This year we brought you 70 birthday celebrations of children's authors and illustrators. This brings the total number of birthdays celebrated on the blog to 122!
I want to thank all of my readers for their comments and support. You don't know how wonderful it makes me feel to have someone say, "Hey, I read your latest birthday post!" or to have someone share/retweet my story.
I want to thank my family - My wife for proofreading every one of my posts before they were published. My children for staying enthusiastic about authors and their books -- and for going along with all of Daddy's crazy ideas! My brother-in-law for his many ideas that have helped grow the blog's subscribers.
I want to thank all the local teachers that welcomed me into their classrooms to share author birthday celebrations with their students.
I want to thank all of the authors that responded with birthday memories and stories. Your thoughts really made the birthday celebrations special!
You all made 2011 a great year!
My favorite part about the year's end is all the top ten lists that reflect upon the events of the year. I put together a few top ten lists of my own.
Top Ten Viewed Birthday Celebration Posts in 2011:
1. Kindergartners Celebrate Leo Lionni's Birthday - May 5 - Making collage mice
2. Happy Birthday Mo Willems - February 11 - Elephant and Piggie skit
3. Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss - March 2 - Oobleck
4. Happy Birthday Dav Pilkey - March 4 - Flip-o-Ramas
5. Happy Birthday Anita Silvey - September 3 - Great Grandma and Grandpa's Favorite Childhood book.
6. Happy Birthday Steve Light - March 19 - Truck Tire Painting
7. Happy Birthday David Weisner - February 5 - Post-its for Wordless Books
8. Happy Birthday Tom Lichtenheld - June 14 - Cloudette Rain Barrel Painting
9. Happy Birthday Beverly Cleary - April 12 - Dear Mr. Henshaw Activity Sheets
10T. Happy Birthday Eric Carle - June 25 - Where's My Hat?
10T. Happy Birthday Sandra Boynton - April 3 - Cows!
This year, we participated in the Picture Book Reading Challenge hosted by There's a Book at our house. We set our goal to read 200 picture books. We read a total of 944! (Check out the list of books we read -- with a little commentary about each). I would like to thank Danielle of There's a Book for organizing and hosting this reading challenge. It inspired me to capture of whole year of reading with my children.
The Top Authors of our Reading Challenge Experience in 2011:
1. Mo Willems - 23 unique books read
2. James Marshall - 17
3. Mercer Mayer - 16
4. Rosemary Wells - 15
5. Cynthia Rylant - 14
6. Jon Scieszka - 14
7. Lane Smith - 14
8. Tomie dePaola - 13
9. William Steig - 12
10. Barbara Joosse - 12
Others to Mention: Dr. Seuss (11), Pat Hutchins (11), Seymour Simon (11), Kate McMullan (10), Dav Pilkey (10), Steven Kellogg (10)
Happy New Year Everyone! I wish you all a happy and healthy 2012!
We love all of your "top 10". How wonderful that you have kept track of all your books this year. We actually fell short on the documented books for our challenge, but when our children were younger, we easily read 3 books (or more) a day. My boys had the advantage of older sisters who would also "read it one more time" pretty much on demand. I look forward to spending some time browsing you blog.
ReplyDeleteThat is a lot of books!! Wishing you and yours many more adventures in reading! AVR
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year!
ReplyDeleteI really like your top ten authors list you read to your kids!
Thanks everyone! Looking forward to 2012! Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteThis is a lot of books read! Congrats and best of luck with 12x12 as well. I love that you did a 'Dear Mr. Henshaw' celebration. I did like that book much!
ReplyDeleteHappy 2012 to you, too.
What a fun niche you've created - and lovely profiles of the authors! Bravo! (And we're delighted you're taking part in the 2012 Comment Challenge!)
ReplyDeleteNamaste,
Lee