Big Cat and Hippos in the Yard...

 Big Cat
by Ethan Long
32 pages; ages 4-8
Holiday House, 2016

Meet Big Cat. He's a real member of the family. He naps, hugs... he can even fly (with help from one of his people). But mostly, Big Cat has fun.

Each spread of this book presents a single easy-to-read sentence that begins, "Big Cat can...." The story comes in the various activities that Big Cat gets caught up in - some not by his choice. Illustrations are large cartoons that don't distract from the text.

Not only is is a great book for early readers, it's a good model for budding young authors who want to write a story about their own pets.

A Hippo in Our Yard
by Liza Donnelly
32 pages; ages 4-7
Holiday House, 2016

Mom, we have a hippo in our yard. 

I love the way this book begins - with a simple statement of observation. Of course, mom doesn't believe Sally, who takes lettuce out to feed the hippo. Sally returns a moment later to pester her father.

Dad, we have a tiger in our tree!

I also like that the story is told entirely through dialog, with Sally's voice in red type and other family members in black. Even though it's not an "easy reader", this is a book that young readers could pick up on. There's lots of repetition, with Sally saying "Come see!", the sentences are short, and the illustrations show what is happening in the text. And while her family members don't believe her, Sally has reason to say there are wild animals in the back yard.

This is a great book to read before, after, or while driving in the car to the zoo.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Yaks Yak

Yaks Yak ~ Animal Word Pairs
by Linda Sue Park; illus by Jennifer Black Reinhardt
40 pages; age 4-7
Clarion Books, 2016


Yaks yak.
Bugs bug bugs.
Flounders flounder.

This is a book crammed with wordplay: animals and the things they might do, if they lived in Linda Sue Park's universe. Yaks would sit around talking. Bugs would annoy their buggy friends. And flounders (a flat kind of fish) would flail helplessly because that's another definition of "flounder".

It's a simple structure - noun + verb - made more fun because both noun and verb are the same word.

What I like: The improbability of it. The imaginative illustrations of steers in bumper cars "steering" and crows boasting (crowing) about their accomplishments. And that there's a glossary that defines where the animals' names came from and the meaning of the "action" word. For example: a "kid" is a child, but "kid" also means to joke.

Review copy provided by publisher.

Skunk on a String

Skunk on a String

by Thao Lam

40 pages; ages 4-7

Owlkids Books, 2016

theme: imagination, adventure, animal tale

It's really hard to begin with opening lines from a wordless book, so I'll begin with the first lines from the jacket blurb:

It's a Bird!

It's a Plane!

It's a ... Skunk??

This is a tale of adventure and intrigue that begins when a hapless skunk finds himself tied to the string of a balloon. Perhaps he was watching the parade, or perhaps he wanted to join in... but he finds himself floating up, up, and away. Past apartments and construction sites, through the zoo, into traffic, under water until - finally - he lands on the tip top of a Ferris wheel. When he unties himself he realizes that he misses flying.

What I like about this book: Usually I avoid wordless books, but this one caught me by surprise. I think it's the art: gorgeous collage work using textured papers in a variety of dots and stripes and florals. The illustrations are a visual feast, and one can spend a lot of time exploring details. The other thing I like: the story is so well told by the artwork that you don't need to struggle to say what's going on. 

Beyond the book:

Check out the book trailer- it's a lot of fun.

Imagine a balloon ride.  If you grabbed on to the string of a balloon and went floating up, up, up, where would you go? What would you see? Make a map or draw a picture to show your adventure.

Play with paper art. Make some collages using different kinds of paper. Maybe you'll want to use papers found in the recycling bin, or bits of wrapping paper too small to be useful. Or maybe you'll want to buy some patterned origami or scrapbook paper for your picture. Think about ways to add texture: handmade papers, corrugated cardboard, sandpaper, patterned duct tape... Have fun and create art to tell a story from your own adventure. 

Today we're joining PPBF (perfect picture book Friday), an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review copy provided by the publisher.