Books featuring animals and “some creatures” as main characters are well loved and well received by the children of this home. If you have been reading this blog, you know that the top favorites include Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. So when a Moms Meet package showed up in my mailbox containing four animal books featuring two dogs and a cat who “wrote” about their newfound lives with their new human friends, I immediately handed them over to my two-year-old twins, Nicholas and Antoinette.
Published by Studio Fun International, a Reader’s Digest Company, these four books highlighted the stories of McKinley, Picasso, Daisy, and Nibbles, who shared their adventures with their best human friends. McKinley and Picasso are dogs, Daisy is a cat, while Nibbles is a guinea pig. Except for Nibbles, the three came from an animal shelter before they were adopted by their new families.
The subjects of animal shelter and adoption may be tough to explain to children. I still couldn’t find a better way to explain that to my children – which is quite a surprise because I am the ultimate “story maker” and can almost always explain any phenomenon using my voice, my eyes, and sp4ingkiling some pixie dust. My children are growing up in a place where dogs are considered as family members so it is quite a challenge to explain to them how come some dogs are placed in shelters waiting for families to adopt them and take them home.
Studio Fun International, who partnered with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), gave me ideas on how to explain this seemingly difficult subjects.
Called the ASPCA Kids: Rescue Readers book series, the four books feature adorable and heartwarming stories between human beings and animals told from the perspective of our furry friends.
Each story is inspired by a real-life animal rescue story and features the inspiration behind each story on a page found towards the end of the book. Each story emphasizes the importance of care, protection, and love of animals with a focus on a joyous outcome. Each book creates a fun and educational hands-on experience written at a Level 2 reading level for early readers.
Included in this book is a Letter to Parents, a guide for parents, to help them explain the connection of the story to real-life inspiration and the ASPCA’s mission . Pre-reading, during reading, and post reading activities are crucial in developing a love for reading and a deeper understanding of the messages and values that the storybooks would like to impart.
The books were written by Lori C. Froeb, who told the stories in an upbeat and happy manner. The illustrators – Tammie Lyon (Nibbles), Miki Sakamoto (McKinley), Violet Lemay (Daisy), and Deborah Melmon (Picasso) – did a superb job in spreading colors in all pages and in my children’s world. Antoinette, our resident artist, loves the Picasso story very much she decided to continue her hobby of coloring walls. These days I am always on my knees scrubbing candle wax off the walls so the house doesn’t look like a giant coloring book.
Why the Picasso story? Probably because of the colors.
We brought the books in our recent family road trip from Kalispell to Helena (the state capital of Montana) and they have been helpful in keeping temper tantrums and travel fatigue at bay.
P.S. These books are available in paperback, library binding hardcovers, and e-books. The paperback books are priced at $3.99 (each) or $15.96 (for all four) everywhere books are sold. Four to five percent of the purchase price of every book goes directly to the ASPCA to help continue its mission.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product for free from the sponsor of the Moms Meet program, May Media Group LLC, who received it directly from the manufacturer. As a Moms Meet blogger, I agree to use this product and post my opinion on my blog. My opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of May Media Group LLC or the manufacturer of this product. Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
