Top 20 Read-a-Loud Countdown: #5 and #6

5.  Go Away Big Green Monster, written and illustrated by Ed Emberley.  This brilliantly conceived and designed showstopper has been on my storytime heavy rotation list for years.  It's often my grand finale, one that ends things on a high note.  I wrote about this on my blog before; I simply cannot stop singing its praises.  A slightly scary green monster comes together with each flip of the page.  Squiggly ears, scraggly purple hair, and a big green face.   But then Emberley has the kids chant in unison, "YOU DON'T SCARE ME" and together we tell each part of the face to go away.  And with a flip of the page, the scraggly purple hair is gone, and so is the long bluish-greenish nose and so on.  And in a final inspirational blast of kid empowerment, the kids tell the monster to "don't come back..."until I say so."  And this perfect final line invites shouts of "read it again" and re-reads.  It's simply storytime gold.

6.  An Eric Carle double feature:  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, written by Bill Martin, Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle; and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, written and illustrated by Eric Carle.  No preschool storytime list of course should be without a book illustrated by Eric Carle.  For this list, I want to make sure a LOT of authors and illustrators are represented so I was trying to limit each talent to one title.  However, with Carle this proved difficult.  These two perennial classics are both surefire winners, so why not include both?  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? of course is a seemingly simple charmer in which readers ask an animal "what do you see?"  They see another animal looking "at me" and with a flip of the page we see the animal in question.  So a brown bear says a yellow duck is looking at it, and with a flip of page, we see this yellow dark, large on the page, against an uncluttered background.  And so it goes until we reach a great meta moment when the goldfish says "I see a teacher (or mother in some editions) looking at me".  This grown-up then says "I see beautiful children looking at me" and with a turn of the page, we have a bunch of kids looking back at the kids looking at the book.  In a moment that always gets a gasp of "wow", when the kids are asked "what do you see?" we get a final page with ALL of the animals and the teacher (mother).  The book is simply a marvel, one that encourages animal sounds.  I always have the kids count to 3 before I turn to page.  It's like one big game of peek-a-boo...but with blue horses and purple cats.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is also deservedly famous in the preschool world.  A little caterpillar pops out of an egg and starts searching for food.  And boy does he eat and eat and eat.  The story works on so many levels:  as a counting book, an introduction to foods and nutrition, and a look at how caterpillars become butterflies. The book has a nice sense of humor--what he eats on Saturday is absolutely hilarious (a pickle, a lollipop AND a slice of salami???  and a whole bunch of other things???).  Kids also love the ending when they see that the title character emerge as a brand new, beautiful butterfly!