book bonanza – just rewards

Feb 10, 2010

The full title of this book is Just Rewards or Who Is That Man in the Moon and What’s He Doing Up There Anyway?, but that is too long to put up there in the title of my post, don’t ya think?

This has been one of our favorites for years. We first heard it at storytime at the Treehouse Children’s Museum in Ogden, UT back in the days when we were frequent visitors to that magical place. The storyteller was fabulous – his voice was dramatic and brought the characters to life. The illustrations are soft and folksy; they speak volumes and aren’t in the way of the story at all. We immediately came home and started checking it out from the library. We have checked it out over and over again. We shared it with our favorite Childrens Librarian so she could use it in her storytime.

One word of caution: this book begs to be told with a very kind voice and a very greedy voice. Children will love the different voices you come up with and will want you to read it repeatedly with the same voices, so choose a voice you can duplicate for the next twenty years or so.

The story teaches the consequences of our behavior in a funny and outrageous way so that the lesson sinks in enough to get children thinking, but not in a way that encourages shame or self-punishing thoughts by the child. Go find it at your local library and you may have to buy it just like we eventually did…

Today our very own copy came in the mail! I found a great used copy for .01 from a goodwill store in Connecticut and after paying 3.99 in shipping, it was mailed to us lickety-split.