Entries Tagged 'books' ↓

Ezri has been enjoying books with photos of animals this week.  I’ll mention 2 faves.

1) Sleepy Cat from Sterling Publishing has simple text like “yawn” or “quiet” with an accompanying color photo of a cat. Ezri will bring this book to me and climb into my lap for a reading.

2) Wacky Wild Peek a Boo! from Busy Baby & Make Believe Ideas has very satisfying flaps. It is from the same series as Perfect Pets Peek a Boo! and suffers from the same super appealing photos and flaps with underwhelming text. The glittery snake and rough elephant trunk are favorite pages for Ezri.

She also continues to gravitate towards Rathman’s two books – Goodnight, Gorilla and 10 Minutes Till Bedtime. Rathman’s artwork is very appealing to Ezri and the plots of these books are clever for parents to read. These are great books for us to enjoy together.

It’s been awhile, but don’t fear Ezri and I have been reading.

Lately, she’s been looking through Goodnight, Gorilla by Peggy Rathman and we read it together. I point at the gorilla on each page and say “gorilla.” Ezri turns the pages for me and she will sit for the whole book which is a testament to its coolness as Ezri’s attentions have been known to wander. Goodnight, Gorilla is a charming almost wordless book that follows a zoo keeper who says goodnight to the zoo and the gorilla who poaches his keys and lets out the animals. The animals all follow the zookeeper back to his bedroom and then the zookeeper’s wife leads them all back to the zoo. Ezri particularly likes the almost entirely black pages when the lights are out. As she gets older she’ll be able to find the balloon and small mouse who also appear on each page.

Ezri is also enjoying books from the series Usborne Touchy-Feely books. We have two of this series of books out from the library:
1) Kittens by Fiona Watt and illustrated by Rachel Wells. This book has a variety of fabric textures inside and many fuzzy bits which Ezri finds delightful.
2) We also have That’s Not My Monster in the same series from the same author/illustrator duo.
On the first page a big pink monster smiles and the text reads, “That’s not my monster. Its eyebrows are too hairy.” Then there are spikes that are too fuzzy, paws that are too bumpy, and horns that are too rough. On the final page the reader finds MY monster whose ears are so fluffy. Again, petting the book is clearly the highlight. There are other titles. I’m sure we will be checking out other titles like That’s Not My Frog or That’s Not My Snowman or That’s Not My Train or That’s not My Dinosaur or That’s Not My Penguin. You get the idea and they are pretty much all the same. But, the concept works and Ezri enjoys touching the books, so bring them on.

I thought I would mention 3 books today.
The first two were birthday presents. Everybody needs books on their birthday and Ezri is no exception.
1) Nursery Rhymes made by Louise Shrigley published by Priddy Books
This comes with a CD, but mostly what Ezri likes is the size. It is a BIG board book which makes turning pages more fun. It is filled with classic rhymes which are classics for a reason – nice rhythm and rhyme to them. It is illustrated with reproductions of fabric appliques that have texture where the stitches would be which makes the book both bright and touchable.
2.Noisy Peekaboo! Vroom! Vroom! written by Dawn Sirett designed by Rachael Parfitt published by DK
Ezri already had a love of lift the flap books and DK makes good sturdy baby-friendly flap books. But, now they have added SOUND. When you open the right flap and find the vehicle, you get a “chug-chug-chug” for the tractor or a “beep beep” for the car. Ezri has learned which flaps make noise and her favorite flap is the one that is lifted to make the fire engine’s siren go. I don’t know if this is because she loves red (fire engine color) or the siren sound, but it is certainly a fun page.
The book is well-implemented with color photos of babies and toys on each spread. The noisy peekaboo book is a nice addition by DK to its winning peekaboo flap book line.
3.Quack! by Phyllis Root illustrated by Holly Meade from Candlewick Press.
Many is the board book where the text is underwhelming and seems to be added as an afterthought to a visually stimulating book. This one puts those to shame proving even a very simple text can be wonderfully written. “Baby ducklings nip and nibble. Duckling tails go wobble, wibble.” It’s fun to read and the sounds keep Ezri interested. She also enjoys it when I point at each duckling on the page and say, “duck, duck, duck.” This one is a joy to read aloud.

Ezri is enjoying an animal excyclopedia for early readers from called The World of Baby Animals by Ton van Eerbeek published by Balloon Books. Each page has a big full color photo of an animal with a small paragraph at an early reader level of facts. Ezri enjoys pointing at the animals in turn. Each page has an animal and the two page spreads are paired. Most of the animal pairings make sense Dog & Cat, Puma & Cheetah, Orangutan & Chimpanzee, but then there’s Squirrel & Elephant and I haven’t figured how those two go together. Though I did learn a baby squirrel is about the size of a pinkie finger at birth.
This book is not a board book and Ezri is getting much better at gently handling the pages of a standard book.  She still isn’t left alone to handle a non-board book, but we do let her turn pages in our laps.

This week Ezri has been enjoying 2 books with cut-outs in their boardbook pages.
Peek-a-Who? by Nina Laden
and
Zoo Faces: A Book of Masks by Lucy Schultz & Ana Martin Larranaga

Peek a Who? features a cutout with a pair of eyes in it. You turn the page to reveal an owl. Peek a Who! There is a cutout with a train track in it that opens to reveal a train for Peek a choo choo. There’s a ghost for peek a boo and animals for peek a zoo and a final page with a mirrored surface for peek a YOU. Ezri enjoys turning the pages back and forth and peering through the holes.

Zoo Faces has eye cut outs and you can peek out of the hippo page at baby or through the lion page. This is a very fun way to interact with Ezri.  Ezri enjoys feeling the round holes that go all the way through the book so she can put fingers through to the other side.

Ezri is pulling down books from her bookshelf.

This week a particular favorite book is Margaret Miller’s What is on My Head? This has full page photos of babies with items on their heads. One baby wears a fancy hat. One wears a firefighter’s hat. One has a stuffed puppy on her head. Another baby has a rubber duck on his head. Ezri is learning the parts of her face and enjoys pointing at the eyes and noses on each baby in the book.

Margaret Miller has a series of board books for babies called Look Baby! Books. We will have to check out some of the other titles like Baby Faces or Baby Food. All seem to feature big photos of babies’ faces which is perfect for Ezri.

In other exciting news, Ezri is taking unaided steps – up to ten at a time. She’s almost a toddler! She stands more like a walker with a less swaybacked stance. She stands up from sitting by herself without pulling up on objects sometimes. She is AMAZING.

Ezri is enjoying her board book of Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin. The repetitive chanting is a favorite and we use the “What do you see? I see a (insert animal here) looking at me” chant on her other wordless books with pictures of animals in them. I’ve read her Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which is also by Bill Martin, this week and she likes the rhyming cadence and nonsense words.

In terms of tactilely enjoying her books, Rhyme-A-Round from Little Scholastic seems to be one of the favorites right now with its holes through board pages and assorted textures and patterns. It centers on familiar rhymes that are fun to sing and chant (Row, row, your boat & The wheels on the bus & Pussycat pussycat). The fuzzy cat page is the favorite for the obvious reasons.

In other book related news, Ezri tore up our phonebook this past weekend, but we mostly used the internet not the yellowpages anyhow.  She went to her first Early Walker storytime on Monday and thinks being greeted with bubbles is awesome.  Miss Sharon also fascinated her with puppets and the book Flip-a-face: Baby Animals by SAMi.

When I started to take that photo it looked much more innocent. Ezri has been reminded not to pull on tails.

Babies love paper. It crumples and it’s fun to turn pages, but paper is flimsy. When moistened paper turns into mushy yuck.  Even a nice cardboard board book can be turned to pulp by a dedicated baby with just a tooth or two.  This leads not only to book destruction, but possible choking hazard and ingestion of ink dyes and paper whitening chemicals.

So, books for babies are mostly board books and reading them is mostly an activity shared with an adult, rather than an opportunity for solo exploring.

But, Ezri is so happy when she gets ahold of a magazine or catalog.  She loves looking through books on her own.  Enter Indestructibles which seem expensive at $5 for a seemingly flimsy magazine like pamphlet book.  However, Ezri has flipped through hers multiple times, she has put them in her mouth and pulled a full mug of cold coffee down from a bookshelf onto one and they are still standing.  They are a little rumpled, but still together with nary a tear or soggy page.

Indestructibles look flimsy and feel like a high quality paper, but they are not.
They are made of Tyvek – a material developed by Dupont and used for maps that are to be taken into the wilderness(rain doesn’t phase it), medical packaging (it’s hard to tear), and housewrap (it’s just that tough).

We own two of these Indestructibles. There are only 3 currently available.  All three feature brightly colored paintings of animals by Kaaren Pixton with no text.  Wiggle! March! features barnyard creatures and offers the opportunity to make animal noises.  Ezri likes my chicken and cow noises especially. Creep! Crawl! features the same style of paintings of bugs and slugs.  While some might consider the lack of text to be a cope out(yes, Eric I am talking to you), it is nice opportunity to just talk to Ezri about what’s in the pictures and point at things together.  We may have to pick up Flutter! Fly! which presumably features birds and has a hummingbird on the cover soon.

Here’s Ezri with that pinnacle of children’s book characters, Walter the Farting Dog. Oh, she loves the noises he makes!

We checked out the board book Perfect Pets Peek A Boo! A Busy baby Book by make Believe Ideas Ltd. from the library.

While the text on this is pretty insipid, the flaps are great. Pets hide behind related objects – a horse behind an apple, a cat behind a mouse toy, a rabbit behind a head of lettuce and a dog behind a bouncy ball. The final spread shows all four animals and is covered by two flaps that open like shudders. When closed all the reader can see is the eye of the dog whose name is Bouncy.  Ezri loves touching the hole with the eye and then opening the flaps to reveal the animals.  The person who designed the flaps on this book gets two thumbs up.  The author – meh.

In other news, Ezri enjoyed rocking in a rocking chair all by herself for the first time today.  The chair used to be her Aunt Amy’s and is only a little big for Ezri.  She only tried to climb up and out of it once – mostly she was content to rock.  A big smile for the rocking chair.

With the holiday, I missed last week’s report on Ezri’s reading and am just catching up.  Here is Ezri looking at Sandra Boynton’s The Belly Button Book.
It features a song ode to belly buttons and many hippos proudly wearing swimsuits at The Belly Button Beach to show of their belly buttons. It is super silly stuff, but fun and the rhyming rhythms work well for reading aloud. Ezri currently loves belly buttons. She likes you to find hers and she likes finding the belly buttons on others. Sadly, Eric has discovered she may pull any hair she finds near the belly button.
In honor of her belly button fascination we read The Belly Button Book and we purchased her Where is Baby’s Belly Button? A Lift-The-Flap Book by Karen Katz. Various of baby’s body parts hide behind a hat, bath bubbles, a cup and a cat. It is a new holiday gift book and I am waiting to test it on Ezri, but I anticipate it will be a hit as it features babies and body parts which are keen interests of hers at present.