Annotated bibliography guidelines and methodology

¶ … Children's Literature

Picture Books

Allard, Harry and James Marshall. Miss Nelson Is Missing. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Print.

Miss Nelson is a non-threatening instructor whose students take advantage of her gentle personality by misbehaving. One day Miss Nelson disappears and is replaced by an ill-tempered substitute, Miss Viola Swamp, who makes the children appreciate their good-natured teacher. The book is designed for primary and early elementary readers.

Beaumont, Karen. I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! Florida: Harcourt, Inc. 2005. Print.

A little boy has been caught and chastised for decorating his home with a box of paints. His mother takes the paint set away from him and tells him, "Ya ain't gonna paint no more!" He soon reacquires the box of paints and becomes busily engaged in painting himself from head to toe. Preschool children will enjoy this book.

Carle, Eric. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. New York: Collins Publishers. 1979. Print.

A young caterpillar hatches out of an egg and begins a voracious eating journey. The book teaches the days of the week by having the caterpillar eat something different each day. The caterpillar grows, becomes fat, builds a cocoon, and in two weeks it emerges as a butterfly. This book will appeal to preschoolers and early readers.

Cronin, Doreen. Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. 2000. Print.

Farmer Brown's cows and hens find an old typewriter in the barn and start leaving him demands. When they don't get what they want, they go on strike. The book is geared towards a K-2 audience.

Lehman, Barbara. The Red Book. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2004. Print.

This wordless picture book is about a series of characters that interact through the pages of a magical book that has the power to transport them to different places. A young girl in a city finds a book in a snowdrift and rescues it. In the book, she reads about a boy who rescues a red book on a beach. He opens the book and reads about a girl in a city, who is reading about him. The adventure continues until the book is lost and found by a different child, who begins an entirely new adventure. This story is designed for preschool children.

Long, Melinda and David Shannon. How I Became a Pirate. San Diego: Harcourt. 2003. Print.

Jeremy Jacob is spending an innocent day at the beach with his family when he is invited to join a pirate crew. Jeremy agrees as long as he is back in time for soccer practice the next day. He learns pirate language, pirate manners, and sea chanteys and initially thinks that the life of a pirate is great fun, but he soon learns that it isn't all he had hoped for. This story is designed for primary and early elementary level students.

Martin, Rafe. The Shark God. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books. 2001. Print.

In this retelling of an old Hawaiian folktale, two native children save a shark from death when it washes up on the shallows, but they soon offend their king and are sentenced to death, despite the pleas of their parents. In desperation, they call upon the Shark God for help. This book will appeal to primary and early elementary level readers.

O'Connor, Jane. Fancy Nancy. New York: HarperCollins. 2006. Print.

Nancy is a little girl who wants everything to be over the top. She wears frilly clothes, uses elegant language, and even offers lessons in how to be fancy to her parents. One evening she transforms her parents and her little sister for a life on the town. The book is designed for a primary level audience.

Swanson, Susan. The House in the Night. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2008. Print.

A young girl is offered a golden key to a house. A giant bird leads her on a fantastic journey that begins small and is confined within the house but grows and takes on celestial proportions as the repetitive story continues. This book will most appeal to preschoolers and early primary level children.

Weisner, David. Flotsam. New York: Clarion Books. 2006. Print.

A young beachcomber is searching the beach for anything that has washed up when he finds a rare treasure, a Melville underwater camera. He develops the film and as he looks at the pictures, he finds amazing fantastic shots of underwater mechanical fish, civilizations living on the backs of starfish, and most amazingly, a picture of a girl holding a picture of a boy holding a picture, and so on. As he looks through the magnifying class, he discovers that the pictures continue back to the very first pictures ever taken. After taking a picture of himself with the amazing camera, he tosses it back into the water for the next beachcomber to find. This book is designed for a primary audience.

Willems, Mo. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! New York: Hyperion Books for Children. 2003. Print.

The bus driver has to leave his post for a moment, and as he leaves, he instructs the readers not to let the pigeon drive the bus. The pigeon starts out sweetly requesting to drive, and he becomes more and more demanding as the readers tell him no, until finally he begins screaming. The bus driver returns and the pigeon leaves, only to find a tractor trailer where he begins the whole process over again. The book is geared towards preschoolers.

Zelinsky, Paul. Rapunzel. New York: Dutton Children's Books. 1997. Print.

This picture book is a retelling of the story of Rapunzel. Richly illustrated in Renaissance-like artwork, the Caldecott Award book adds a new twist: in this version, Rapunzel is pregnant with the Prince's baby and celebrates a hasty wedding in the tower after he manages the long climb up to the window via her reddish-gold locks. The book is appropriate for early readers and up.