design, Mack uses an absolutely real-looking facsimile of an old-fashioned book pocket and date-due slip as a frontispiece opposite the title page. (It'll make you touch it to see if it's real! Really!) LOOK again at this one for bedtime, storytime, or Book Week!

If you're faced with a bunch of junior screen zombies, try pairing this one with Lane Smith's It's a Book (See review here)

Give 'Im the Hook! The End (Almost): Starring ME, Donut by Jim Benton

To say Donut is an attention-seeking blue bear is putting it mildly. Getting him off the page practically takes an act of Congress.

Jim Benton's just published The End (Almost) (Scholastic Press, 2014) features a disgruntled author who tries to fire Donut when his opening-page audition begins with a big BURP!

"The END!!"

One BURP?"

YES! This story is OVER!"

No way, Dude! Determined to be a star, Donut is not going, at least not all of him. He exits page right but returns to stick his head back into the page to plead his case. Ordered to go home, Donut heads off page again, "losing" one red sneaker as he goes.

But he's not off-page long! Donut tries to sneak back, disguised in a big mustache and green Derby.

"I KNOW it's you, Donut."

A big sign [YOU CAN'T SEE ME!] appears, mostly covering someone with blue feet in red sneakers!

Finally the author comes up with the perfect ploy to get Donut out of his book! Sorry, Buddy, but...

"We're out of PAGES!"

But even running out of print space isn't enough to deter Donut, who right away is ready for a retake or a rewind. Or maybe a re-read?

Like Mo Willems in his We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) Jim Benton joins those picture book creators who make the limitations of the printed page part of the fun of telling the story, (literally "thinking outside the box") even when their characters don't follow the script.  Perfect April Fools fare, Benton's story is easy beginning reader book, while offering plenty of room for hamming it up while reading it aloud. Pair it with Willem's book or with Lane Smith's hilarious look at reading, It's a Book! on page or on screen. (Read the review here.)

Page Shunner: I Will Not Read This Book by Cece Meng

WAIT!

BEFORE I READ THIS BOOK...

I HAVE TO FLOSS MY TEETH...

AND CLEAN UNDER MY BED.

Kids in the middle of the bedtime routine are masters of stalling, and this little PJ-ed boy is right up there in the Stallers Hall of Fame.

But when the fish are fed and his itchy nose is scratched, it's crunch time. For that, there's always the preschooler's famous, feared fall-back position.

YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!

I WILL NOT READ THIS BOOK EVEN IF YOU HANG ME UPSIDE DOWN BY MY TOES....

The boy pictures the whole scene for his patiently waiting mother. She's hanging him upside down by his big toe from a cliff and his sock monkey is tickling his feet, over a sea filled with sharks, in dragon-filled sky in a lightning storm, with a speeding train bearing down on an improbable ocean-spanning track....

No way. After all, as the little lad admits, reading is hard and there might be strange words, and it will take forever...and...and...

But what if the rope breaks and he falls down, down, down toward an imagined doom?

But, then, what if Mom is there to catch him?

That's different.

THEN I WILL READ THE BOOK WITH YOU.

Cece Meng's newest I Will Not Read This Book (Clarion, 2011), to be published September 6, takes our reading-phobic little hero to the heights of hyperbole before he cracks and agrees to crack that bedtime book with Mom. Artist Joy Ang gives this cliff-hanger the appropriate hilarious hyper-preposterous treatment as well, setting her comic protagonist against a bright white background as he dangles over the dangers he imagines, clutching the offending book despite it all. Even reluctant readers will have to giggle at the super silly perils he summons up, and all kids will be tickled by the cover which shows the boy holding up the book in question, aptly titled I Will Not Read This Book.

Pair this one with Barbara Bottner's Miss Brooks Loves Books (And I Don't) for an empathetic book fest for the bookophobic.