Go To Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing (2008)

I love this book! One night, Lucy could not go to sleep so she got out her crayons and drew a monster. The irrepresible monster was great fun and very energetic and Lucy had her hands full. At long last, she is able to tuck him into bed, read him a story and send him (and herself) off to dreamland. I had such fun reading this with my preschoolers. My original plan was to focus on print awareness : the monster's brief utterances are all highlighted in large letters, and I thought I would write each utterance on my whiteboard as I read it. But a dry run proved to me that that would interrupt the flow of the story. So instead I just read the book through, and then we played "monster says." This was really just "simon says", but I added in a bunch of early lit commands too, referring to the posters on the wall in the storytime room, sort of like this:

Monster says, jump up and down.

Monster says, stop.

Monster says, point to something that rhymes with big.

Monster says, point to something that starts with the /b/ sound.

Monster says, make an L with your body.

Etc, etc. It was really fun. I meant to say something to the parents about how this is a great game for building literacy and print motivation  that you could do anywhere, but I got so carried away with the game that I forgot.

- Brianne Williams