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JUST FOR ME, JUST FOR YOU by Eds. of Nick Jr. Family Magazine

JUST FOR ME, JUST FOR YOU

by Eds. of Nick Jr. Family Magazine

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85963-5
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Aimed at parents with children who are just toddling into literacy, this collection of reprints from Nick Jr. offers 11 short poems or domestic episodes that lend themselves to shared reading. Some, such as Sarah Albee’s comic “Don’t Wake the Baby!,” illustrated by Marjorie Wunsch, are wordless sequences; in the rest, short lines of text are punctuated by repeated, easily repeatable words or phrases in a larger type size: “Summer sunshine beats / on sizzling city streets. / There’s no need to wear a lot. . . . / It’s HOT, HOT, HOT!” A different author and illustrator collaborate on each selection; Jack Prelutsky, Jean Marzollo, Olivier Dunrea, and Chris Raschka provide most of the star power, but both the writing and the bright cartoon art is consistent throughout in tone and quality, without sudden jumps in readability or visual left turns. For lap-sit partners who aren’t yet up to meatier collections, such as Mary Ann Hoberman’s You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You (2001), this makes a perfect way to promote reading as a participatory, social act. (Collection. 4-6)