Part of a " Welcome, Baby" series, this one is another colorful pasteboard book about Christmas for young 'uns. There's a shrinking concentric set of holes through the cover and the first few pages, colored in green and red, and inviting inquisitive chubby fingers to poke around and explore. The book is essentially a series of cute animal images with minimal text. It's a great way to introduce a growing and curious infant to Christmas traditions, if that's where your culture leans. Even if it isn't, it never hurts to educate a kid about traditions celebrated by others, which was the aim of my own The Very Christmassy Rattuses book for young children. We seriously need some inclusivity right now.
Showing posts with label young children's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label young children's. Show all posts
Thursday, December 17, 2020
The Snowiest Christmas Ever by Jane Chapman
This is a sweet and nicely-illustrated color pasteboard book about a family of bears, the children of which wish for snow, and that old adage about 'be careful what you wish for' comes into full fruition as the house is almost literally inundated with snow. It comes in the windows, through the door, and down the chimney, but in the end, the family manages to cope and enjoys some play and some sledding. It's a cute and fun story for young kids who like snow or who might never even have seen snow but would like an idea of what it's all about. Of course these books never tell you about the downside: how cold and dangerous it can be, but that has no need to be a part of this story!
Friday, December 11, 2020
I've Loved You Since Forever By Hoda Kotb, Susie Mason
Written by Kotb (coat-bee), this hardback color book for young children is beautifully lyrical and rhythmical. When I say it could put you to sleep I mean that in the nicest way possible. Mason's illustrations are simple, but well-done and nicely-colored. The text is reaffirming and persuasive, and the whole effect is quite warming and enjoyable, especially for young children. Hoda Kotb is a main co-anchor for NBC's morning 'Today' show and her story, written to celebrate her adoption of a child, takes us through several scenarios of lasting and powerful love for one's children. I commend it as a worthy and inspiring read.
The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton
I loved this author's Dinosnores book, and I adore her last name which is so irrepressibly perky, so I wasn't surprised that I enjoyed this nicely-illustrated hardback for young children either. And who can possibly have a beef with a book that teaches these children how to go to bed and more importantly, how to go to sleep? A group of animals on a boat go through their bedtime routine and while I'm not sure about exercising after a bath as opposed to before it, in general the routine is pretty good one, involving getting good and clean, getting some exercise, brushing teeth and getting into pajamas. The book is rhyming, and fun, and colorful so what's not to like? It did not put me to sleep while I read it, which is paradoxically why I liked it!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Snowy Hide and Seek by Eric Carle
The phenomenally successful Hungry Caterpillar is back in this winter adventure. How this works exactly given that the caterpillar became a butterfly half a century ago is a bit of a mystery, but I'm not going to rate this book negatively just because of that! LOL! Described as a 'A Finger Trail Lift-the-Flap Book' this colorful hardback tells a story of searching and finding, and encourages the young reader to open flaps and follow finger trials, so it's a very tactile work, perfect for curious youngsters. The caterpillar gets to meet penguins and polar bears, reindeer and Santa Claus, and generally has a fun time as will, I'm sure, your toddler. I commend this one as a worthy read.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
I've enjoyed this author's books for children (3 out of 3 prior to the present one) and this one upheld that tradition. Frankly I can't believe I haven't reviewed this one before now. It's not a Christmas book, and the reason I do it now is because the author has a Christmas book out which I shall also review up next. This one is a counting book - a colorful pasteboard for young children that documents this voracious caterpillar's chomping through one of this, two of that, three of the other, and so on, not ad infinitum fortuantely. I'm not convinced that caterpillars really eat some of the things this one did, but it was very hungry!
I commend this as a worthy read with a joyous ending for young children. Count on it!
Little Blue Truck's Christmas by Alice Shertle, Jill McElmurry
Written by Shertle, illustrated by McElmurry, this is another colorful hardback for young children, about the little blue pickup truck who must deliver five Christmas trees, although it seems less like a delivery as such than it does the truck hustling these trees to whomever it could find to buy them! But it finds a buyer for each and every tree, especially the last one which looked like maybe it wouldn't have a home for the holidays! A fun Christmassy sort of a story, which I commend.
How to Catch a Reindeer by Alice Walstead, Andy Elkerton, Adam Wallace
So, it's the most reviewing time of the year - for some more children's books for Christmas, that is! This hardcover picture book for kids was beautifully colored, well-illustrated, and amusingly-written in rhyme. I've never bought into the 'A Visit From Saint Nicholas' reindeer-naming scheme, but this book does. It's about a reindeer trying to catch-up to Santa's sleigh, and about people who for reasons I was unclear about, are trying to catch the reindeer. They don't succeed, but the reindeer does, as we know she would all along.
Some people might take issue with a female reindeer with antlers, but believe it or not, female reindeer - aka caribou - do grow antlers. They're the only species of deer where females do. Why? You'll have to ask them. So reindeer are a good emblem for equality of the sexes! At least in that regard. They shed their antlers, which are bone, not horn, after the males do, so if you see an antlered reindeer in the spring, it's a female, not a male. Very confusing, huh?
But I digress. I commend this book as an amusing and colorful read.
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Wellybobbers Visit Tikka Tonga Lake by A Swan, Sarah-Leigh Wills
Written by Swan, and illustrated by Wills, this picture book aimed at young children was a serious disappointment. I got the impression that it had been designed as a print book and then tossed into the ebook world as an afterthought, and it didn't work. I had thought it might be amusing, being already familiar with what wellybobs are (for the uninitiated, it's a cute Brit name for wellington boots, aka galoshes).
I looked at this using Net Galley's PDF, and that was messed up. It looked like picture ebooks usually look like when viewed in a Kindle. The Amazon process is renowned in my experience for shredding, spindling, and julienning picture books - or anything that isn't plain vanilla text for that matter - and sure enough it turned this book into kindling as expected. How this became so bad, and yet no one seems to have noticed, is a mystery to me, but based on the two examples I saw, in two different formats, this book is a disaster. Maybe the print version looks sweet, but I don't get to see that.
The story is supposed to be about elves having an adventure helping a squirrel find a nut, but in the PDF version, I had to page through several blank pages to find any with an illustration, and when I got there, there was no text. None at all. Not anywhere after the introductory page. The images were also split between screens, and viewing them in landscape mode did nothing to improve upon this.
The Kindle version did have text, but the pictures were split between screens and the text did not match the picture it appeared next to. I paged through to about half-way and seeing no sign of improvement, I gave up on it. Yes, the text rhymes, but that's not all it takes to make an engaging story. The illustrations were okay, but nothing spectacular enough to make up for the poor presentation, so overall I was not at all impressed, and I cannot commend this as a worthy read.
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Moon Pig by Celina Lagnardo, Leo Lagnardo
Why so many writers want to associate a pig with the Moon I do not know, but there are a few out there! Pig Jumps Over the Moon by Jeff Dinardo is one; The Little Pig, the Bicycle, and the Moon, by Pierrette Dubé is another, and The Pig Who Sang to the Moon by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a third. I haven't read any of those, but I did read this one and was amused and pleasantly impressed with it. It paints a fine porktrait of an animal with a mission and a strifng ambition.
"Pig" dreams of visiting the Moon, and through diligence and hard work manages to put together a rocket and a space suit and heads on out there to do just that, landing safely, exploring, and returning in time for dinner. The writing is sweet and the pigtures amusing. I commend this as a worthy fantasy read for young children.
Little One You Are the Universe by Zeni Shariff
This is a small format young children's illustrated book about elephants that seems at first glance to be a bit 'new-age-y', but it's really an entertaining and nicely-illustrated book about friendship. Young elephants Lotus and Adia meet at the watering hole one day and learn to overcome their shyness. Over time they become good friends, but they're separated when they are taken captive by humans and forced into labor camps, one of which involves railroad construction, the other of which involves mining.
While I disagree with the anthropomorphization of animals, it's not overdone here, and elephants are without a doubt intelligent and sensitive mammals who reflect human emotions and behaviors in small ways. But I don't doubt that two elephants who have grown up together would miss each other and that's what happens with these two, until they find themselves, after a long journey, brought sweetly back into each other's orbit.
This was a fun book and nicely-done both in the writing and in the artwork by the author. I commend it as a worthy read.
Friday, November 20, 2020
Little Red Sleigh by Erin Guendelsberger, Elizaveta Tretyakova
This was a sweet book written by Guendelsberger and finely-illustrated by Tretyakova which relates the charming story of the little red sleigh who sets out to find fulfilment in life. It was really well put-together, and I appreciated that nothing was done to try and anthropomorphize the sleigh: it was always a sleigh and always looked like one. It never pretended to be anything different, but still it had a personality which came through to the reader.
I guess if you wanted to be perverse, you could argue that maybe it would have been a better story if the sleigh had been represented as trying to better itself, but that fact is that it was doing exactly that, even as it remained true to its purpose and I liked that. It wanted to be the best it could be at what it was, and that's inspiration enough. I commend this as a worthy read.
Santa.Com by Russell Hicks, Matt Cubberley, Ryley Garcia
This was an overwrought story about corporate take-over, and modernization, and mechanization, and the heroic elf who rescues Christmas despite his being held as a slavish toymaker! Usually I might get with a story like this, but this one didn't move me at all. To me it was so overdone and confused that I just could not get with it. I can't commend it.
Pete the Cat's 12 Groovy Days of Christmas by Kimberley Dean, James Dean
Here's a fun Christmas book (again, it ain't cheap, but it is a hardback) that takes a new riff off the 12 days song, including fuzzy gloves, guitars strumming, and ugly sweaters. It does mention cupcakes which once in a while are fun, but you wouldn't want to eat them every day for twelve days if you know what's good for you! That aside, the book is amusing and well-illustrated, and makes for a worthy read.
The Night Before Christmas by Major Henry Livingston Jr, or Clement C Moore
Having said that in my previous review, if you're a die-hard traditionalist (see what I did there - got a non-Christmassy Christmas movie mention in my review?!), you can always go get that abominable poem here (for a price - all these Christmas books seen to be expensive hardbacks), and suffer through it with your family. This one ain't bad - it has the poem, and decent illustrations, but it shows santa smoking a pipe, and I wouldn't buy it, nor would I recommend it because the title isn't even the title of the poem! It's actually called: A Visit from St. Nicholas
Dasher by Matt Tavares
So it's time for the grouch to review a few Christmas books even though it's not even Thanksgiving as of this post. I'm not a big fan of Christmas, in particular the crass commercialism that starts in friggin' September for goodness sake. For me, Christmas has typically been the chance to celebrate the winter solstice and see some good movies on TV, so if you set me up with a drink, some decent food and a couple of decent movies and then go off and play all the games you want, and try on all the sweaters and pajamas, and slippers you desire, and I won't care! I'll be happy!
You know, I've never bought into those dumb reindeer names that everyone but me seems to have inexplicably embraced, because I never grew up with that abominable poem in my head. I have two problems with it and one is the sheer sexism in the explicit claim that only male reindeer can pull the sleigh. And for that matter, even the rather racist stance that only reindeer can pull the sleigh. One thing I agree on with this author though, is that I always did feel that Rudolf got way more credit than he deserved for the gig, so I applaud Matt Tavares in bringing Dasher (or whatever his real name was) to the fore in this story, which is well-illustrated, nicely-written and tells and decent story.
Mindfulness for Little Ones by Heidi France
This was a worthwhile book about encouraging children to be more aware of their surroundings and their inner feelings. It's never a bad thing to bring that sort of awareness to children, and people tend to forget how rich an environment it is for young ones, especially having come into the world inclined to put everything in their mouth!
While that's not a great idea, especially as one grows older, that same curiosity about sight, sound and texture should not diminish as we age, but become more important in terms of staying grounded, and staying in touch with our surroundings.
Environmental awareness isn't just about safety, although a book like this can seriously help with that, and it's especially important to try to remain calm and focused in this age when we we're stressed over a pandemic disease that thanks to the appalling incompetence of leadership at the highest levels, is running unchecked through the USA, on top of racism, LGBTQIA discrimination, misogyny, as well as the poisoning of the planet and our heating of it almost to the point of no return, all of which has gone unchecked, if not exacerbated, over the last few years.
It doesn't hurt to be sensitive to what's going on in the world. It doesn't hurt to know what's going on inside ourselves either, especially when health concerns are growing. I commend this book as a worthy and educational read not just for children but for the adults who might read it to those children.
No Reading Allowed by Raj Haldar, Chris Carpenter, Bryce Gladfelter
This is a fun book about the English language and how the same-sounding sentence can mean two different things because of the way the words are spelled. The book has pairs of sentences, some full page, others quarter page, written by Carpenter and Haldar, with fun illustrations by Gladfelter. They include items like: The children scarfed the mousse The children scarfed the moose Beware the sharp turn Beware the sharp tern And so on!
I found this to be an entertaining, amusing, inventive, and educational book and I commend it as a worthy read.
Kamala and Maya's Big Idea by Meena Harris, Ana Ramírez González
This is the second of two children's books about Kamal Harris that I read. The author is Kamala (pronounced Kom-a-la) Harris's niece. The book tells the inspiring story of these two girls' struggle to get a children's playground up and running on an empty lot at the apartment complex where they lived.
Despite almost universal apathy by the adults, the two girls were resolute (that's good to be, especially if you're a girl and maybe used to being talked down, dismissed, or diminished). The girls made a plan and stuck to it, and they fought and struggled and made it happen - and there was the playground that all the kids could enjoy. An inspiring story that's true! We're going to need that selfless resolution in the White House to overcome the dire depredations and selfishness left as a legacy by the worst president in US history.
Kamala Harris Rooted in Justice by Nikki Grimes, Laura Freeman
This is the first of two children's books about Kamal Harris that I read. This one is a biography written nicely for children by Grimes and illustrated elegantly by Freeman. It follows Kamala (that's pronounced Kom-a-la), now vice-president-elect (as of this review) from her childhood, through school, law school, and her various public service jobs up to the point where she became a senator. It's not updated for very recent events - it ends at her run for senator - but it tells an inspiring story and it makes for encouraging reading, and for hope for the USA for the next four years that too many people have become desperate for under the recent cult and dictatorship.
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