Saturday, February 9, 2013

The Giant Hug by Sandra Horning illustrated by Valeri Gorbachev


The perfect picture book should bring you joy - I think The Giant Hug is a perfect picture book.  This is good timing too with Valentine's Day this week - you might make Valentine's Day a celebration of love.

Owen wants to send his Granny a hug for her birthday but she lives far away so Owen goes to the post office with his mother.

"I want to mail a hug to my granny.  Will you please send it?' Owen asked in his most polite voice. 'Well we don't normally send hugs, but I suppose we could give it a try,' Mr. Nevin said.  Owen's mother wrote down Granny's address for Mr. Nevin.  Owen walked behind the counter, opened his arms as wide as he possibly could, and gave Mr Nevin a giant hug. 'Please make the hug just as giant when you pass it on to the mailman,' Owen said."

So begins the journey of this special hug.  Mr. Nevin hugs Ms. Porter.  She then hugs Leroy.  Leroy travels into the city.  The next person in the chain is a porcupine called James who is not really the hugging type. He then hugs the aeroplane Captain.  Amanda, who drives the mail truck is next and the hug really brightens her day.  Amanda hugs Chad who immediately asks to a dance. Chad reaches Mrs Greenberg who passes the hug on to Shelly - the final link in this long chain of hugs. Granny is delighted to receive the hug from Shelly but she has a special message that needs to be returned to Owen!  The picture on the last page will make you smile and smile.

This book will be part of our library collection later in the year.  It is one of the special titles we will include in our annual donate a library book event.  I discovered this book at the New York public library last year when I spent a glorious few hours in the children's library reading and reading picture books.

Here is the author web site. Here are some teaching ideas, songs and other books on the topic of The Post Office.

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