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KID TEA by Elizabeth Ficocelli

KID TEA

by Elizabeth Ficocelli & illustrated by Glin Dibley

Pub Date: March 1st, 2007
ISBN: 0-7614-5333-4
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish

This bathtime rhyme will tickle young children, though the premise is stretched further than it really goes. Based on the day’s activity, each night the bath water becomes a differently colored “kid tea,” from Monday’s mud brown through popsicle purple, paint yellow, lipstick red and grass green, to bright blue after Saturday’s baking makes for a “muffins-pies-and-jam day / berries-on-my-hands day.” Dibley steeps two children with oversized heads and fixed grins in successive tubs, sometimes alone, sometimes together, and uses exaggeratedly bright, opaque hues for the resulting “teas.” After Sunday, a “go-to-church-and-sing day / steeple-bells-will-ring day,” the water’s clear, “but just you wait till Monday!” As an inducement to climb into the tub, this makes a bouncy alternative to the likes of Robert Neubecker’s Beasty Bath (2005) or the frothy sentiments in Neil Philip’s The Fish Is Me: Bathtime Rhymes, illus by Claire Henley (2002). (Picture book. 5-7)