Day 26 to Day 30 - 30 books in 30 days Challenge

Hello!

This brings us to the last 5 days of this very exciting, enriching 30 day reading challenge by The Bubble Ink.

March 26, 2014 - Day 26 - Reading Prompt – Gardens

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. - Marcus Tullius Cicero

We were to read books that celebrate gardens.

Bubble Ink picks - 

My Garden                                        - Kevin Henkes

Inch by Inch, The garden song             - David Mallet Illustrated by Ora Eitan

Sunu Sunu - Snail Storm in the garden - Sandhya Rao, Tulika Publishers

We read 'Bees and Butterflies', a sparkly book by Gina Philips. Beatrice Bee and Bella Butterfly show each other and our little reader how they are important to create and preserve beautiful gardens. 'Little Fox's Picnic' by Debi Gliori is about a bunch of friends who go on a picnic to a garden on a lovely summer day. 'The Oak Tree' is a simple reader book that educates about different parts of a tree. We also read 'Pepper learns about recycling' and 'Pepper learns to take turns'. The last was another reader book by Disney, 'How does your garden grow?

A good book shared today was 'The Giving Tree’ by Shel Silverstein. All of us would have surely read or heard this story in our childhood. Watch this video here.

March 27, 2014 - Day 27 - Reading Prompt –  Birthday

Bubble Ink picks -

How many sleeps before my Birthday - Mark Sperring

Happy Birthday, Biscuit                     - Alyssa Capucilli

Surprise Gifts                                     - Asha Nehemiah

We read 'Little Honey' which is the only book we have on Happy Birthday…. and we were quite startled by that revelation! We also read 'Pepper and the new baby' since my little one insisted that being born is also similar to having a birthday! A very endearing birthday book that we want to have in our library is 'Gorilla' by Anthony Browne. We read the book in a school library and fell in love with it!

‘The Secret Birthday message’ by Eric Carle is an interesting book. Here is a link for the same.

March 28, 2014 - Day 28 - Reading Prompt – Grandparents

Grandparents make the world , a little softer, a litter kinder and a little warmer. The reading prompt honours the grandparents.

Bubble Ink picks -

Just Grandma, Grandpa and me     - Mercer Mayer

Nana upstairs, Nana downstairs     - Tomie de Paola

Days with Thathu                         - Geeta Dharmarajan

I was ruing about this prompt coming up!  I should have armed myself since I expected it! My baby came up with Grandpa Pig from the Peppa Pig series when I informed her about the prompt. But we don’t have any of those books! We read 'Pepper learns to keep a promise', where Pepper goes off to play forgetting his promise to not leave his old Grandpa alone at home, causing a minor mishap! Pepper pledges to henceforth 'try' to keep his promise. We also read 'The Little Red Riding Hood'. A favourite with my daughter but I don’t like the Usborne story where the wolf actually gobbles up the granny and LRRH and the woodcutter snips off the wolf's tummy to get them out! Horrifying! The Ladybird version is much milder and I find that better. But the former is owned and the latter was from the library! I am definitely buying more books on this prompt!

March 29, 2014 - Day 29 - Reading Prompt –  Read in your Native Language

The prompt honoured each of our native languages. Hence, there were no reading picks. Our native language is Tamil and our national language is Hindi, so we picked books in these languages.

Daddy and baby did the reading today. They read 'Dosa' by Sandhya Rao, Tulika books. Amma is dishing out yummy dosas for Bapa, who is immersed in the newspaper. When amma calls out to Bapa, 'Tell me when to stop', he incredulously asks, 'Stop? When did you start?' Amma comes out to check and the plate is empty! Who ate the dosas - or should I say, who ate the doshais? :-) A simple, sweet, tiny little story to amuse your kiddo. They also read 'Beej' in Hindi by Deepa Balsavar. A simple story on germination and how the excited little girl wonders about what the little seed will grow into. Very nice illustrations. Love to see Indian characters etched on books!  Dadi with her huge red bindi, Dadaji with his Gandhi chashma, Didi in salwar-kurta, Maa in her oiled, braided hair.. its all so lovely! Then they read 'Daddy's little star' (out of the theme). Little Fox is walking with daddy in the forest and wonders how high does the sky really go? Daddy churns out a game out of this and in the end, Little Fox realises that just like our love, the sky goes on forever!

We got a lot of suggestions for books in Tamil. The good part is Tulika and other Indian publications are doing a great job with printing books in a number of Indian languages, beside English. This is great encouragement and we would love to read more books in Tamil! 

March 30, 2014 - Day 30 - Reading Prompt –  Read your favourite book

Being the last day of the challenge , we were to read on any theme - our child's favourite book, the one she wants to be read to again and again or just any book that she chooses.

We did not want to read our favourite books for some reason today! So we read 'Dad! I cant sleep!' by Michael Foreman. We read 'Peter's Pebbles' by Cherie Zamazing. A superb story on adventure, fantasy, imagination and pebble painting as a hobby. We love this book! We also read 'Green Eggs and Ham' by Dr Seuss - our current favourite, which was declared only today!

And so ended the glorious month of the '30 books in 30 days Reading Challenge, hosted by The Bubble Ink. There are fantastic takeaways - learning about beautiful books, authors and genres, meeting so many like minded mums who participated enthusiastically and shared their reads, knowing about so many wonderful initiatives in Bangalore and Mumbai in the field of children's picture books and libraries - it was a priceless experience. I thank The Bubble Ink for the same. 

I have begun blogging here on children's books thanks to this challenge. I shall now begin to post my experiences of reading with my little one regularly. Hopefully, these records will be handy to you when you want to reach out to an interesting book to read to your baby. You can subscribe to this blog by sharing on email or via RSS feed so that you do not miss on any review. Yay!! I am excited, eager and raring to go! :-)