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RHYME FLIES

Name: RHYME FLIES
Author: Antonia Pesenti
ISBN: 978-0-7148-7639-9

by Antonia Pesenti ; illustrated by Antonia Pesenti ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2018

Wedding elegant design with witty and funny rhymes and challenging children to play with words make this book a winner.

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A book of rhyming fun for young vocabulary sophisticates.

Just from the quirky title and illustration—a winged alarm clock—on the cover, readers get a hint of the delightful rhymes to be found inside. Bold, colorful graphics, emphasized by the liberal use of black and framed with plenty of white, present an object on the right-hand page while the text on the left identifies it. The objects are mainly run-of-the-mill: “Alarm Clock,” “Fresh Orange Juice,” “Fingernails,” “Fluffy Bath Towel.” The fun starts when readers unfold the gatefold pages beneath the illustrations to discover the object transformed by a very clever rhyming counterpart. “Fresh Orange Juice” becomes “Fresh Orange Goose” (the goose pokes its head out from a glass of orange liquid), and “Fluffy Bath Towel” becomes “Fluffy Bath Owl” (a cross-looking blue owl hangs from a towel rod). Once children have caught on to the rhyming nonsense, the gatefold design will give them time to come up with their own rhymes before revealing the one in the book. Children will squirm in delight when “Cheese on Toast” becomes “Sneeze on Toast” or “Fingernails” become “Fingersnails,” and what child will not salivate at the thought of a “Spoon of Marmalade” becoming “Moon and Starmalade”? The different glimpses of a human—a face, a hand, feet—in the illustrations are of a white person.

Wedding elegant design with witty and funny rhymes and challenging children to play with words make this book a winner. (Board book. 3-6)

Pub Date: May 11, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-7148-7639-9

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Phaidon

Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS

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AN ABC OF EQUALITY

by Chana Ginelle Ewing ; illustrated by Paulina Morgan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019

Adults will do better skipping the book and talking with their children.

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Social-equity themes are presented to children in ABC format.

Terms related to intersectional inequality, such as “class,” “gender,” “privilege,” “oppression,” “race,” and “sex,” as well as other topics important to social justice such as “feminism,” “human being,” “immigration,” “justice,” “kindness,” “multicultural,” “transgender,” “understanding,” and “value” are named and explained. There are 26 in all, one for each letter of the alphabet. Colorful two-page spreads with kid-friendly illustrations present each term. First the term is described: “Belief is when you are confident something exists even if you can’t see it. Lots of different beliefs fill the world, and no single belief is right for everyone.” On the facing page it concludes: “B is for BELIEF / Everyone has different beliefs.” It is hard to see who the intended audience for this little board book is. Babies and toddlers are busy learning the names for their body parts, familiar objects around them, and perhaps some basic feelings like happy, hungry, and sad; slightly older preschoolers will probably be bewildered by explanations such as: “A value is an expression of how to live a belief. A value can serve as a guide for how you behave around other human beings. / V is for VALUE / Live your beliefs out loud.”

Adults will do better skipping the book and talking with their children. (Board book. 4-6)

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-78603-742-8

Page Count: 52

Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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BABY LOVES SCIENTISTS

YOU CAN BE ANYTHING!

From the Baby Loves… series

by Ruth Spiro ; illustrated by Irene Chan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2019

So rocket science can be fun.

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

If they haven’t already thought about their futures (and they probably haven’t), toddlers and preschoolers might start planning after perusing this cheerful first guide to scientific careers. Plump-cheeked, wide-eyed tykes with various skin and hair colors introduce different professions, including zoologist, meteorologist, aerospace engineer, and environmental scientist, depicted with cues to tip readers off to what the jobs entail. The simple text presents the sometimes-long, tongue-twisting career names while helpfully defining them in comprehensible terms. For example, an environmental scientist “helps take care of our world,” and a zoologist is defined as someone who “studies how animals behave.” Scientists in general are identified as those who “study, learn, and solve problems.” Such basic language not only benefits youngsters, but also offers adults sharing the book easy vocabulary with which to expand on conversations with kids about the professions. The title’s ebullient appearance is helped along by the typography: The jobs’ names are set in all caps, printed in color and in a larger font than the surrounding text, and emphasized with exclamation points. Additionally, the buoyant watercolors feature clues to what scientists in these fields work with, such as celestial bodies for astronomers. The youngest listeners won’t necessarily get all of this, but the book works as a rudimentary introduction to STEM topics and a shoutout to scientific endeavors.

So rocket science can be fun. (Informational picture book. 3-6)