Book club: week 6

Next week is coming too quickly... School next week! And for us, school for the first time! It hasn't really sunk in yet, it's crazy, scary and very exciting at the same time... for me that is!
So for this week, I chose "Come to School too, Blue Kangaroo!" by Emma Chichester Clark. About Lily who is going to school for the very first time... Another brilliant series that we love. Lily and Blue Kangaroo books are fantastic, and once again, Emma Chichester Clark has created this amazing, beautiful and perfect world. 

Good luck to all the other parents who have their first child go to the school first time next week! I'm sure the children will do well, but the parents might struggle a bit!

Book club: week 5

As much as I love happy books, this one is not really a happy book: "Not now, Bernard" by David McKee.

Personally, I think it's a brilliant book for parents. And because children love it so much, the parents get to read it again and again till they (we) get the message. I was a bit sceptical reading this book to my 4 years old, thought she might be scared, but she loved it so much and asked to read every night. I'm not sure what the children love about it, probably for them it's just a story about a boy and a monster. As for the parents...
A boy called Bernand goes to both of this parents and gets "Not now, Bernard" because they are too busy. He is then sent to the garden where he knows there is a monster. The monster eats Bernard and goes inside. Both mum and dad don't notice that it's not Bernard anymore, but a monster, he eats his dinner on his own in front of TV and gets sent to bed with his milk already waiting for him. When the moster tries to object and says "But I'm a monster", he gets the same "Not now, Bernard", because Bernard's parents are still not looking at him.
For me, it's a good reminder to give my children enough attention, to listen to them. There is always something to do - shopping, cooking, washing, cleaning, the list is endless! It's easy to forget what is really important and make a way to always notice children, instead of constantly saying "Not now!".

Book club: week 4

First of all I need to do something I promised to myself I won't do - apologize for not very regular posts, I promise to catch up soon and I have some very exciting things! I have been a lot better with updating my Facebook page with the recent work, so if you haven't "liked" it yet, here it is: http://www.facebook.com/TamaraToveyPhotography

Now, the book of the week, well, rather a series about Alfie and Annie Rose by Shirley Hughes. The illustrations are fantastic and so recognizable - showing real life of a family with two little children. So the life is not perfect - with the toys everywhere, with the craziness of trying to do shopping with young children, wet feet from puddle jumping, messy and muddy things, even a burst pipe! But it's a happy life, full of kind deeds, with cute little things that are important to children.The bond between siblings in the books especially resonates with me, because watching my own girls always puts a smile of my face. 
One of the books out of series - "Alfie gets in First" by Shirley Hughes.

This book is about something that happens to me almost every time we come home. My little girl shuts the door from inside and thinks it's very funny. I always make sure I have my keys safely in my jeans pocket unlike Alfie's mum who left her keys in the basket with the shopping inside the house and went out to carry the pushchair in.  So the book is about trying to get an upset Alfie to open the door, while his mum is trying to find a way to get inside the house with the help of their neighbours.

So far we have read "Alfie and the big boys", "An evening at Alfie's", "Alfie's feet", "Alfie gives a hand", "Alfie wins a prize", "Alfie and the birthday surprise", "Annie Rose is my little sister". My favourite thing is take the books as we find them in the library. There is something about going through the shelves and then finding a familiar author or book. I love when books are very recognizable, when the illustrations style is so stong and this set is definitely one of those.

Book club: week 3

For this week I have decided to feature  "You choose" by Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt.

We "read" this book about 2-3 times a week. Which is a lot, considering our own collection and regular trips to the library. Sometimes I see my girls "read" it on their own. It's not really a "reading" book,  not a story as such. You are creating a story about you! It's a great to start conversations and discussions and great for vocabulary building. It's about everything - favourite food, clothes, shoes, hats, jobs, pets, houses, places to go and so much more. We when have just received it with our Book Start treasure chest, my 4 year old insisted on bringing this book to all our activitites so that she can read it with everyone. She was very interested to see what they chose and why.
I love the happy illustrations - bright and colourful - every page has lots of different options. I love how you can either just quickly choose something or pause and discuss in depth, with every page inviting a new conversation. So, you can choose a house, but you can also expand and discuss why do you like this house, who would live there. A great spread about jobs, hobbies, food... So much to learn!
Don't forget - you are very welcome to recommend your favourites, I would love to learn about new books!

Book club week 2

For my second book I have decided to go with our very recent favourite: "Where the wild things are" by Maurice Sendak.

One of very talented photographers I know through one of photography groups shared photographs of her son in a costume. I have never heard of this book before and seeing the photographs made me want to read it.

Here is the link, please have a look, the photographs are amazing: http://julieanneimages.com/blog/thank-you-mr-sendak/
So, a couple of weeks ago as we were looking through the books at the library, I have spotted it! I was so excited and took the book, thinking it's just for me. Lucy was curious about the book and asked me to read it. To my surprise, she loved it. She asked to keep it a bit longer and we didn't return it with the rest of the books we took out that day, which means a lot. I found the book fascinating, but thought it's one of the children's books that really is mostly for adults. But obviously, the trick is that everybody loves it on different levels.
I am sure it's not the only fantastic book I wasn't aware about, so if you have any great books for children, please feel free to either recommend them in comments or send me an e-mail: tamara@tphotography.co.uk 

Do you enjoy reading your children's books as much as they do?

Introducing a new weekly feature! Something that has been on my mind for a while, and although it's still the work in progress and not perfect, I thought I would start. The biggest part of my identity is being a mum, and I wanted to also share some of the things that are important to me outside the camera :) We love books, books are a big part of our daily routine. So, here is a start of a weekly book feature.

One thing I'm very curious about is how do you choose the books you read to your children?

Some of our books are in Russian, sent to us by my mum, my friends and what I bought during our visits. Some of the books in English were given as gifts and some books I have bought.
But most of the books we read are from the library. We often take out 10-15 books at once. Our local library is in a leisure centre where we have swimming lessons and we always stop by the library after the lesson. Also, our library runs the most fantastic rhyme time and story time so we are visiting it at least a couple of times a week. We browse through the shelves and look for something that looks interesting. We also look for the familiar authors/illustrators and series. I thought I would share with you some of our favourites.

So... Book club week 1 (can anyone help out with a better name for it?)
I want to start off with Emma Chichester Clark's "Melrose and Croc" books. After we extended them in our library numerous amount of times and collected most of them I thought it's about time other children have a chance to read them and bought the books.

Lucy loves the nice stories, Klara just likes the crocodile and the dog and I absolutely adore the illustrations. Emma Chicherster Clark's style is so recongizable, she created this perfect world. - vintage, cute, bright... Reading the books to my girls is a visual feast for me! The stories are short and very kind, about friendship and happy things.

I won't be describing all the individual books, but here is one of them. This book should be very timely right now, seeing it's the middle of "summer" and all (sigh):

Books about Melrose and Croc:

Friends for life
Beside the sea
Find a smile
Go to town
Together at Christmas
A hero's birthday

I have a list of books I would love to share with you, but I also would LOVE to hear from you all - what do you read to your children, how do you find new books, or what are our old favourites, maybe from your own childhood?