How Many Seeds In a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara

WOW! I love it when I learn something from reading a storybook. This is one of the many things I love about being an elementary librarian. Today I shared a new story with my 1st graders - How Many Seeds In a Pumpkin? Mr. Tiffen's class is going to count the number of seeds inside of three different pumpkins. Mr. Tiffen puts the three pumpkins out where the students can study them - one big pumpkin, one medium pumpkin and one small pumpkin. When he asks the class to guess how many pumpkins seeds they will find inside the pumpkins he gets answers from 1,000,000 to 22. The next day they come to school prepared to open the pumpkins and find out how many seeds are inside. They now have three empty pumpkins and 3 bowls full of seeds. Mr. Tiffen sends the students home with some "thinking homework". He wants them to think how they can count the seeds. That night Mr. Tiffen dried the seeds so they would be easier to count. The next day they come back and have ideas of how to count the seeds, but agree that Molly's idea of counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's is the best way. They organize by groups and decide how they will count their seeds. The big pumpkin group counts by 2's, the medium pumpkin group counts by 5's and the small pumpkin group counts by 10's. Which pumpkin do you think has the most seeds? Did you know that the number of lines on the outside of the pumpkin tells us how many lines of seeds will be in the pumpkin? I did not know that! I also did not know that the longer the pumpkin stays on the vine the darker the color of the pumpkin. This is a great sharing and exploring book. There is also a list of pumpkin facts in the back of the book. Check it out!

Katie Loves Kittens by John Himmelman

Katie is the sweetest dog in the world and she is so excited when her owner, Sara Ann brings home three kittens. Katie thinks they are so cute and wants to play with them so badly. But, she can't stop howling at them which scares them much to the dismay of Sara Ann.

Every time Katie thinks she can control herself, things go wrong. She jumps on the kittens while they are sleeping on the bed, she eats their food, she chases them.... Katie thinks she'll never get it right and she just wants to be close to the kittens. Katie feels so sad.

Open this great story to find out whether or not Katie ever gets it right with the kittens!

We Are in a Book! by Mo Willems

Elephant and Piggie realize that someone is looking at them. Elephant gets worried until Piggie explains it is "the Reader". As the Reader we make Elephant and Piggie crack up. Piggie says he can make the Reader say words, and he says "Banana". When the Reader says "Banana" Elephant falls down laughing. Elephant and Piggie are "in a book!" In their amazement they cannot believe how much fun it is to have the Reader say words that are in their word bubbles.....until they realize that the end of the book is coming soon. They try and figure out how they can make this fun continue forever, they don't want the Reader to get to the end of the book. What will happen? Once again Mo Willems has thrilled our youngest readers, and our librarian, with his illustrations and story.