You Are My I Love You is a bit of an indulgence book for me. I love books about parent-child relationships, and books with a bit of poetry in them, and if the kids will tolerate them, I will read them over and over again. This book is a particularly excellent example of that style, and although it's a library book, I may well end up purchasing it myself -- er, for my kids, I mean.
The story is about the relationship between a parent and a child. The opening lines are "I am your parent; you are my child. I am your quiet place; you are my wild." The text is entirely couplets of this nature, showing the calm and support and guidance of a parent and the eagerness and openness and magic of being a child. I cannot get through it without tearing up, because it so completely describes the joy of having a child and seeing them unfold the mysteries of the world. "I am your favorite book; you are my new lines. I am your night-light; you are my starshine."
The illustrations are beautiful and active. The characters in it are two teddy bears, a big teddy bear and a little one, and the actions and energy leap from the page. My kids will sit on the floor with this book just flipping through the pages to see the illustrations, even without someone to read it to them.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It would make a fantastic shower gift for an expectant mother or father, or a book for your own kids of just about any age. One word of possible warning: there is one couplet in it of a religious nature ("I am your praying hands; you are my saying grace"). It is not a religious book in nature (that is the only reference to anything religious), but if you do not want religion in your children's books at all, this is not a good choice for you.
If you liked this book, you might also try:
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
BooBoo, by Olivier Dunrea
I would like to begin by noting that I totally do not understand the appeal of this book. It is about a gosling. A small blue gosling named BooBoo. Who likes to eat. Lorrie, however, adores the book, and demands it approximately 25 times every single day, so I thought I should give it a mention.
The pictures in this entire series, by Olivier Dunrea, are very cute and very simple. There isn't much background, and the characters are drawn very simplistically. It's very easy for even very small children to follow the action in this book. "BooBoo" was one of Lorrie's first words, in reference to this book and its main character.
There isn't a whole lot to the story. BooBoo is a gosling. She eats things. There's a litany of all the things she eats. Then she eats a bubble, and it makes her burp. She burps a lot. Then she drinks water, and is better. I suppose there's a lesson in there about not eating everything you see (underscored by the last page, where she's staring with fascination at a beehive), but mostly it's just a series of actions strung together, more than a coherent plot. BooBoo eats things.
BooBoo is not the first book in this series, though it works fine as a stand-alone. There are many, many books about these little goslings. Gossie, about the gosling who wears red boots, Gossie and Gertie, about Gossie and her blue-booted friend, Ollie the Stomper, and so on. As a word of caution, I bought Gossie and Friends and Gossie's Busy Day, the flap books, and found them very different in pacing, with too much on a page for small children. Be aware before adding them to your collection.
Other Gossie books by Olivier Dunrea:
The pictures in this entire series, by Olivier Dunrea, are very cute and very simple. There isn't much background, and the characters are drawn very simplistically. It's very easy for even very small children to follow the action in this book. "BooBoo" was one of Lorrie's first words, in reference to this book and its main character.
There isn't a whole lot to the story. BooBoo is a gosling. She eats things. There's a litany of all the things she eats. Then she eats a bubble, and it makes her burp. She burps a lot. Then she drinks water, and is better. I suppose there's a lesson in there about not eating everything you see (underscored by the last page, where she's staring with fascination at a beehive), but mostly it's just a series of actions strung together, more than a coherent plot. BooBoo eats things.
BooBoo is not the first book in this series, though it works fine as a stand-alone. There are many, many books about these little goslings. Gossie, about the gosling who wears red boots, Gossie and Gertie, about Gossie and her blue-booted friend, Ollie the Stomper, and so on. As a word of caution, I bought Gossie and Friends and Gossie's Busy Day, the flap books, and found them very different in pacing, with too much on a page for small children. Be aware before adding them to your collection.
Other Gossie books by Olivier Dunrea:
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
And the Good Brown Earth, by Kathy Henderson
I love to garden, so a book that talked about the changing seasons from the point of view of a garden really appealed to me. I like anything I can do to get my kids more interested in gardening. Unfortunately, the execution fell a bit flat. I enjoyed the book, but the kids were much less into it, and didn't warm up on multiple reads. We ended up returning it to the library early.
The storyline is fairly simple and sweet: Joe and his Gram go to the vegetable patch in every season, and Gram does the proper garden chore while Joe "helps". In the end, they have a bountiful harvest.
My first real issue with the book is that the sentence structure and language is sometimes a bit awkward. The main refrain, repeated over and over, is, "And the good brown earth got on with doing what the good brown earth does best." Although nicely poetic, I think it was hard for young ears to parse quickly.
The pictures were beautiful, but much too indistinct for a children's book. There were many pages where it took some thought to decipher what was happening in the pictures, and that was with the help of the text to decipher it. My children wouldn't spend much time looking at the pictures they couldn't understand.
This book may be a better fit for reading to older children, in the 6-8 range, but I would not recommend it for children under five.
The storyline is fairly simple and sweet: Joe and his Gram go to the vegetable patch in every season, and Gram does the proper garden chore while Joe "helps". In the end, they have a bountiful harvest.
My first real issue with the book is that the sentence structure and language is sometimes a bit awkward. The main refrain, repeated over and over, is, "And the good brown earth got on with doing what the good brown earth does best." Although nicely poetic, I think it was hard for young ears to parse quickly.
The pictures were beautiful, but much too indistinct for a children's book. There were many pages where it took some thought to decipher what was happening in the pictures, and that was with the help of the text to decipher it. My children wouldn't spend much time looking at the pictures they couldn't understand.
This book may be a better fit for reading to older children, in the 6-8 range, but I would not recommend it for children under five.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Titch, by Pat Hutchins
Although this book was first published nearly forty years ago, I only discovered it recently. Pat Hutchins, the author, has written many excellent books, and won the Kate Greenaway Medal for her book The Wind Blew.
Titch is a classic sample of her style. She has said that she likes to write very simple stories that even the youngest child can enjoy, and Titch is a fantastic example of how you can tell a meaningful story without a lot of padding around the story.
Titch is the youngest child of three. Through the book, we are shown through many examples how his older siblings get big, fun toys while Titch is limited to the littlest things. The simple pictures are easy to comprehend: Titch's sadness and longing come through clearly. But in the end, Titch's small item is a seed, and it turns out bigger than anything else.
My kids love this story for its simple language and easy-to-follow story. The pictures are spare but well-done, keeping the characters central in every image. It's easy to see why the story has survived so long.
If you like Titch, check out these other books by Pat Hutchins:
Titch is a classic sample of her style. She has said that she likes to write very simple stories that even the youngest child can enjoy, and Titch is a fantastic example of how you can tell a meaningful story without a lot of padding around the story.
Titch is the youngest child of three. Through the book, we are shown through many examples how his older siblings get big, fun toys while Titch is limited to the littlest things. The simple pictures are easy to comprehend: Titch's sadness and longing come through clearly. But in the end, Titch's small item is a seed, and it turns out bigger than anything else.
My kids love this story for its simple language and easy-to-follow story. The pictures are spare but well-done, keeping the characters central in every image. It's easy to see why the story has survived so long.
If you like Titch, check out these other books by Pat Hutchins:
Yummy Yucky, by Leslie Patricelli
Yummy Yucky, by Leslie Patricelli, is a fantastic book for small children. It's part of a series of opposites books written by Patricelli, which includes Quiet Loud, Big Little, and No No Yes Yes. Each set of facing pages shows a pair of scenes. One is yummy. One is yucky. "Spaghetti is yummy!" says the first page. "Worms are yucky," says the second. Each set of images are linked, either by the sound of the words or the look of the objects.
Kids love the easy-to-follow pattern of the text, and the pictures are fantastic. Something about the naked baby with the enormous head seems to delight them, and his over-the-top expressions are easy to understand and identify with.
This is a great book to read to kids starting as young as 4-6 months. With short, snappy sentences and interesting pictures, it will hold their interest from a young age. As they get older, it can serve as a reminder of the kinds of things we do and don't put in our mouths ("Boogers are yucky"). It was one of the first books my son could "read" entirely on his own, and as he closes on four, he still likes to listen to it, and even read it to his little sister.
If you like Yummy Yucky, check out these other books by Leslie Patricelli:
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