Where's Baby? - a review

Where's Baby?

By Anne Hunter
Tundra Books, 2020

Toddlers are one of the most difficult audiences to reach when writing or reading books. Anne Hunter makes it look easy in the charming book, Where's Baby?

Papa Fox looks high and low for Baby, calling out in a large word bubble each time, "Ba-by!"  He asks if Baby is up in the tree, inside the log, under the water, etc.  Each time, someone is there, but it's not Baby. Skunk replies, "I am inside the log, but I am not your baby. Go away!" 

Gentle illustrations in ballpoint pen and colored pencils make it easy to spot Baby hiding in each spread. Blues and grays dominate the color palette, but Baby's brown coloring will help even the youngest of listeners spot his hiding places. Readers will suspect that Papa knows all along where Baby is hiding, and they will be right.  Baby can't wait to play again!

Elements of grammar (location prepositions), fun (seek and find), and comfort (love of family) are all in Where's Baby? When this pandemic has passed us by and I can visit with toddlers again, this will be the first book that I read.


Look inside Where's Baby?



My copy of Where's Baby? was provided by LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

I Think I Can - a review

I Think I Can

By Karen S. Robbins
Illustrations by Rachael Brunson
Schiffer Publishing, 2019

Below is my review as it appeared in the June, 2019 edition of School Library Journal.

PreS-Gr 1-An aardvark and a mouse share a silly conversation that begins with a simple and positive pronouncement: "I think I can." In this easy reader designed for a shared reading experience, the aardvark's dialogue consists mainly of single sentence declarations. Mouse's responses are a bit longer and serve to further the story line, "You think you can what?" The book's layout and Brunson's illustrations make it easy to focus on reading. Aardvark's words are in a large, blue font, and Mouse's words are black. Aardvark always appears on the left page against a plain white background, and Mouse always appears on the right. Both are simple cartoon characters in soft, pleasing colors with expressive, happy faces. The story culminates in a song set to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." The rhythm of the song is a bit forced, but the joy of singing and reading a song will overcome any shortcomings in meter. Unlike other, wordier, "you read—I read" stories, this one is sweet and super short, leaving no excuse to forgo a quick, shared story. VERDICT Librarians can hand-sell this book to busy parents, grandparents, and caregivers. Teachers can use it to pair confident and emerging readers for a shared experience.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. 

 

Reprinted with permission.

Sharon, Lois & Brams's Skinnamarink - a review

Sharon, Lois & Bram's Skinnamarink 

with Randi Hampson
Illustrated by Qin Leng
Tundra, 2019

This is a book made for singing. If you don't know the song already, click the video below to hear it. The size is good for sharing, and the playful illustrations feature people and anthropomorphized animals from around the globe. Many races and ethnicities are featured, and a young girl in a wheelchair appears multiple times. Five verses to keep the fun going.  Be sure to do the hand motions, too! Skinnamarink is a great choice for story time.  If sharing one-on-one, spend ample time poring over the illustrations for fun details.



My copy of Skinnamarink was provided by LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Art Detective: Spot the Difference! a review

Remember when the Summer Reading theme was "Be Creative?" If you have an artistic inclination, those were the days - with painting, sculpture, and other creative arts in the forefront!  With the continued focus on the CCSS, and the upcoming science-driven theme of "Fizz, Boom, Read!", art runs the risk of being lost in the shuffle.  Thankfully, there is an effort to combine them - turning STEM into STEAM - adding Art to the traditional Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

Here, however, is a book that's all art - specifically, painting.  Enjoy!

Kutschbach, Doris. 2013. Art Detective: Spot the Difference! New York: Prestel.

With the help of a cartoon dog named Charlie, readers explore famous paintings in an attempt to convict an art forger.

Hello! My name is Carl, but my friends call me Charlie the Sleuth.  I'm a detective who solves art crimes, and right now I'm working on a very difficult case.  It's about a shady artist and his forgeries - paintings he offers for sale that aren't really what they appear to be.   ...   Do you think you could help?  

... and with that, the reader (now an art detective) begins a page-by-page quest to spot the differences between famous paintings and forgeries.  Some are humorous.  In "The Sunday Stroll" by Carl Spitzweg, the portly father in the forgery sports a Pinocchio nose and a baseball cap.  Others are more subtle - the color of a parasol, insects in the tall grass.  In all, nineteen paintings (and their accompanying "forgeries") are presented, including VanGogh, Gaugin, Rousseau, and Cézanne. Each has 15-25 differences.

What makes this book so wonderful is that it invites a deep exploration of each painting.  Is greater realism produced by the blemish on a Cézanne melon?  Does the addition of a bird in Passarro's "Place du Théâtre" detract from the hustle and bustle of Parisian citizens? These are not questions that kids will answer, but subconsciously, they may begin to see them. The reader cannot simply flip through the pages.  If he does, the forger will not be found. By noting each mistake, he is compelled also to notice the aesthetic produced by the artist's choices.

The final pages offer thumbnails of each painting with the differences marked by X's.  A note is included about each painting, it's painter, and noting its current location.

Enjoy the search!


Note:
This book is marked with the seal of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), indicating that its paper was derived from "responsible sources."  This is the first time I've seen this logo.  I hope to see it more often!

Don't miss today's Nonfiction Monday postings, and be sure to catch up on all of the great posts on 

KidLit Celebrates Women's History Month!  

Picture Book Roundup - Silly, dreamy, fun, well-done!

Silly, dreamy, fun, well-done  - these are my favorites today!

• Silly

Harrington, Tim. 2013. This Little Piggy. New York: Harper Collins.

Funny and silly, this is the story of what those other five little piggies are doing - forget about going to market or eating roast beef; these little piggies are painting, selling hot dogs, dancing and flying planes!

Browse inside This Little Piggy.

Click to hear the author's musical rendition of 
This Little Piggy.  You can download it, too!

• Dreamy

Giovanna Zoboli. 2013. I Wish I Had .... Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.  (Ill. by Simona Mulazzani)

A simple wish list  - one wish on each beautifully illustrated, double-spread page of this over-sized book.  Inspired by the animal kingdom, each wish is for an animal's ability,

I wish I had the quick heart of a mouse as it makes its escape ...

... and the wings of a wild goose on the day it takes flight. 

Perhaps it rhymes in its original Italian version.  No matter - it's still poetic and beautiful.

The link to a preview of I Wish I Had ... may be accessed here.

• Fun

Gibbs, Edward. I Spy on the Farm. Somerville, MA: Candlewick.

I loved I Spy With My Little Eye when it was published in 2011, and I love Edward Gibbs' I Spy on the Farm as well.  Perfect for participatory sharing, kids will squeal out the answers as they look through the die-cut holes and hear the clues,

I spy with my little eye ...

 something pink that begins with a P.

Oink, oink!

Colors, letters, farm animal sounds - I Spy on the Farm has it all!

I Spy on the Farm preview here.

• Well-done

Falwell, Cathryn. 2013. Rainbow Stew. New York: Lee and Low.

Whimper, sigh, cloudy, sky,
Is it too wet to play?
We don't want to stay inside
because of rain today.

Grandpa smiles and says to us,
"I know what we can do.
Let's go and find some colors
for my famous Rainbow Stew!" 

Filled with love and frolicking fun, Rainbow Stew is a tasty delight! (Be sure to try the recipe)

Rainbow Stew preview here.
Rainbow Stew activities here!


If you're looking for the usual nonfiction post this morning, check out Sally's Bookshelf for today's Nonfiction Monday roundup.  Next week, Nonfiction Monday will be right here at Shelf-employed.  

Who's Looking at You? a review

Frattini, Stéphane. 2012. Who's Looking at You? New York: Sterling.

Eighteen 8"x8" pages feature eighteen different eyes peering out at the reader.  Each eye is on a flap nearly as big as the page with a narrow, brightly colored frame surrounding it.  Open the flap to see "who's looking at you," and learn a few facts, focused, not surprisingly, on the eye.

Snail
How did this hungry snail find the leaf? Snails can't see very well - they mostly depend on touch and smell to find their way.  But most snails do have eyes, right at the ends of two bendable tentacles called eyestalks.

The snail is actually one of the easier eyeballs to recognize.  Very young children won't find many easy guesses as it's surprisingly difficult to determine some animals from a single eye, but slightly older kids will have fun with Who's Looking at You?  Even the adults at the library were enjoying this one!  Some of the featured eyeballs are those of the gorilla, wolf, cuttlefish, chameleon, and blue-spotted grouper.  The butterfly is a bit of stretch - the photo features the "fake" eye that some butterflies sport on their wings to fool predators.  The inside back cover contains eight additional eyes for guessing, with small flaps hiding nothing more than the animal's name.

The photography is beautiful and the guessing is fun!



Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is at The Nonfiction Detectives.

Picture Book Roundup - April edition

A quick picture book roundup for April ...

• Gibson, Amy. 2012. Split! Splat! Ill. by Steve Bjorkman. New York: Scholastic.

April showers bring May flowers and delightful books about rain! Enjoy this rhyming, cumulative book with bright watercolor illustrations. It begs to bed read aloud - perfect for storytime!

I sing a little mud song,
a puddle song,
a muddle song,
a no-shoes, toes-ooze,
slip-slap-and-thud song.

• Schaefer, Lola M. 2012. One Special Day. Ill. by Jessica Meserve. New York: Disney/Hyperion.

Bold, "digital oil pastel" illustrations accompany bold and simple text that describes a bold young boy, who was "strong as a" [bear], "fast as a" [horse], and many other wonderfully bold things, until

he was gentle,
because,
for the first time ever --
Spencer was a brother.

A fun, participatory (the animal names are provided in illustration only), and touching book about welcoming a new baby.

• Allen, Jonathan. 2012. Don't Copy Me! New York: Boxer Books.

As any younger sibling can tell you, the old repeat-everything-you-say and copy-everything-you-do is one of the oldest tricks in a young one's toolbox.  The reason it's so popular is that it is virtually impossible to defend against - as Little Puffin finds out in Don't Copy Me! The very-funny Jonathan Allen has a great time with this one (click the title link for a peek inside).  Call me politically incorrect, but what I like best about Don't Copy Me! is that all does not end well for Little Puffin.  Score one for the little guys!

May picture book roundup

I am in the midst of transferring from one branch to another, and I now have two desks overflowing with great new books!  Here are a few:

Gibbs, Edward. 2011. I Spy with my Little Eye. Somerville, MA: Templar. (Candlewick)

That big (almost 2.5"), yellow, circular eye on the cover is actually a hole - an oh, the things we can spy through that hole!  On a predominantly white spread with an eye on the left page and a circle of blue on the right, we read,

I spy with my little eye  ... something that is blue. "I am the biggest animal in the world."

Turn the page to find a richly colored blue whale, which due to some artfully placed curlicues, manages to appear realistic and at the same time, fanciful.

I'm a BLUE WHALE.

Each featured animal unfolds in the same manner.  The rear cover of the book features a hole for your own little eye to go spying! Colors, animals, guessing - this book has it all!
Edward Gibbs is listed as a "debut artist."  What a debut! This one's dynamite!

Tusa, Tricia. 2011. Follow Me. Boston: Harcourt.

From the book jacket, here is the description of the art,

The illustrations in this book were done using an etching process with monoprinted color.  The text type was set in Prin.  The display type was set in Rats and Carrotflower.

(Rats and Carrotflower? - love that one!)  What this means to me is a softly-colored book with fanciful drawings outlined in etched brown lines.  The color sometimes spills out of its intended (?) perimeter in much the same way that the young protagonist spills out of her swing and floats and flies through the breezes, "lost in small, green, happy music."  She invites the reader to follow her through all of nature's colors, "deep into brown, into the bright white of yellow, into orange that slips into red."   From the illustrator of In a Blue Room, another beautiful book!


Johnson, Lindsay Lee. 2011. Ten Moonstruck Piglets. Ill. by Carll Cneut. Boston: Clarion.

All in a scramble,
all ready to gambol,
ten moonstruck piglets
on a midnight ramble.

Through the mud wallow,
beyond the wide hollow,
leapfrogging piglets
in turns lead and follow.

It's all fun and games until the moon goes behind a cloud!  But not to worry - Mama's coming.  These sleepy-eyed, wrinkly little runts are irresistible!

Where Ten Little Piglets is filled with amusing detail, this next book features uncomplicated simplicity ... (but in both books, you can count on mom to the rescue!)