Hindley (The Best Thing about a Puppy, 1998, etc.) offers an open invitation to toddlers to get physical in this joyful celebration of body parts from head to toe. In simple, buoyant verse, and illustrated with equal expression, accessibility, and incitement, Hindley introduces the ears, eyes, the nose, toes, fingers, hands, arms, mouths, lips, necks, and knees. Hide behind those fingers, wiggle and waggle those toes, “legs are for leaping and jumping and dancing. Legs are for kicking and skipping and hopping. Legs are for stomping and suddenly’stopping.” The pleasure of movement flows from these pages, and the pleasure of company: “And I’ll tell you again—Kisses are little, smiles are wide—A hug is a bundle with you inside.” (Picture book. 2-5)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7636-0440-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
Between midnight and noon a family sleeps, wakes, then leaves the house to the pets and a pair of enterprising mice, while a grandfather clock sounds hourly “dings” and “dongs.” Children can practice an increasingly old-fashioned skill by manipulating clock hands on the cover as they listen to Behrman’s rhymed text and view Takahashi’s spacious, twisty domestic scenes. It’s an adequate second choice, after Dan Harper’s Telling Time with Big Mama Cat (1998); that book has a less generic story line, and is designed so that the clock face folds out. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5804-4
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
PLB 0-688-15996-6 The familiar plight of the smallest is the subject of this picture book from Keller (Brave Horace, 1998, etc.), featuring a baby bear, who is smaller than his mother, father, and siblings. Jacob is frustrated when he can’t reach the cookie jar, see himself in the mirror, or climb to the top of the jungle gym. Papa and Mama tell him he must wait to grow bigger, but Jacob hates waiting. Paint marks on a tree replace the traditional notches in a door frame to mark Jacob’s height. No matter how many vegetables he eats, he doesn’t grow; when the snows come, his mark is buried in a drift. After the snow melts, the reassuring ending finds Jacob grown, not only in stature but in maturity. The apple-cheeked characters are round and cuddly, while the homey, pen-and-watercolor scenes are ever-affable. At their center, the demonstrative Jacob is an everychild, learning to find joy in small measures. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-15995-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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