Stories about Summer - "Summer" by Rotraut Susanne Berner

Summer is in full swing in our part of the world, and it's a great opportunity to tell stories about the seasons, the changing weather and summer activities.

"Summer" is a picture book by German artist and illustrator Rotraut Susanne Berner. It's a part of the series called "All Around Bustletown" - or simply "Wimmelbuch" in Berner's native German.

Wimmelbuch, or Wimmelbilderbuch literally translates from German as a "book abound with pictures". German philologist Cornelia Rémi describes Wimmelbooks as "a type of wordless picture books which display a series of panoramas teeming with an immense amount of characters and details".

According to Rémi, Wimmelbooks have "the potential to accompany children ... along their path to literacy and introduce them to different strategies of coping with the world and of telling stories".

Indeed, in our story circle focused on Berner's Summer, kids were eager to tell all kinds of stories prompted by the images on the pages of the wimmelbuch. Some kids were focused on the vehicles and followed the red scooter across the pages. Some kids were excited to find all kids of different animals (there are so many!). Personally, my favorite story is the boy who looses the rabbit balloon... to find it on the last page of the book!

As with every story circle that involves topics like nature, weather, or seasons, I loved the fact that we've met in our local park, where we could look around us and discuss what's special about summer in our part of the world. (It was a hot hot HOT day - really appropriate to discuss summer!)

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