Tag Claire Potter

It’s Time For Bed

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All Aboard the Bedtime Bus
Karl Newson and Tim Budgen
Little Tiger

The queue for a special bus is long, so don’t delay:don those pjs and get ready to come aboard with a host of other sleepy heads. Dreamland awaits; here come the passengers singing their yawns away on a magical journey from one stop to the next till they finally reach Slumber Land with teeth already brushed and bedtime stories read.
An enchanting combination of Karl’s lulling rhyming text with its repeat refrains and Tim Budgen’s playful scenes of the dreamy journey that’s just right for getting human toddlers ready for bed and sending them calmly off to sleep.

Monsters At Bedtime
Laura Baker and Nina Dzyvulska
Happy Yak

The fourth in the Monsters series is a really fun pre bedtime read. In Laura Baker’s rhyming text and bold bright illustrations we follow the funky, mischievous monsters through their end of day, eventually somewhat sleepy, routine. (So glad I’m not the large story sharer shown in Nina Dzyvulska’s reading scene. Even wearing my teacher’s eyes everywhere hat, I think I’d miss some of the monster mischief going on there.)
Don’t be surprised if your own little human monster wants to spend a long time poring over every spread, relishing all the mischief as well as searching for the bat monster lurking in each vibrant illustration.

Also on the bedtime theme is:

Five Steps to Bed
Claire Potter and Ailie Busby
Bloomsbury Education

Two young children describe the transition from their mother-annoying bedtime preparations to her thoughtful ruse of asking her offspring to help improve the evening situation before it gets out of hand. The children decide the steps they need and illustrate each with a picture. The pictures are then ordered and used to create a routine comprising bath (what kind would they choose), followed in turn by toothpaste, pyjamas, bed and finally, dream – what weird wonderful one would they want.
Young listeners can, having heard the story, help create their own bedtime routine.

Which Food Will You Choose?

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Which Food Will You Choose?
Claire Potter and Ailie Busby
Bloomsbury Education (Featherstone)

When Mum opens up the fridge one Monday and sees nothing but beige food items she decides to take the two small narrators straight off to the supermarket to find something more enticing, telling them they’re going to play a game. “But we can’t play games in the supermarket” comes their immediate response.
On arrival she invites her little ones to choose three foods but they have to be red.

Off they go selecting pepperoni, watermelon and a tin of tomato soup. ‘Which three of these RED foods would YOU choose?’ asks the author.

Back home they use the pepperoni as topping for the pizzas they make, chomp into slices of the watermelon (planting the seeds afterwards) and put the soup in a flask to drink when they visit the park .
The narrative then asks, ‘What would YOU do with the three red foods you chose?

A similar thing happens on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with the children being asked select in turn three yellow, green, orange

and then purple foods.

Come Saturday Mum is caught beige-handed,

so on Sunday the children take things into their own hands …

This is a fun, non-judgemental approach to ‘picky eating’ that should definitely encourage youngsters to try some new foods and Claire Potter, the author includes two sets of notes to help adult sharers to ‘get the most out of ‘ the book.

To add to the enjoyment of the text, she uses some playful alliterative descriptions such as “Gorgeous, glorious, groovy green “ and ‘gazillions of green foods’ and ‘Zingy, zesty, zippy orange !’ … ‘oodles of orange foods’. and adults might like to extend the word play by asking youngsters to make up their own alliterative phrases for others of the foods labelled in Ailie Busby’s enticing spreads. The brother and sister certainly appear to be making the most out of their choices – its good to see wonky carrots and using the celery leaves to feed the rabbit – no food taste there.

There’s a wealth of potential between the covers of this little book, not only for – parents/carers but for foundation stage teachers too.