Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer

This book is full of silly talk, but I love that. It's a long poem full of nonsense like
"I wear my shoes inside out and rain makes applesauce, My house goes walking every day and rain makes applesauce. Oh you're just talking silly talk." The large pictures are illustrations of the line of poetry. In the lower right hand corner is a picture of the making of applesauce starting with planting the apple seeds in the rain. By the end of the book they have picked and peeled and cooked the apples and made applesauce.

I first met this book while working as a live-in babysitter long before I had children. I loved it and so did the children I was working with. It is fun for when preschoolers are in that period when they like to play with language. I caution you though, my eldest son thought it was a dumb book even when he was a child. Some people are very down to earth and will not enjoy this at all!

The Bones of Fred McFee

The Bones of Fred McFee is a poem written by Eve Bunting. Fred McFee is a plastic skeleton that the two children in the book have brought back from the Harvest Fair. They hung him up in their sycamore tree and "our skeleton dances the the dance of the dead, there in our sycamore tree." Strange things begin to happen, "our rooster used to crow all day,...now the rooster's gone and the hens won't lay..."

They decide to let Fred McFee stay in the sycamore tree until Halloween. The dog howls the night of Halloween and when the children get up the next day - " The morning's bright and filled with light,but where is Fred McFee?"
The see a rectangular mound in front of the sycamore tree and think they know what it is - but, who put it there?

This book has been requested by lower Elementary children who have heard it the year before. My experience is that it's best to read it first -with no pictures- as a poem, so the children can hear the rhythm. Then having gotten the overview, read it page by page with pictures. Children love this book and so do I.