Saturday, January 26, 2008

Sheep in a Shop


Christie suggested the Sheep in a Jeep series in board books. This is a great series by Nancy Shaw and illustrated by Margot Apple. I picked up Sheep in a Shop as an example.

The two greatest things about these books are the rhyming and the characters. The text uses all kinds of clever rhyme-end rhyme, internal rhyme, or almost random rhyme. It makes it so fun to read, if not a bit challenging to read smoothly. For example, "Sheep find rackets. Sheep find rockets. Sheep find jackets full of pockets."

The characters are so lively. There are five sheep trying to solve a problem-how to buy a birthday present with no money. On each page every sheep shows some character. There is no such thing as a sheep just hanging around on a page because there need to be five.

These books are fun for reading to a group because of the boisterous text, and they're also good for one-on-one reading to explore the many details in the illustrations.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a request for a type of book, Larry: Maya's cousin Addy loves books with real photographs. Unfortunately, one of her favorites (called Baby Talk)has a very disturbing 'negative' image of a dark-complexioned child: the only one in the book is also the only unhappy child in the book!) This got me to thinking: do you know of any good culturally-diverse board books with real images (ideally of babies?) I'd love any suggestions!
Kati

Larry Longard said...

Hmm, I’m really surprised that the publishers of that book weren’t more careful. Well, I looked back at Babies (January 13), and it portrays all kinds of people taking good care of their babies (including fathers). So look back at that one. Also, I haven’t seen it myself, but check out Carrie’s suggestion in her comment under Yes (January 22). We’ll keep looking. Anyone else have a recommendation for Kati?