Book Bridges: The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

What’s Included?

Each Book Bridges provides a variety of resources and activities for a specific book to promote literacy. The Rabbit Listened is a gentle and heartfelt story about a child named Taylor who experiences a difficult moment after something important to them doesn’t go as planned. In addition to a more in-depth summary of the story, each Book Bridges resource includes information about the book’s author and illustrator and questions to ask before, during, and after reading. Talking about a story before, during, and after reading helps children think deeply, connect to the characters, and build a love of reading that lasts a lifetime.

Each Book Bridges also includes a variety of extension activities:

• Reading – Related book recommendations and questions relating the stories
• Writing – Sentence starters and pictures prompts related to the story
• Math – Math problems and prompts featuring story elements
• Science – Step-by-step, hands-on activity tied to the story
• Social Studies – Questions and prompts that tie the story to the child’s life
• Art – Activity and supply list that connect to the story

What is Book Bridges?

Reading with young children is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to help them grow. From birth through age 5, children build early language, thinking, and literacy skills through warm, back-and-forth experiences with caring adults. Research shows that shared reading at home supports vocabulary, comprehension, motivation to read, and school readiness, and that these benefits can begin long before children enter school.

The biggest benefits do not come just from reading words on a page though. Children learn more when adults make reading interactive by talking about the pictures, asking questions, listening to children’s ideas, and letting children help tell the story. This kind of shared reading experience supports language development and can also strengthen enjoyment, confidence, and family-child relationships. Best of all, there are simple strategies that can help families turn book sharing into a rich, joyful routine.

Books can also open the door to learning beyond the story. When families talk about a book before, during, and after reading, connect it to everyday life, and extend it through play, drawing, movement, science, math, art, or hands-on activities, children have more chances to build language and make meaning. Young children learn more when they can talk, move, create, explore, and respond in different ways. This research supports the idea behind Book Bridges. A book can be a bridge for conversation, play, discovery, and learning across many parts of a child’s world.

The Book Bridges work is a collaboration between Literacy Bridges and the Washburn University Department of Education. Undergraduate students working to become licensed educators at Washburn University created these resources using texts from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library collection. Families interested in receiving one book per month for children up to five years old can learn more about how to register for the program here: https://kschildrenscabinet.gov/imaginationlibrary/.