David shares with us, “So, on one hand this book taught me a lot about transsexuals and that experience but the bigger impact that this book had on me was the feeling that just because I don’t experience something, doesn’t mean that it’s not true.” The episode transcript is below! *Please visit this page to learn more about my regular storytime songs and routines.Welcome to our LGBT podcast This Queer Book Saved My Life! In this episode, we talk with award-winning children’s author David LaRochelle (he/him) about the LGBT book Conundrum by Jan Morris. I went over the vocabulary and previewed the motions for walk, gallop, mosey and pulling back for WHOAH before we sang. You probably wouldn’t see all these trucks on the farm… but you might see a wagon! I brought some extra books to read after this flannel just in case (like Bang! by Leo Timmers or Firefighter Duckies by Frank Dormer), but we had quite a few toddlers this morning and they clearly wanted to mooove again. I let the kids and caregivers keep the puppets from our earlier rhyme so they could help tell the story by making the animal noises as we read! The more sounds your child hears and makes with you NOW, the better they’ll be able to sound out words while reading and writing LATER. Grown-ups, I love reading books and sining songs with farm animals because they are full of so many fun sounds! Farm animal sounds are especially good for exposing kids to tricky vowel sounds, like the short a sound in “baa” and the short u sound in “cluck”. Lit Tip: Building Phonological Awareness with Animal Sounds

As we completed each verse, I passed out the puppets round the room.

We put our shaker eggs back in the basket and hen sat on top to keep them warm, then explored other farm animals and sounds. Puppet Rhyme: I Went to Visit a Farm One Day Speaking of farm animals, I know a chicken! And she laid an egg…

Sing: I Know a Chicken by Laurie Berkner (shakers) The older kiddos enjoyed supplying more narrative as we read, and everyone enjoyed making some noise! This book was spot on for the many ages and stages in the room. It’s so great for so many early literacy skills! Narrative skills, print awareness, phonological awareness, you name it. I seem to read this storytime book A LOT.

Moo! by David LaRochelle