December Storytime Briefly 2014

This December, I was hoping for a big snow storm so I could have an excuse to share some of my favorite snow books.  But our weather has been unseasonably warm, so I gave up on waiting for snow and read the books anyway.

We talked about snow storms and read

• Big Snow by Jonathan Bean and
• Blizzard by John Rocco

I brought one of my favorite childhood books, Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton to show the kids, and we looked at the map of the city and the picture of the snow-covered city.  We discussed similarities in the pictures of David's town in Big Snow.  The students also enjoyed finding the days of the week in the illustrations for Blizzard.

We talked about the Christmas truce during World War I and read

• Shooting at the Stars: The Christmas Truce of 1914 by John Hendrix

I appreciated the author's note at the end of the story that led to an interesting discussion as we discussed the question many of the students asked: Why didn't the soldiers just make peace if they wanted to stop fighting?