Rattletrap Car: A Great Summer Read-Aloud

Here’s a terrific summertime read-aloud for young children. It was a favorite in my elementary school library. Rattletrap Car is a good book for introducing children to onomatopoeia and for predicting skills. The book has rhythmic refrains and words that are fun to say. I always encouraged children in the library to participate in the telling of the story when I read it to them. (See below.)

RATTLETRAP CAR
Written by Phyllis Root
Illustrated by Jill Barton
Candlewick Press, 2001

The Characters: Poppa and his three children--Junie, Jakie, and “the baby”

The Story: It’s a hot hot hot summer day. Junie, Jakie, and the baby want to go to the lake to cool off. Father is concerned that they might not make it to the lake in his “rattletrap” car. As Poppa says, “It doesn’t go fast and it doesn’t go far.” But the children insist…so Poppa decides to give it a try. The family packs up everything they want to take along for their outing at the lake:

• Dad packs a thermos full of razzleberry dazzleberry snazzleberry fizz and a tub of chocolate marshmallow fudge delight.
• Junie takes her beach ball.
• Jakie takes his surfboard.
• The baby takes her three-speed, wind-up, paddle-wheel boat.
  

Little do the characters know that they will need everything they’re taking with them even before they reach the lake.

Once everyone is in the car, Poppa turns the key…

brum brum brum brum
Clinkety clankety
bing bang pop!

AND

They were off to the lake
In their rattletrap car.
They didn’t go fast and
They didn’t go far when

Boomsssssssss

The tire went flat.

Oh my goodness! What are they going to do? Junie knows. She gets her beach ball and sticks it onto the car in place of the flat tire with some of the chocolate marshmallow fudge delight.

The family sets off again on the trip to the lake…but...

whumpety whomp!
The floor fell off.

No problem! Jakie takes his surfboard and sticks it to the underside of the car with…what else?...chocolate marshmallow fudge delight.

With a
Wappity bappity
lumpety bumpety
clinkety clankety
bing bang pop!

They are off to the lake once more. Then the gas tank falls off. Not to worry. Dad attaches the thermos of razzleberry dazzleberry snazzleberry fizz to the rear of the car--with chocolate marshmallow fudge delight--and the family is back on the road. But when the engine falls out, it seems their hopes of ever getting to the lake are dashed. Jakie, Junie, even Poppa don’t have a clue what to do to get the car running again. That’s when the baby shakes her three-speed, wind-up, paddle-wheel boat and cries, “Go, go, go.”

Junie, Jakie, and Poppa get to work putting the baby’s boat in place of the fallen engine. Then Poppa turns the key and the car starts up. Sure enough…the family makes it to the beach in their "rattletrap car." They splash in the water and stay cool all day long…till the moon comes up and they get into the car and go…

flippita fluppita
fizzelly sizzelly
wappity bappity
lumpety bumpety
clinkety clankety
bing bang
pop!

all the way back home.


Library/Classroom Suggestions

1. Prior to reading the book aloud, print the words below on large chart paper. Point to the words as you read them aloud to children. Do this a few times until children know the words. Then encourage them to join you in saying the words when they are repeated several times in the book…along with the addition of a new line (two words) each time the family fixes a "rattletrap car" problem and sets off on the road again.

lumpety bumpety
clinkety clankety
bing bang
pop!

2. Tell children to listen carefully as you read to them all the things the family took with them to the beach. Tell them it will be important to remember what they brought along.

3. When the family experiences their first problem--the flat tire--ask children what item the family brought along that they might be able to use in place of the tire? Do the same with the car floor, gas tank, and engine.

My students loved saying words like razzleberry dazzleberry snazzleberry fizz and those listed above and repeating the refrains with me as I read Rattletrap Car aloud. I got lots of requests for this book after I shared it in the library.

Lesson Idea
A Lesson from Writing Fix: An Onomatopoetic Field Trip (using onomatopoeia to tell the story of an imaginary field trip)

Art by Jill Barton
Images of some illustrations done by Jill Barton for Rattletrap Car and other picture books.

Three More Books Illustrated by Jill Barton

Picture Book Review: The Three Bears' Halloween

THE THREE BEARS’ HALLOWEEN
Written by Kathy Duval
Illustrated by Paul Meisel
Holiday House, 2007

The Three Bears’ Halloween is a great new book to read aloud to very young children at this time of the year. It’s not too spooky—but it provides the right amount of Halloween atmosphere for little listeners.

The story begins as Papa, Mama, and Baby Bear are putting on their Halloween costumes. Then off they go into the night. Baby Bear can’t wait to start trick-or-treating. Boo! He yells down into a hole—and a squirrel gives him nuts. Boo! Boo! He shouts into a bush—and bees give him some honey. Boo! Boo! Boo! He calls up into a tree—and birds drop berries into his bag. Baby Bear thinks he’s pretty scary stuff!

Next, the three bears come upon a house that looks mighty spooky. There are gravestones lining the walk to the front stairs. There are cobwebs and bats hanging from the roof of the porch. Shutters hang askew. A skeleton is stationed at the door. And what’s that poking out from a small evergreen tree that the bears don’t see? A black peaked hat! Whose could it be???

Baby Bear knocks on the front door and cries, “Trick or treat!” The door CREEEAKS open. Just as the three bears enter the house, they hear someone laughing loudly: TEE-HEE-HEE! Who could it be?

Once inside the kitchen the bears find three yummy popcorn spiders. Papa and Mama nibble on the licorice legs. Baby Bear wolfs down a whole tasty arachnid! TEE-HEE-HEE! They hear that laugh again and spy someone peeking in the window—“someone with a scary broom!” The bears are frightened. They run into the living room to hide behind a sofa. Baby trips over a chair and breaks “it to bits.”

The door CREEEAKS open again. The bears see the shadow of someone entering the kitchen...and it looks like someone “with a big, scary nose.” The bears head upstairs, jump into bed, and pull the covers over their heads.

TEE-HEE-HEE! Someone is creeping up the stairs after them! Baby Bear peeks out from under the covers and sees a BIG, BAD WITCH!!! Yikes! The three bears leap out of bed, scurry down the stairs, and run out the door. The last illustration shows the bears hurrying out through the gate. In the foreground, we see a young girl with golden hair who's pulled off her peaked hat and long green nose. She's smiling and wishing the hairy intruders a Happy Halloween!!! Who could she be?

Duval’s brief text, which echoes the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, should be familiar to many young children. The author adheres to the traditional sets of threes often found in folktales: each of the three bears dons a costume; Baby Bear trick-or-treats at three different places; the bears eat food, break a chair, and jump into bed in someone else’s house. This book has a fine format for a picture book for little listeners.

Meisel’s art is an excellent complement for this not-too-scary Halloween tale. The bears don’t look ferocious, the illustrations aren’t too dark—and although the pictures are uncluttered, some include droll little details--like the squirrel dressed up in a Superman costume, a little mouse wearing clothes that appears to be following the bears, and three stuffed bears displayed on the bedroom bureau.

I highly recommend adding The Three Bears’ Halloween to a list of books suggested for reading aloud to children in preschool and kindergarten at Halloween.

Great Halloween Read-Alouds for Little Listeners

I used to have a great time sharing Halloween tales in my library during the month of October. I’d turn off the overhead lights, switch on my electric jack-o-lanterns, let the children settle into the right mood, and start reading.

Here are the titles of some books in verse that are just right for reading to little listeners at this time of the year.

IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE
Written by Eve Bunting
Illustrated by Susan Meddaugh
Clarion, 1990

Here’s how Bunting’s book begins:

This is the house where scary ones hide.
Open this door and step softly inside.

And what do readers find inside the haunted house?
An organ playing music but no one is there fingering the keys. There are ghosts and witches and bats hanging from an old chandelier. There’s a mummy lying on a bed and a skeleton rattling his bones in a closet. To be sure, there are plenty of scary things in this haunted house which has been all decked out for Halloween with the capable hands of illustrator Susan Meddaugh.

SCARY, SCARY HALLOWEEN
Written by Eve Bunting
Illustrated by Jan Brett
Clarion, 1986

In this Halloween oldie that is still in print, Jan Brett used a dark, and sometimes stark black background, to set the “scary” tone for this rhyming book. In the first two-page spread, we see two large green and black cat’s eyes staring out at us from the darkness.

Here are the beginning lines of this book:

I peer outside, there’s something there
That makes me shiver, spikes my hair.
It must be Halloween.

A skeleton with bones so white
They gleam and glimmer in the night,
Has come for Halloween.

Then we come upon a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf, two witches, goblins and gremlins, a devil, and a mummy—all the creatures kids would expect to hear about in a Halloween story. Of course, they really aren’t witches and frightening creatures—they’re just trick-or-treaters enjoying a scary night out.

PUMPKIN EYE
Written & Illustrated by Denise Fleming
Henry Holt, 2001

Fleming has created a visually stunning book for Halloween. Everything In Pumpkin Eye is set against a dark background that fills up each two-page spread. There are no white borders or colored frames. Children really get drawn into the nighttime setting of this brief Halloween tale that I often read aloud two or three times to each preschool class. My students often left the library chanting some of the lines from the book:

Trick or treat—
pounding feet,
eerie shadows
fill the street.

Swooping bats,
hissing cats…
tattered rags,
toothless hags,
pointed tails,
blood-red nails.

Trick or treat—
pounding feet,
wretched witches
roam the street.

Pumpkin Eye is one great book to read aloud to young children. Kids love the rhyming verses and the illustrations!

JUNGLE HALLOWEEN
Written & Illustrated by Maryann Cocca-Leffler
Albert Whitman, 2000

This book is about jungle animals making preparations for and then enjoying themselves at a fun-filled Halloween party at which…

They sing and dance
in jungle beat
and eat and eat
and eat and EAT!

Jungle Candy
Jungle Cake
Jungle Ice Cream
Wooo!
Jungle Ache!

After their jungle celebration, the tired animals all head off to sleep. The palette of bright colors Cocca-Leffler used for this book is fitting for a festive occasion like this party. Jungle Halloween is one Halloween tale sure not to send shivers up a young child’s spine.

OH NO, NOT GHOSTS!
Written by Richard Michelson
Illustrated by Adam McCauley
Harcourt, 2006

In this adaptation of Michelson earlier book Did You Say Ghosts?, the setting is nighttime in the bedroom of a young brother and his sister. They’re trying to be quiet so they don’t wake up their father. They hear a sound. What could it be?

The brother reassures his sister that it’s not a ghost.

His little sister says:
Ghosts? Oh no, not ghosts!

The brother answers:
SHUSH!
There’s no such thing as ghosts.
I guarantee it…well, almost.

Besides, if one sneaked up on you
And tried to scare you with a BOO,

I’d dress up like a werewolf,
Roooooooooooooar!
And scare that ghost right through the door.

At the mention of werewolves, the little sister’s thoughts turn to those monstrous creatures.

And so it goes…from werewolves to giants, from giants to demons—and then to witches, black cats, skeletons…and finally to a hairy, double-scary creature, which appears in the next to last illustration as a tall shadow in the doorway. Who…or what…is this being? Why, it’s none other than their father--whom they evidently woke up with all their talk about scary things that go bump in the night.

Adam McCauley’s mixed media illustrations provide the right amount of spookiness with touches of humor. He transforms the children’s bedroom into a scary land of their imaginings. This new version of Michelson’s Did You Say Ghosts? is likely to be a hit with children.

ONE WITCH
Written Laura Leuck
Illustrated by S. D. Schindler
Walker & Company, 2003

This is a fine counting book to read to preschoolers at Halloween time. In this book,

One witch
on a hill
had an empty pot
to fill.

The witch visits her friends—two cats, three scarecrows, four goblins, five vampires, six mummies, seven owls, eight ghosts, nine skeletons, and ten werewolves. They all provide her with such ghastly ingredients as slimy slugs, a musty moth, fresh blood juice, and a rattlesnake—just the right fixings for a gruesome brew, which she cooks up in her pot. The witch sends her trusty bats off with invitations to ten werewolves/in their caves/nine skeletons in their graves, etc. , to all her friends who contributed the gross ingredients of her party brew.

What did all
her good friends do?

They came and ate
that gruesome brew.

(Everybody
loved it too!)
They saved the last bowl
just for…

YOU!

Schindler’s watercolor illustrations are just ghoulish enough to entice young children to emit happy shrieks of fear and excitement while listening to a parent, teacher, or librarian read this winning counting book aloud.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Whimsy Books this week.

Great Read-alouds for Little Listeners: NIBBLE NIBBLE

I guess most of us in the kidlitosphere are well versed in the books of Margaret Wise Brown—especially GOODNIGHT MOON, THE RUNAWAY BUNNY, and THE IMPORTANT BOOK.

Today I’d like to talk about a book of poetry Brown wrote entitled NIBBLE NIBBLE. The original edition, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, was published in 1959. The book was reissued in 1998.

NIBBLE NIBBLE

Written by Margaret Wise Brown

Paintings by Wendell Minor

HarperCollins

2007

Now...along comes another edition of NIBBLE NIBBLE illustrated by Wendell Minor—and it is absolutely lovely! It includes just five of the poems from the original book: Song of the Bunnies, Nibble Nibble Nibble, The Rabbit Skip, Song of Summer, and Cadence. These poems are perfect for sharing with a little someone you love: They have an abundance of rhythm and refrains—and rhymes aplenty. The book’s large font and uncluttered art let the poems breathe on the pages and Minor’s illustrations definitely enhance and bring new life to Brown’s text.


From SONG OF SUMMER

Here comes a bunny
The first to stray
Out of April
And into May.

The illustration that accompanies this first stanza and the second stanza of Song of Summer is set against a white background. The two-page spread of a bunny looking at a robin in flight with its wings outspread above a garden of bright pink tulips is perfect in its simplicity. The next two-page spread, which illustrates the last two stanzas of the poem, takes us into a dreamy summer evening and a deepening blue sky alight with glowing fireflies. Here we see a bunny from the back as it gazes out over a meadow of timothy grass and Brown-eyed Susans while the lightning bugs float in the sky like little falling stars.

Here are the fireflies
Last to remember
The end of August
And first of September.

There’s also a close-up of a milkweed plant with a monarch caterpillar creeping along on one leaf and a monarch chrysalis hanging from another.

And here comes a caterpillar
The last to creep
Out of summer
And into sleep.


One great feature of this book is the use of different colors of text in three of the poems.

Here’s an example from NIBBLE NIBBLE NIBBLE:

Nibble Nibble Nibble
Goes the mouse in my heart
Nibble Nibble Nibble
Goes the mouse in my heart
Nibble Nibble Nibble
Goes the mouse in my heart
And the mouse in my heart is
You.

The different colors make these poems perfect for reading/reciting in two voices—those of a parent and a child. A parent could teach his/her child the words that are printed in pink (Hop Skip Jump) or blue (Flippity Flippity Flop) or orange (Zoom Zoom Zoom). After a time, the parent and child could take turns reading/reciting their parts of the poems while snuggled on a chair or cuddled on a bed before lights out. What could be better than sharing a book like this—a book with poems and pictures that a young child will, no doubt, want to return to again and again?

Wendell Minor’s bunnies, mice, and the fox in NIBBLE NIBBLE are adorable, charming, sweet—and realistic. His are not cutesy cartoon-style art animals. I am a big fan of Minor’s art—and I think this is one of his best-illustrated books to date! From beginning to end NIBBLE NIBBLE is one great book to look at and to read aloud to—and with—little listeners.

Recommendations: NIBBLE NIBBLE is a wonderful book to give to the parents of a newborn. It would also make a fine gift for Easter giving.