Bob Shea
by Stacey
How did I miss this guy? Bob Shea is my new favorite author and now that I’ve found him, he’s showing up all over the place. He has a funny clip going around on Facebook and one of my favorite kidlit bloggers, Jules of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, not only wrote about him this weekend but hosted a session with him at The Southern Festival of Books.
Katherine checked out Oh, Daddy! from the school library on Friday leading to a weekend full of Bob Shea fun. I had passed on Shea’s books like Dinosaur vs. Bedtime and Dinosaur vs. the Potty thinking they would be too young for the girls. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong. The stories are just the right type of funny for Katherine and they are Read Together Books!
Each time I read (and there were many requests for ‘One more time!’), Katherine became more familiar with the repetitive lines in the story and after a few readings she was taking over the parts that became ‘hers.’ And with each reading, more and more parts became ‘hers.’ Now she asks to read Oh, Daddy! all by herself. While she still can’t tackle all the text, as is often the case with Read Together Books, her understanding of many of the words multiplied significantly with each reading and she has a great sense of accomplishment.
Today I went to our public library and checked out all the Shea books I could find. Tonight we have Big Plans to tackle a Dinosaur. I think we are going to win… ROAR!
I *still* haven’t seen Oh Daddy! Must. find.
stacey — i just have to tell you — i don’t get this guy. your recs have always been spot-on up until now; i immediately request whatever title and/or author you mention in your blog from the library and am always so glad when the books come in. but i went to pick up like 4 of his books and thumbed through them and was actually convinced i’d written down the wrong name. there didn’t seem to be any plot, or character development, or story … am i missing something? unfortunately i dropped them back into the ‘to be shelved” bin and left. maybe these are geared to a younger age group than a 5- year old?
So interesting… As we often say, “That’s what makes the world go round!”, right? So certainly no pressure to like everything I recommend but… Just my thoughts… I thought at first too that the books were more geared to younger kids but when I sat and read them with Katherine I realized that they really were more broad. There really is a plot which is quite interesting given the scarcity of words… And even character development. The other thing to consider is that not all books need plot and character developmental depending on your goal in reading them. Let’s keep this conversation going- I like it!!