🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 📖 Pre-Reading Foundations — Handling books, tracking print left to right, hearing stories, and connecting spoken words to written text directly builds the print awareness and phonological knowledge that formal reading instruction builds on.
- 👂 Listening Comprehension — Following a story — keeping track of characters, events, and cause-effect relationships — builds the listening comprehension that transfers directly to reading comprehension once children decode independently.
- 🌈 Imagination & Creativity — Entering a book's world — imagining the setting, characters, and events — exercises creative and narrative thinking that enriches pretend play, story creation, and the ability to generate original ideas.
- 🌍 World Knowledge & Background Knowledge — Nonfiction and information-rich picture books build background knowledge that accelerates reading comprehension — children who know more about the world understand more of what they read across every subject area.
Pickin' Peas Written by Margaret Read MacDonald
Illustrated by Pat Cummings
From the Book
"Pickin' peas. Land on my knees! Heard my momma callin' me RIGHT over there. Every time he sang 'RIGHT over there', he gave a little jump to the right."
About the Book
Pickin' Peas, based on a Southern folktale, is the story of an African American girl who discovers a rabbit is stealing and eating the peas from her pea garden. The little girl captures the rabbit with the intentions of keeping him locked up until pea picking season is over. However, the rabbit tricks the little girl and eventually escapes, only to return to the pea garden and steal more peas.
From the Correspondent - Stacey Lloyd
When I picked up this book, I expected a joyous tale of a little girl and a bunny who cross paths during pea pickin' in the pea garden. However, the story turned out to be less than "joyous". When the little girl discovers the rabbit is eating her peas, she grabs the rabbit by the neck and shouts at the rabbit. When the rabbit doesn't answer, she squeezes his neck harder.
Disgusted by the rabbit stealing her peas, the little girl decides to take him away from his home in the pea garden and put him in a "small box". The little girl intends to keep the rabbit in this small box all season to "save" her peas. Fortunately for the rabbit, he's much smarter than the little girl and manages to escape solitary confinement.
Myself and my son both did not enjoy this book. I tried to read it to him twice and both times he told me to stop and read another book. Although the illustrations are nicely done, the story just isn't pleasant or entertaining.
My son and I give
Pickin' Peas 2 out of four peas.
Book Details
Title:
Pickin' Peas Reading level: Ages 4 - 8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st ed edition (June 30, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN: 006027235X
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The volume is less important than the consistency. Even one book per day, read with engagement and followed by brief conversation, delivers significant developmental benefit. Many families read 3–5 books at bedtime plus additional books throughout the day — this is excellent and associated with the strongest reading outcomes. If you can only manage one daily reading session, make it consistent, engaged, and joyful rather than perfunctory.
Chapter books don't replace picture books — they extend the reading menu. Most children enjoy having a chapter book read aloud starting around age 4–5, even before they can read independently. Picture books remain appropriate through childhood (and adulthood — they're literature, not a developmental stage to be exited). When introducing chapter books: choose ones with short chapters, interesting characters, and immediate plot engagement. The Magic Tree House, Frog and Toad, and Flat Stanley series are reliable first chapter book series.
