Not at all offended, just wanted to defend my poor Spongebob

I know I definitely check the freebie/discard bin outside our library and have been simultaneously appalled/delighted with my finds! (I mean, do we have to chuck 'Persuasion'????)

I agree completely with how kids can feel like they're in a foreign country in their own classroom/community if they don't have all the latest tv knowledge...for better/worse we've started down the slippery slope and here we are. For our ds it has helped to have more things in common -- but he doesn't have 2 bro's with great senses of humor!!
I love the sense of freedom your boys seem to have in your posts,
something we've tried to cultivate in our ds...showing him how cool it is to really be yourself and I think he gets it, definitely, but it's hard out there in elementary school, so we've accepted his push-back on a lot of the popular stuff.

Many thanks for all the great references in the past and for the one on the H. book!

Well...now you've done it, I've gone off researching the intellectual underpinnings of Spongebob and found:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/how-sponge-bob-works.htm

Interesting to note, I think, the creator is previously an educator in the field of Marine Biology, and then also an animator. Voila, Monsieur Spongebob.
"Hillenburg wanted his lead character to possess similar qualities to famous funny men like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin- both of whom played innocent characters"

My apologies to this thread for going Sooooo far afield from the area of amazing book recommendations. But I figured no way was I gonna start a new thread just for S.B.

Can someone on the board recommend some high quality picture books for younger kids who read at advanced grade level. My DS7 just finished first grade, reading level is about R-S for guided reading or about 5-6th grade. He will read chapter books if they are intensely interesting, but continually requests picture books. He even asked if i could get chapter books tha have illustrations on every page!! (tall order).. My local librarian told us there were lots of picture books designed for older readers but we've only found a few at this point. Patricia Polacco seems like a good fit but the story i picked quickly for him is too mature (deals with Holocaust)..

irene

Irene, here are some that my boys liked:

"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night," Janet & Allan Ahlberg (Puffin, 1994); very witty, story-within-a-story structure. Young Italian boy captured by brigands, spins tall tales to keep the bad guys happy. Pictures every page!

Also by Allan Ahlberg (can't lay my hands on it right now, sorry for the incomplete info) and longer, is "The Better Brown Stories," with an even more sophisticated structure. A storybook family discovers the writer who is telling their story, and asks for revisions, with unpredictable results. Lots of pictures.

We love the illustrator Beth Krommes. "The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish," by Jacqueline Martin (Houghton Mifflin, 2001, 48 pp), is a beautiful and interesting book. It's based on a historical incident; an Inuit family is on a Canadian Arctic Expedition ship in 1913 that gets stuck in the ice for several months. The story of their survival and rescue is well-researched and inspiring. Pictures (gorgeous ones!) on every page.

Another Krommes book, this one with Lise Lunge-Larsen, is "The Hidden Folk: Stories of Fairies, Dwarves, Selkies, and Other Secret Beings" (Houghton Mifflin, 2004, 72 pp). Well-told and beautifully illustrated traditional tales, with a picture on at least every two-page spread.

(Speaking of folklore, you might also try the d'Aulaire Norse and Greek mythology collections--lots of pictures there).

Another classic story you might look for is Kenneth Grahame's "The Reluctant Dragon." Sadly, this is most often seen abridged, but I believe the old edition with the Ernest Shepard illustrations is not abridged. Grahame's prose is challenging.

Do you like poetry? There are some lovely poetry picture books out there, with more fun in the language than you see sometimes in prose for this age. My kids liked, for instance, Charles Causley's "The Tail of the Trinosaur" (Jane Nissen, 2006, about 80 pp, and pictures on every one!), Dennis Webster's and Kim Webster Cunningham's "Absolutely Wild" (David Godine, 2009, about 40 pages, with the most fabulous woodcuts), and David Frampton's "Mr. Ferlinghetti's Poem" (Eerdmans, 2006, more wonderful woodcuts, for which I'm a big sucker!).

Anything there? You might also investigate the Hokusai biography I mentioned on the previous page; also my lads really like Tintin on days when they want stories with lots of pictures.

Hope that helps!

peace
minnie

DS6 loves the Rosco Riley series and has now found Captain Underpants and he loves it...how can you not love attacking toilets with teeth :-) He also loves any of the Roald Dahl books...his favorite movie when he was 4 was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I am thinking about starting him on some of my favorite series (Lion, Witch, Wardrobe...Prince Caspian) and these are way out of his league but was one of my favorite series of books...Madeleine L'Engle's books - A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time....I LOVED her books.

My ds-now-7 read a *lot* of great picture books when he was learning to read -- he taught himself to sight read with picture books. We never did early readers, but he pored over picture books every night!

Some of our favorites:

"Miss Rumphius" by Barbara Cooney:
http://www.amazon.com/Miss-Rumphius-Barb...1685&sr=1-1

"The Three Questions" and "Stone Soup" by Jon J. Muth -- these are fabulous picture books and I can't recommend them highly enough:
http://www.amazon.com/Jon-J-Muth/e/B001H6UCHW/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

"Imagine a Night" by Rob Gonsalves:
http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Night-Rob-...1706&sr=1-1

Shel Siverstein writes wonderful poetry for kids that makes my ds laugh out loud:
http://www.amazon.com/Shel-Silverstein/e/B000AQ15KI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

"The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" by Jon Scieszka:
http://www.amazon.com/True-Story-Three-L...1992&sr=8-1

"Dear Mrs. LaRue" by Mark Teague:
http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Mrs-Larue-Let...2038&sr=1-5

"Scaredy Squirrel" by Melanie Watt (one of ds7's all-time favorites):
http://www.amazon.com/Scaredy-Squirrel-M...2100&sr=1-1

A combo of Captain Underpants and Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins books finally pushed my little guy over the edge, from picture books to chapter books. He also really enjoys (and has re-read many times) the American Girl books -- they're at all not "girly," they just happen to be about girls!

He will read chapter books now (very quickly!), but prefers non-fiction almost any day of the week. Have you tried much non-fiction for your ds?

We've just discovered the Zac Power books - not sure if these are available in stores in the States though (am in Australia). My boys (5 and nearly 7) are desperate for them. Zac is a 12 year old spy who races through 24 hour missions in between schoolwork and chores. His older brother Leon invents the gadgets for GIB (Government Investigation Bureau). The books have a reasonable number of diagrams of the gadgets (lava skis, robot octopus/submarine, personal hologram projector etc) and take about 45 minutes to read out loud. I find them rather too much like read-aloud cartoons, but this seems to be a positive thing in the minds of small boys.

Ooh, or what about Graeme Base? I loved "The Sign of the Seahorse" as a 5th grader -- I have to get that one for ds7!

http://www.amazon.com/Sign-Seahorse-Adve...4181&sr=1-9

A few that DS liked that haven't been mentioned -
Frank Asch's Cardboard Genius series comprised of the following 3 titles:
Star Jumper, Gravity Buster, Time Twister

One he could not put down recently:
Science Fair by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
This book deals with a conspiracy at a gifted school regarding science fair projects and the lengths crazy parents go to ensure that their children succeed.

We've had a big reading week here, as it has been so HOT (well, y'all in Texas or somewhere would laugh at what I call hot, but it has been very very hot for here, anyway, so we've cut back on some of our normal outdoor stuff and read more inside):

Pierre Berton, "The Secret World of Og" (1961; repr. 2002 Doubleday Canada, 160 pp., profusely illustrated in a nice childlike fashion by the author's daughter). Silly, but fun, this is a book written for the author's children, using their names and the names of their pets (Yukon King and Earless Osdick, too funny). Four older children follow their cat and baby brother down a trapdoor into a tunnel under their playhouse, and discover a world of little green men, whose only native word is "Og"; some of the creatures have learned English, though, from picking up comic books and so on left on the lawn or in the playhouse, so they have a limited and comic understanding of humanity. Grade 4ish-5ish reading level, I think.

Beverley Nichols, "The Tree that Sat Down" (first of a trilogy that also includes "The Stream that Stood Still" and "The Mountain of Magic," 1945, currently out of print, but lots of paperbacks from the '70s still available out there, I think). Fairy Tale in the classic mode, with the good people very very good, and the bad 'uns extremely wicked. Miss Judy and her Grannie run a lovely little shop and clinic for animals in the wood on Magic Mountain; bad Sam and bad Old Sam start up a rival shop in an old Ford, where they cheat the animals and try to destroy the competition by recruiting an evil witch named Miss Smith and her three poisonous toads. All turns out well in the end (though even when I was a child, I thought the ending was a bit over the top in a hackneyed sort of a way). The well-drawn characters are probably the strongest feature of the book. For an audience of maybe 6 to 9, say?

Allan Ahlberg, "The Boyhood of Burglar Bill," (Puffin 2008, 180 pp.), the second volume of Ahlberg's memoirs. This is a terrific read, very vividly written--the story of one year (1953) in Ahlberg's childhood, and the scratch team he and his classmates got together to enter in the Coronation Cup football tournament. It's wonderfully funny, with also many poignant moments, and such great writing. (There's a sort of afterword "Part Two" in the last twenty pages or so, that I skipped when reading it aloud to them--a rather cruel prank winds up having tragic consequences for one of Ahlberg's friends, and I didn't think my lads were quite up to that yet.)

David Almond, "My Dad's a Birdman," illustrated by Polly Dunbar (Candlewick, 2008, 120 pages, lots and lots of pictures). For younger readers than Almond's other books (the jacket says 4 to 8, but I think you could go either side of that a year or two). A father, grieving the loss of his wife, decides to enter the Great Human Bird Competition (organised by Mr Poop); he collects feathers, sews wings, makes a nest, eats bugs, and practises "flying". His daughter Lizzie tries to snap him out of it, but in the end, decides that entering the competition together would be kindest. Lizzie's Aunt Doreen and her headmaster, Mr Mortimer Mint, are the other characters, who also undergo changes as the story goes along. Like all of Almond's books, this one is about finding joy in darkness, the power of love, and the importance of imagination. Lovely.

And the best for last, David Almond, "Skellig," (Hodder Children's Books, 1998, Delacorte 1999, 182 pp, jacket says ages 8-12). Michael moves into a new house, but his baby sister is very ill, his parents are upset, and he feels powerless to help. He finds someone living in their ramshackle garage; the only person in whom he can confide about the stranger is his neighbour Mina. I don't want to say too much about this one--it is magical, and you should discover it for yourself--but we found this book to be a treasure. Mina shares her love of William Blake with Michael, and the story reminds one of Blake, I must say, with its hovering air of the spiritual and the very great beauty present throughout. Special.

peace
minnie

We read a fun one yesterday: "The Seventh Expert: An Interactive Medieval Adventure," by Mark Oakley and John Mantha (2008, Annick Press, 96 pp.). We've not read this kind of a book before, but it was quite entertaining.

It's 1368, and your village has been swept away in a storm; with six other community leaders, you relocate the survivors to a new village site, and for seven years, you try to ensure the survival of the community. You expend "effort" points on supplies and infrastructure (there's a catalogue at the end of the book), and respond to various random events, determined by rolling a die. Lots of bad things can happen: weather, bandits, plague, taxes (!), battle...The kids found it a challenge to accumulate enough food and so on to get through a winter in the face of all these trials and tribulations!

The book is well-researched; beside the main story, there are informative sidebars about various aspects of 14th-century life, as well as a brief but useful bibliography. Quite a fun way to learn some history!

The authors field-tested the book on grade 7 and 8 students, but it's eminently usable with younger ones, too.

peace
minnie

PS The game sheets are available at the publisher's website: www.annickpress.com . The Seventh Expert has its own microsite there, where the scoresheet can be found.