“In the Town All Year ‘Round” by Rotraut Susanne Berner and "Pomelo Begins to Grow" by Ramona Badescu and Benjamin Chaud
Welcome to Curious G’s Book Club, where we will highlight new books every week. We will also include a fun activity or two, which you can try with your curious little ones, based on the elements of the books. This week, we are reading “In the Town All Year ‘Round” by Rotraut Susanne Berner and "Pomelo Begins to Grow" by Ramona Badescu and Benjamin Chaud
After reading this book to your little ones a few times, they will most likely enjoy “reading” it to themselves as they follow a cast of diverse characters around a charming town as the seasons change. Each season starts with an introduction to some of the people that live in the town, as well as a preview of what’s to come for each person. Then each season follows these characters through a farm scene, a train station, a cultural hub with a museum and school, a town square, a department store, and a beautiful park. Curious G loves to look for each character throughout the changing scenery, and to note the differences and similarities in town from season to season.
After reading this book, you can start over and play a comprehensive game of “I Spy with my little eye” with each page. There are truly so many things to point out! You can even take a bus/train ride, go to a local park or shopping mall and try to spot and tally specific things that can also be found in the book. For example, you can count the people wearing hats, people on bicycles, people reading books, people with musical instruments, people walking dogs, etc. If you don’t want your kids gratuitously pointing at people, you can choose inanimate objects or animals.
We just checked this out from the library today, and it’s already in my Amazon shopping cart. Pomelo is an enthusiastic little pink elephant that is thrilled when he realizes that he is growing. He starts to wonder about the whole process of growing; what happens physically, what happens mentally, how his growth relates to the world around him, what will he be able to do and learn as he grows, and how he will feel along the way. His musings are both poignant, relatable, and easy for kids to understand and enjoy.
