Favorite Canadian Author for Kids

If you know me at all, you know I LOVE to read, which is why I am very excited to introduce you to my next guest blogger. Renee reviews books with her kids (what an awesome idea!) on her blog Mother Daughter Book Reviews. She's Canadian, of course, and here to introduce us to her favorite Canadian children's author.

I am so thrilled be have been asked by Meghan here at Crazy Casa K to contribute a guest post and her fabulous website. To introduce myself, my name is Renee and I blog over at Mother Daughter Book Reviews with my two kids, Danielle (9 years old) and my son Dominic (almost 6 years old). We read all kinds of children’s books and then share with our readers what we think of them. We also host a number of giveaways giving our followers chances to win some great books. This has been so much fun for us!

I was asked by Meghan to introduce her readers to some of my favorite Canadian authors and books. Without hesitation, I knew exactly which Canadian author I wanted to highlight: Robert Munsch. Ok, technically he was born in the United States, but we Canadians like to claim him as our own because he wrote all of his fabulous books after he moved to Canada. ;-)

Robert Munsch has written over 50 children’s books, often in tandem with the fabulous illustrator Michael Martchenko.  What makes Robert Munsch’s books so delightful is that they were crafted through story-telling.  Each book was conceived after Munsch repeatedly shared the stories with audiences of children refining them with each telling.  Many of the books are based on either Munsch’s own children or children that he has met.  The background of the stories is often shared in the published books as well.

Robert Munsch GETS children.  The stories in the books are mostly so far-fetched that they play to children’s imagination and keep them howling in laughter throughout.  There is plenty of dialogue in the stories allowing parents to use a variety of voices when reading the book.  There are many expressions and sound effects used as well.  For example, in Mmm, Cookies! when the Mom takes a bite of a play clay cookie, it goes like this:

                                                             So she picked up that cookie and took a big bite.

             
                                                             SCRUUUNNNNCH!

                                                             And she yelled, “Yuck!

                                                             PWAH! SPLIGHT!

                                                             PLAY CLAY!

                                                             GLA-GLA-GLA-GLA!”

These books are FUN to read! 

I would like to share with you some of our favorites.  There is a category on Amazon that consists of “Classic Munsch”.  These books are some of Munsch’s earlier works and ones that are the most popular and well-known. Here are our Top Three Classic Munsch Books:

Title: Love you Forever

Year: 1986

Summary: Love You Forever was Number 1 on Our Favorite Children’s Books For Preschoolers 3 to 5 years old. While most of Robert Munsch’s stories are straight-up hilarious, this one also includes the tenderness the mother demonstrates toward her child.  A mother rocks her new born baby boy to sleep singing a tender lullaby.  As each page turns, the little boy grows and grows until he is a man.  All the while the mother continues to sing her beautiful song to him.  I have always made up a song to go with the lyrics and I literally get choked up singing it every time.  With this book, you simply can’t go wrong – it is an all-time favorite. 

Title: Jonathan Cleaned Up -- Then He Heard a Sound or Blackberry Subway Jam

Year: 1981

Summary: Jonathan gets the surprise of his life when he discovers that a new subway station has opened up in his living room. Jonathan finds himself cleaning up after the commuters several times a day until he finally devises a plan to re-route the subway elsewhere.  If I had to choose a book based on the sheer number of times my kids wanted to check it out of the library, it would have to be this book.  This story is one of the more far-fetched ones and my kids just loved it.  You’ll just have to read it to see where the Blackberry Jam comes in!

Title: The Dark

Year: 1997

Summary: Jule Ann sets loose The Dark which pops out of the bottom of the cookie jar.  The Dark is a troublesome pest which swallows up all the shadows in Jule Ann’s house and moves on to swallow up all of the shadows in Jule Ann’s town.  It’s up to Jule Ann to outsmart The Dark and return him to the cookie jar from which he emerged.  I find The Dark to be one of Munsch’s most imaginative books.  We also had the pleasure of seeing a collection of plays based on Robert Munsch’s works and this was one of the stories included in the production.  This book is a riot!

To choose our Top Three books from the non-Classic Munsch collection, we need to go no further than our home’s bookcase.  We have some Robert Munsch books that we felt were so fabulous that we ought to own them!  Here they are:

Title: We Share Everything

Year: 2000

Summary: Amanda and Jeremiah are new to kindergarten and they have so much to learn about sharing.  They quickly learn that the way they deal with conflict with their siblings at home isn’t going to work here in kindergarten.  But, much to their teacher’s dismay, they quickly learn to share EVERYTHING!  This is a Munsch story that is actually not far-fetched.  In fact, it’s the exact opposite – ok, except perhaps slightly exaggerated. This is a great book for children starting out in kindergarten, but hopefully it won’t give them any bad ideas.  ;-)

Title: Mmm, Cookies!

Year: 2000

Summary: What happens when mischievous Christopher discovers a big pile of play clay in his basement?  His mother and father get fooled by his big, beautiful cookie, but his teacher finds a way to outsmart him and gives him a piece of his own ‘cookie’.  This book is by far one of my favorite books to read aloud to the kids because of all of the sound effects in the text.  There are sounds for making cookies:  ‘WHAP, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP’; ‘SWISH, SWISH, SWISH, SWISH, SWISH’; ‘CHIK, CHIK, CHIK, CHIK, CHIK’, etc; and sounds for gagging on the cookie (as described above).  We just love this book because it is a great read-aloud book.

Title: The Sandcastle Contest

Year: 2005

Summary: While on beach vacation with his family, Matthew enters a sandcastle-building contest with the eye-popping prize of a bathtub full of ice cream.  But much to Matthew’s dismay, the judges of the contest only see a REAL house on the beach and demand that Matthew’s house be removed.  But, leave it to Matthew to convince them that his sand house is an official entry into the contest.  Will Michael be the winner of the contest?  I can’t pinpoint what my kids love about this story.  Perhaps it’s simply seeing a kid outsmart some adults or seeing a bathtub full of ice cream, but something plays to their imagination in this story.  We’ve read this book dozens of times and it’s one of their favorites.

Thanks so much for letting me share some of our favorite Robert Munsch Books.  If you haven’t read any, head out to your local library to see if they have any there.  To purchase any of these books on-line, please click on the images of the book covers.  If you’ve read some Robert Munsch books, I’d love to hear back from you about your favorites.  Please leave us a comment here at this post telling us which Robert Munsch books your family loves or hop on over to Mother Daughter Book Reviews and let us know there!