Teaching Heart Blog

I have two great books to share. The first was sent to me by the author Deborah Lee Rose and the second I received as a reviewer for Amazon.com. It was refreshing to be sent two books I could write positive reviews for and suggest to my readers with the confidence they would love the books.

You can’t help but smile when reading, The Twelve Days of Winter by Deborah Lee Rose. The illustrations are adorable and if you have a student in elementary school or if you are or were a teacher yourself you may find yourself laughing as you read along.

The story starts out with the words, “On the first day of winter, my teacher gave to me…a bird feeder in a snowy tree.” The illustrations compliment the text and tell a side story of their own. You see a teacher dealing with getting her class ready to go outside. As an educator myself, I relate to the teacher in the story trying her best to help the little ones get on coats and gloves. Outside they help to fill the bird feeder and you see the kids making snow angels, throwing snowballs, and more winter fun happenings. That description just describes the first four pages! The rest of the pages add more counting fun in the classroom. As the winter days go on and the teacher continues giving… the chaos in the classroom gets greater. The teacher is obviously flustered by the end of the story and ready for winter break and also very deserving of the break.

My three year old and seven year old enjoyed this story very much. It was fun counting the objects in the story with them. My three year old loved pointing out what was going on in each picture. The text was simple enough for a second grader to read independently.

This lovely story would be the perfect gift for a kindergarten through third grade teacher to share with her class. Also, I suggest you wrap it up and tie a bow around it and give it to your favorite teacher as a Holiday treat! You may wish to tie a tag on it that says, “I am sure you have had your share of The Twelve Days of Winter like the teacher in this story! Thanks for being a fun teacher. Have a well deserved winter break.”

I found myself smiling when I first read through The Nutty Nutcracker Christmas. It is such a creative story that any six through ten year old boy can make a text to self connection to. The original Nutcracker is generally a girl’s story. Yet, this Nutcracker is written with the main character being a boy who loves to play video games.

Fritz is the video game loving boy in the story who finds himself in VERY BIG TROUBLE before you even turn to page two of the story. Fritz, like all brothers broke one of his sister’s toys and his handheld video system is taken away from him. However, Fritz continues to be naughty and secretly find his game system and begins playing… Fritz plays and plays until he masters the game by beating the Mouse King!!! You can imagine Fritz excitement from his achievement… but magically, The Mouse King himself appears alive out of the game challenging Fritz. Fritz of course is scared and shocked when he sees this larger than life Mouse with a sword. Luckily and even more Magically, a Nutcracker appears and thus begins and adventure that any six to ten year old would love to read.

What a wonderful story with great illustrations. I would recommend this to the six through ten year old age group. This book is perfect alone, but even made better with the CD included with this story. The first track is a twelve minute read-along of the story. The read-along is read very creatively and with nice sound affects and music. My only complaint is that the CD read-along does not contain turn the page signals. Following the read-along is five Christmas songs you probably won’t hear anywhere else but on this CD. They are each creative and some are even humorous. The titles are: Christmas Eve at Our House, I’m a Natural, Let’s Ruin Christmas, Welcome to Christmas Wood, and Don’t Say Impossible.

This book is definitely a must have for your Children’s Christmas Book collection. It is a very unique story that will capture the heart of your child over the holidays!!!