Baby books Archives - Page 4 of 12

Love Song for a Baby

by Marion Dane Bauer
illustrated by Dan Andreasen

This is again, one of those books my toddler and I disagree on. I like the concept and the pictures are just beautiful. My little girl does like all the images of darling little babies, but she gets impatient with the text, turns the pages too fast and never lets me finish reading it. So after just two attempts, it\’s going back to the library.

It\’s a lovely little book of verse, a parent describing to their child how the baby arrived and how much they loved him right from the start. The words tell of little things babies do, attributes they have, tender care the parents give, all reiterating the unconditional love. Through the pictures you see the baby gradually getting older until in the last one he appears to be a year old, walking on his own, looking proud of himself and very charming. I just can\’t say enough how much I love the rich paintings, but as my kid simply won\’t sit through the book and we\’re returning it without once having made it all the way through, it ends up getting a low rating here.

Rating: 2/5 …….. 32 pages, 2002

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Baby books, Current Reads

Where Does Maisy Live?

by Lucy Cousins

Cute Maisy the mouse entertains kids in an interactive board book where they must discover where she lives by lifting flaps to see who is in different kinds of homes. I like that Maisy is pictured wearing muddy boots, and the pages all have farm animals. Along the way toddlers learn where the animals stay- horses in the stable, pigs in a sty, dog in a doghouse, chickens in the coop, etc.- and the noises they make. At the end there\’s a regular house with a door to open, where you at last find Maisy. My daughter likes to actually knock on this last door with her little fist and say \”open!\” before lifting the flap. Very fun and educational little book.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 12 pages, 2000

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Baby books, Current Reads

Baby Sounds

by Joy Allen

As an adorable little baby goes through her daily routine, the typical sounds she encounters are named. Waking to bird song out the window, banging pots and pans on the floor while mom does dishes in the kitchen, playing with a toy phone, jangling keys, riding in the car (honk honk!), etc. My toddler\’s favorite page is the double-spread showing kids on the swings, their faces pictures of glee. The pictures are nice and soft, done with pastels I believe. The baby\’s teddy bear accompanies her in each activity, and my little one has just learned to start looking for these kind of consistencies on every page. It ends (appropriately) with the child splashing in the bath, and getting a bedtime kiss. Cute.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 14 pages, 2012

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Baby books, Current Reads

Opposites

with Polar Animals
by Melanie Watt

We seem to have quite a few baby books in the house right now that feature arctic animals, this is one of them. My toddler always asks to see the walrus! I like this little book. It illustrates the opposite concepts very well, and introduces the child to a certain set of animals pictured in their environment as well. My favorite pages are the ones showing open/closed– a puffin with its beak in the different positions, light/heavy– a walrus sitting on one end of a tipped ice floe, with a tern on the other end up in the air, inside/outside– two owlets hatching out of eggs, one peeking through a hole in the shell, and summer/winter– showing the dark and light pelage arctic foxes take on in the alternate seasons. The illustrations are clearly depicted and cute as well.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 22 pages, 2003

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Baby books, Current Reads

Goodnight Baby

by Cheryl Willis Hudson

Sometimes my kid\’s favorite board books are the simplest ones. This one, just a few pages long, shows a toddler winding up his day. With brief rhyming text it describes how after playing with friends the child (appropriately pictured looking tired and rubbing his eyes) has a bath and snuggles with a bedtime story before sleeping in his crib. It\’s a nice little reiteration of bedtime routine, doesn\’t have much else going on. I guess it\’s just the familiarity of repeating what happens before bed that makes it appealing to my daughter. Plus she now likes to try and find the stuffed animal toy included in each picture. She seemed to think it odd or amusing at first, exclaiming \”monkey!\” emphatically, but then I explained that the monkey is Baby\’s friend like a teddy bear, and now she doesn\’t sound so surprised to see him there anymore. The pictures are simple and pleasant, and have just enough detail to entertain a child looking for more to think about- what are the children doing with the toys, for example, or what does Baby do with each of the objects in his bath- so it can be a little more engaging if you want, but is also nice and brief when you\’re looking for a quick bedtime story.

Rating: 2/5 10 pages, 1992

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Baby books, Current Reads

Kipper\’s Book of Weather

by Mick Inkpen

Another simple, yet effective board book. Kipper\’s Weather simply depicts and names different weather patterns and shows the cute puppy doing appropriate activities for each. Basking in sunshine, splashing in rain puddles, sliding on ice, rolling snowballs, etc. My favorite pictures are the ones where he\’s peering through obscuring fog, or holding a metal trash can lid over his head to ward off hailstones. And my daughter likes the pretty rainbow at the end, which spans two pages. I always make little sounds to illustrate each activity or bit of weather- splash for the rain, plink plink for the hailstones, brrrr in the snow and so on. Recently my little girl has begun pointing out and naming the weather in its true context as well, she says \” \’nowing\” for the snow and \”rain\” very distinctly. I think she would name a rainbow as well, she says the word for the page in the book but we haven\’t seen one in real life for a very long time!

Rating: 3/5 …….. 16 pages, 1994

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Baby books, Current Reads

Touch and Feel Ponies

by DK Publishing

My kid really likes ponies right now- she can even make the cutest whinny noise when you ask her \”what does the horsie say?\” So this board book was a hit right off. Like all the other Touch and Feel books, it has different textures for your child to explore- hairy pony manes and furry coats, smooth prize ribbons, a closely woven blanket, and so on. My toddler particularly likes noticing things the ponies have in common with herself- they eat apples (pictured on one page in a bushel basket on the ground), get covered with blankets and even wear socks. She pointed this out to me on the back cover, where a pony getting loaded into a trailer has protective coverings on its lower legs. \”Pony sockies!\” my little girl said excitedly. Yes, it really did look like the horse was wearing socks.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 10 pages, 1999

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Baby books, Current Reads

Architecture Animals

by Michael Crosbie and Steve Rosenthal

Of all the architecture board books by Crosbie and Rosenthal we\’ve found, this one featuring animals is my favorite. The distinct photographs show three-dimensional animals featured on or near buildings: statues and relief carvings are the norm but there are also eagle gargoyles, a neon owl sign, a duck that is an entire building in and of itself, a grasshopper weathervane and a tortoise holding up a column. My daughter and I both really like the bronze frieze from the Chanin building in New York, which shows a myriad of sea life- the bit of it pictured in this book has three bass swimming among some plants. It\’s just beautiful. Another page I really like shows walrus heads decorating the side of a building in Seattle. I just find it really intriguing- walrus! And my kid is really into walruses herself lately, probably because we have several board books that feature arctic animals. She always insists on turning first to the pages with penguins (\”pen-wins\”) and walrus (\”wall-wrie\”).

But back to the architecture book! Each page has a little caption that tells the name of the building and its location – they\’re from all over the world- and a fun little poem or verse describing something about the animals (Bubble, bubble / In bronze pieces / Swim some fish / Of assorted species). My toddler usually has no patience to hear the rhymes so I just read one or two lines that give the most basic description, or just name the featured animals for her. A very cool little book.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 24 pages, 1995

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Baby books, Current Reads

Opposites

by Keith Kimberlin

This board book uses puppies to demonstrate opposites. It does a good job with some of them- light and dark colors, groups of few and many, and the front and back on the covers are especially cute. A lot of the other pages kinda bug me, however, because they just don\’t seem to illustrated the concepts well. I will tell you of them.

The fast puppy is sitting on a scooter, looks like he\’s going for a ride- my toddler gets a kick out of this. But the slow puppy next to him isn\’t moving at all, just sitting there. Wouldn\’t it be better if he was at least walking?

The short and tall spread shows a little chihuahua next to a german shepherd- but the shepherd is pictured so large his lower legs and feet are off the page, and he\’s sitting. It looks almost exactly like the big and small spread, just with different dogs. I imagine it would have worked better to show a dog with short legs- like a dachshund or basset- next to a dog with very long legs, like a greyhound. And both standing up.

The in and out page shows a puppy in a box, then the same puppy just sitting on the bare ground. I think the concept would be stronger if the box was shown in the second picture. The awake and asleep spread show a fat little puppy sleeping in a chair on the beach, and then a different pup just looking at you. I think showing the same pup in the awake picture would make it stronger. Incidentally, the sleeping pup is a pinkish wrinkled shar pei, and my daughter seems to think he looks like a pig. She always says \”oink\” or \”piggie\”!

So that\’s me being very critical, just because I kept picturing how these pages could have been done better. But it doesn\’t really matter; my kid loves this book because it\’s full of cute puppies!

Rating: 2/5 …….. 22 pages, 2006

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Baby books, Current Reads

Apple Farmer Annie

by Monica Wellington

We found this one at random browsing in the public library, and it\’s currently a favorite- both with my daughter and myself. The book seems quite simple, but has a lot going on. With simple text and bright-colored pictures, it shows how Annie tends to her orchard, picks and sorts the produce, turns the apples into salable goods, drives them to a farmer\’s market in the city, and sells them for her living. There are so many things I find attractive about this book. First of all, it has a female business-owner as the main character. It shows a sequence of events, where apples and their products come from, and how (via the illustrations) many of those are made. The text doesn\’t address this, but if you look carefully at the pictures you can see all the tools and deduce the basic process in making the cider, applesauce, baked goods, etc. My daughter is too young to appreciate this part, but with an older child I can imagine talking about the pictures in more detail to explain how those things are done. Each page also has a little dog and cat somewhere- this pleases my toddler, who loves to point out where \”puppy!\” and \”cat!\” are at each turn- except for the pages where Annie takes her apples into the city, when the cat sensibly stays at home!

Rating: 5/5 …….. 32 pages, 2004

Tags: 5/5- Loved It, Baby books, Current Reads

Tag: Baby books

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