Happy Birthday Ruth Krauss

Happy Birthday Ruth Krauss - July 25

One of the benefits of celebrating author birthdays is having a reason to revisit your favorite authors each year. Last night, I found all of our books by Ruth Krauss - A Hole is to Dig, The Happy Day, and The Carrot Seed. During my search of our bookshelves, I also discovered the book, Is This You? that Ruth Krauss published with her husband Crockett Johnson, author and illustrator of Harold the Purple Crayon.

My son selected Is This You? as his choice of book to be read aloud before bed. It is quite a funny little book that is made up of a series of questions -- "Is this your family? Is this? Is this your family? This?" Each question is paired with a silly picture -- melting snowman family, gingerbread cookie family, horses in a pasture, and marching ants. Of course, none of these pictures are pictures of the reader's family. However on the next page, Krauss instructs the reader to draw a picture of their family on a piece of paper. The rest of the book follows the same pattern -- series of questions (Is this where you live? Is this what you eat for breakfast, etc.), silly pictures, and draw a picture. In the end Krauss suggests placing all of the pages in between two more pieces of paper to make a book.

We weren't able to complete the activity at bedtime, but I promised we would work on it today for our Ruth Krauss birthday celebration. Unfortunately, I think this book is out of print, but this is a list of the drawings we made so you can try this activity with your children even if you cannot locate a copy of the book:

1. My Family
2. This is Where I Live
3. My Breakfast
4. My Name is
5. My School
6. My Friend
7. This is What I Want for my Birthday
8. This is How I Go Places
9. This is How I Take a Bath
10. My Bed
11. Me