Five Little Monkeys... by Eileen Christelow

Five Little Monkeys...  by Eileen Christelow

Rating: Overall, about 4.5 stars

These books are fantastic go-to books for reading aloud.  While they aren't super special treasures or books with priceless lessons sewn with rich words and creative characters, they are fun, engaging, and reliable.  Those are all good things!  I've put the "treasury" of books on the left; this is a great gift for a 3- or 4-year old, boy or girl.  We've really enjoyed these books, and they are always standbys if I need to check out a few more books from the library. 

One thing is curious about the books: where's Dad?  Apparently, he's out of the picture; there's no mention of him in any book, so only Mama is left to tend to her five offsprings.  Gulp!

Here are a few sentences on each book:

Five Little Monkeys Bake a Birthday Cake  The five monkeys decide to bake Mama a birthday cake; they wake early and make the cake, but they are so excited to follow the recipe that several add in the required baking soda, eggs, oil, etc.  While it bakes they go upstairs to make mama a present (with every tool imaginable...this is a good example of GroupThink!), only to return when they smell something burning.  Firemen arrive, but instead of putting out a fire they help ice the cake, which they eat together even though Mama's birthday is actually tomorrow.  This makes Lorelei and Ben giggle everytime.

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed  We all know how this one goes, and when I got this book as a gift when Lorelei was a baby it gathered dust on the shelf.  But when Ben was around 18 months we read it almost daily...the kids realized what was going to happen, so predicting it was fun and easy, and they could quickly fill in the words in the text.  But it does encourage bed-jumping, something I don't frown upon unless it's right at bedtime.

Five Little Monkeys Play Hide and Go Seek  This might be Lorelei's favorite.  It is a poem--I wish all these books were--and the monkeys play hide and go seek with Lulu, their sitter, while Mama goes out dancing (good for her!).  They hide inside, and then outside, and then in their beds.  This is a counting book--Lulu counts first to ten, then 25, and then to 100.  Lorelei likes to count along with her, so this is a good book to encourage counting to those high numbers (we like to do that in the car, too).

Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car  This is another I-hope-my-kids-don't-do-that book, but it's pretty safe anyway.  Unless you have paint handy and your kids want to paint your car.  Anyway, Mama wants to sell their old car, but it doesn't have any takers.  While she takes a nap, the monkeys wash it, paint it, then push it down the hill...into the swamp!  There, they convince the alligators to push it back up to the house, and buy the car, too.  Mama and the monkeys go buy a fancy red convertible.  Good ending!  We bought this as a board book at the airport, which was silly--it has way too many words in it for a less-than-2-year-old to sit through.

Five Little Monkeys With Nothing to Do  "Boring" was a bad word when I was growing up, and we don't say it in our house.  So this one isn't my favorite, but it's still a good standby.  The monkeys complain about not having anything to do, so Mama suggests they clean up their very messy room, get washed up, pick flowers for their grandmother's visit.  They get muddy during the last activity, so they go and change, which a) gets everything messy again and b) gives them more things to do!

Five Little Monkeys Go Shopping  Another math book.  This one is actual addition and subtraction, done in a funny way.  Mama goes shopping, but keeps gaining and losing monkeys, depending on if her monkeys wander off with a friend or if a friend wanders off to be with her brood. 

Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree  We've not read this one!  Have you?