McQuinn, Anna. Lola Loves Stories. Illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw. Alanna Books, 2009. Charlesbridge, 2010.
This picture book is the second in a series of nine books about Lola and her family and their love affair with books and libraries and reading. The first book, Lola at the Library, is more informational, showing how Lola goes to the library with her mommy and checks out books and listens to the librarian tell stories during story time. In Lola Loves Stories, we get to read about and see how the books Lola borrows from the library work themselves into her imagination and her playtime.
Every Saturday Lola and her daddy go to the library where Lola finds some “excellent books.” When they come home, they read the books together, one book each evening. And every day as she plays with friends and alone, Lola acts out the many themes and characters in the stories she has read. She becomes a fairy princess, an adventurer, a tiger, and one day just a girl with sparkly shoes. There’s even a not-so-subtle nod to Max and his imagination in Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
I love that this picture book is so simple, with brief, large print sentences, and yet so stimulating to the imagination for even the youngest (and oldest) readers. I like that Daddy takes Lola to the library in this book, and that Lola and her friend Ben have a play tea party with their baby dolls in strollers beside them.
The Lola Reads series is originally from a British author, written for a British audience, but either it’s been Americanized or the concepts and vocabulary are simple enough to reach across the ocean. The original British title is Lulu Loves Stories. I didn’t catch any Anglicisms that would need to be explained to an American child. Just a simple story about a child reading with her parents and acting out what she hears and reads.
Other books about Lola include:
- Lola at the LIbrary
- Lola Plants a Garden
- Lola Gets a Cat
- Lola Reads to Leo
- Lola Meets the Bees
- Lola Goes to School
- Lola Sleeps Over
- Lola’s Nana-Bibi Comes to Visit