Roar! by Margaret Mayo

Roar! by Margaret Mayo, illustrated by Alex Ayliffe

Rating: 4.5 stars

We are the dorky family who reads while we eat. Are you surprised? I guess you're not really supposed to do this or eat while watching TV; one should focus on the food only and chew deliberately and do only one thing at a time. Oh well. Chalk it up to another thing I need to work on to be Mommy of the Year. Maybe next year. Anyway, Roar! is one of the books that we started reading when we started reading while eating. Both my kids (3 years and 16 months-ish) sit in booster seats and I strap them in so they can't go anywhere (hey, it works for us) and then we eat and read, read, read. They love it! I usually let them choose one book each, and then I choose a few. I've got to be sure these books are interesting to both of them, so we rarely read a Berenstein Bear book or something with a whole lot of text. Then, to encourage eating, I won't turn the page until they've taken a bite or spoonful of whatever they're eating. I often pretend to peek at the next page and get excited about what I see so they are motivated to "help me get there." Even if we've read the book dozens of times, this still works. For now!

Anyway, the book.

It's a good one! Ayliffe steals the show a bit with the illustrations--so bright and interesting and fun. This is just a parade of animals and what they do: elephants mud-wallow, giraffes stretch, tigers prowl, zebras run. That's my favorite page, the zebra one, though Ben's favorite is the hippo page because once my husband made a hilarious hippo sound, so they make me do it again. PLUS, as an added bonus, the hippo has his mouth wide open as only hippos can do, and Ben likes to "feed" the hippo whatever he is eating. Yes, I'm sure to wipe off the page before returning it to the library. Only to check it out again. And again. And again. It is a poem, which I always appreciate (maybe because I can't write a poem to save my life), and the text is great. There's a new word for Lorelei on every page, and one that is easy to explain, like prowl or fierce.

This is a great, great book!