Christmas with The Gruffalo

The past Christmas is not our usual Christmas. Away from the equator and family, it was an almost-white Christmas with just daddy, mommy, Maxi LG and Mini LG. Of course, God was, and is always, with us.

The Gruffalo was shown on TV. This beautifully animated film is based on the story written by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It tells a tale of a mouse taking a walk through the deep dark woods in search of a nut. He made up an imaginary monster to trick his predators, but the monster turned out to be too real.

I wonder if Julia Donaldson got her inspiration from the Chinese folk tale of 狐假虎威。 The Gruffalo is similar to good old Chinese story of the fox scaring off the other animals by borrowing the terror of the tiger.

Maxi and Mini are familiar with the book before watching the film. It is amazing how they echoed the story and the characters through their reading experience.

In most circumstances, it is the other way round. Maxi and Mini usually echo their reading experience through their TV experience. Kids today are more familiar with films and cartoon characters, than to books.

Hence. one way to encourage kids to read is to introduce books of their favorite TV characters. At LITTLE GIANTS, available collections of popular TV characters include Chuggington, Dora the explorer, Peppa pig,  Charlie & Lola, Horrid Henry, Ben 10, etc.

Wishing you a year of happy reading.

Tips to help Little Giants read

Reading is a complex process. Little Giants need to develop different skills (e.g. a knowledge of phonics, words recognition, concentration, comprehension) to be able to read.

Practical tips to help your Little Giants in their reading journey:-

1. Make reading fun and enjoyable.
2. Talk about the stories and pictures.
3. Compare the stories with Little Giants' own experience.
4. Sound out the words (using phonics).
5. Use clues in the pictures to help Little Giants to understand the story.
6. Encourage Little Giants to use the "context" to make sense of the story.
7. Make time to read daily.
8. Read favorite stories again and again (you will be bored, but Little Giants love this and learn best with repetitions).

Please share your tips too. Beside as a library of books, I hope Little Giants would be a platform for like-minded parents/ carers to share our experience.

Little Giants Books Collection

At LITTLE GIANTS, our books are hand-picked by LG mom with own experience and research. Feedback and response from our Little Giants, especially Maxi, affects the choice of books. Well, Little Giants know what other little ones like better.

We have board books for our little ones to read, touch and "attack". There are absolutely beautiful picture books that toddlers, older kids and adults would all enjoy. Chapter books are for the independent readers and for parents to read to budding readers. There are bridging books between picture and chapter books too. Books of knowledge and special interests are good read for a break from fiction. 

Literacy and reading ability do not come instantly. Hence, we have picked sets of easy-to-use, step-by-step reading scheme books to make learning to read both fun and successful for you and your little ones.

Our collection is suitable for kids of all ages, even for adults (the young at heart ones). We have books tailored for different stages of reading. A lot of the books are good for all ages. The same book could be read to younger kids, be read together with budding readers and be read independently by avid readers.

Our collection of books is not-so-big and we only have English books for now. But, you would be impressed if you were to compare ours with the local library collection. I am confident that you would make us grow our collection as soon as your little ones start reading.

Introduction

Hi, I am Little Giants' mommy, LG mom for short. I have two Little Giants, Maxi and Mini. Maxi is turning 6 years old soon and Mini is 2. They LOVE to read.

I am fortunate enough to take a break from my Giant career and become a stay-at-home-mom in a gigantic city in UK for the past one year. This is where and when I discovered the amazing journey of reading with my two Little Giants.

Well, I read quite a bit with Maxi when she was younger, but not as much as I wish and as I do with Mini now. But, it's never too late to catch up! From knowing her letter sounds, to being able to read words and sentences, to reading independently, Maxi has made tremendous progress in less than a year! She is now such an amazing reader with voracious appetite for books. She has read her first Roald Dahl book and we read her first Shakespeare book (kids version, of course) together! She is just happy being left alone with books (oh, that does free me up).

Mini likes to follow whatever Maxi does, hence it is not hard to make him read. He adores picture books. We discover new things in the illustrations even the nth time we read the books of Julia Donaldson, Nick Sharratt and Axel Scheffler. He could finish the sentences of the books when I read first half of them. His level of comprehension is impressive. I just love to hear him say. "Another book please!" or "I want to read again!".

I enjoy reading the children books as much as the Little Giants. Wrinkles are showing, but there is a young heart in there. The joy of having them on my laps and reading together is priceless. Nevertheless, good books do come with a price, especially when the public library service is less than satisfactory (yes, I am talking about our local libraries in Sabah).

We hope to move back to Kota Kinabalu eventually. I was thinking where to source books for my Little Giants if we were back home and the idea of starting a home-based children books rental service came to mind.

I already have a hand-picked collection to start with. Little Giants have a young-at-heart uncle who loves children books and could take care of the administrative part. Little Giants' grandma would just love to share good books with other kids because she misses her far-away Little Giants so much. EUREKA! How wonderful if more kids in KK would fall in love with reading with such a service!

Oh, I am excited! Please share my Little Giants' joy of reading. I hope we could inspire a love of books in all Little Giants.