Yoo-Hoo, Lady Bug! by Mem Fox

Yoo-Hoo, Lady Bug! by Mem Fox, illustrated by Laura Ljungkvist

Rating: 4 stars

When Lorelei was about 2 1/2, I read a book aimed at parents by Mem Fox called Reading Magic.  In this book, she talks about the huge emotional and intellectual impact reading aloud to children has on their own ability to read and their own intellectual development.  I read that and was completely inspired to share my own love of books with our kids, and to record some of those little adventures with books here on this blog.

It was with Mem Fox's books that I started.  While we vacationed as a family to the beach three and a half years ago, when Lorelei was nearly three, Ben was some months over one, and Kiefer was a conversation yet to be held, I wrote my first blog post about Koala Lou.  It is a delightful book about the love a mother has for her baby, regardless of whether she wins or loses.

Here's my 500th post, and I'm returning to Mem Fox as a way to thank her.  Life always come full circle anyway...

And while I'm paying tribute to Mem Fox, it really is illustrator Laura Ljungkvist who shines in this book.  The text is a simple little rhyme inviting us, the readers--and you'll be hunting right alongside your child--for the lady bug in each picture.  And those pictures are gorgeous invitations to forget everything else going on around you and dive right in to hunt for the silly little ladybug hiding from view.


The pictures are like our playroom at the end of the day: full!  Full of toys, slightly messy, proof that fun has been had.  And Ladybug stays silly til the end, when your kiddo will spot her zooming away in a yellow toy car.



P.S.  Fun fact: Yoo-Hoo, Ladybug was actually written and published as Yoo-Hoo, Ladybird in Fox's native Australia.   Clearly, we Yanks a) get it all wrong and b) demand the book be written for us!

Hide & Seek by Il Sung Na

Hide & Seek by Il Sung Na

Rating: 4 stars

I really relish the moments when my older kids come sit with me and Kiefer and read with us.  Often they show him parts of a book that he has not seen before.  Sometimes they show me parts of a book that I have not seen before.

Kiefer is almost 2 1/2, and he's just getting into look-and-finds, a category of books with which Ben was obsessed.  Whereas look-and-finds that I've seen dozens of times before are pretty tedious,  a new one brings a fresh challenge.  There can be something really fun about it.

That's how it was with Hide & Seek.  I first read the book to Kiefer and we both liked it: A simple tale where some animal friends play hide and seek.  Elephant counts while his friends all run and hide.  The illustrations are bright and whimsical, the animals are each playful and unique.  Elephant finds them all, except chameleon.  Chameleon finds them.

It wasn't until Ben came to sit with us that I realized that the sly, clever Chameleon is hiding in each page.  Il Sung Na colors his skin in a bunch of fun, interesting ways, allowing him to camouflage himself perfectly.  So, on another read of the book, Ben and Kiefer and I also hunted for Chameleon.  The three of us had a great time silently looking, pointing quietly at the little lizard when we found him in an encouraging oh-good-job-Kiefer way, rather than a competitive I-found-it-first-ha! way.

It was just one of those sweet moments on the sofa with both my boys and one good book.

Beach Ball by Peter Sis

Beach Ball by Peter Sis

Rating: 4.5 stars

We went to the library last week to get some books for our fall beach trip and happened upon this one.  Since we liked Fire Truck by Peter Sis, I went to see if there were any other books by him that we might like.  How perfect to find this one!  What wasn't perfect was not realizing how great a car book it really was...until we got down to the beach.  Lorelei could have easily studied this book for an hour in the car, which would have given me only four other hours to fill with something else.

The book is a look-and-find, but not of the usual variety.  The story line which hardly exists at all is just that a little girl's beach ball gets swept up by the wind and she chases it across the beach, through all of the pages of the book.  On each page is a different theme of things you need to find.  On one page are shapes, so you can see how many triangles you can find or just how many different shapes exist.  On another page are numbers, and you count all the different things--that was Lorelei's favorite page.  On another is a too-easy maze and on the trickiest page is the alphabet.  The reader is challenged to find something that starts with each letter of the alphabet.  It's tricky and fun.  It definitely kept my interest for awhile!

This is an old-ish book, printed in 1990, and it definitely could be more than what it is--the book could be bigger and hold more, the illustrations could be more charming and/or funnier, the setting could be different in each book.  I can hardly imagine the awesome result if another illustrator got his or her hands on the idea and ran with it!  I really wish Robert Nuebecker or Rotraut Susanne Berner would do something like this...

Wow! City! by Robert Nuebecker

Wow! City! by Robert Nuebecker

Rating: 4.5 stars

Dorky library confession #253: When I saw that this book was finally en route to our library, and therefore to our library bag, and thus into our very own home for some weeks, I did a Home Alone Macauly Culkin-style  "YESSSSSSSSSS!"

I know, I know.  I'm a dork.  That's okay; I've embraced it.  But I was really excited, because we thoroughly enjoyed Wow! School! and Wow! America! (review for the latter here).  We loved looking through the huge pages, finding the red-haired Izzy and her dog. 

We liked this book because we don't live in the city--and while familiarity is definitely comforting, different is indeed intriguing.  (We went to visit my step-sister in Baltimore last month, and seeing the billboards and train tracks alongside the highway was super cool.) 

So we looked through this book a zillion times while it was in our appreciative possession, watching Izzy and her father travel by plane to New York, where they took a taxi, looked at the fire station, looked up to the tall skyscrapers, and other things.  In fact, pajama-clad Ben (see picture) looked at this book first thing most mornings for three weeks straight!

It's a great, great book, but Wow! America! is definitely the best in my opinion.  But maybe that's because we don't know how this book ends...the last page was ripped out.  Drat!  What, oh what, is the last WOW?  We'll never know... 

In the Town All Year 'Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner

In the Town All Year 'Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner

Rating: 5 look-and-find stars

This past April our family headed to the beach in North Carolina, a five-ish hour drive from our home in Great Falls.  I took 34 books for our kids.  I'm not kidding.  My husband even told me "Let's pack light."  So I did.  Knowing that there would be a washing machine readily available to wash our clothes every night if I wanted, I packed just two or three outfits for all of us.  Knowing that there would be a kitchen full of pots, pans, and Tupperware, I packed just a few toys and puzzles for Lorelei and Ben.

But books?  Who can skimp on books?  I actually hid them in each bag so that Jonathan wouldn't find them.  I put four or five bedtime books in the clothes bag for the kids, and another couple in our bag.  I had a book bag for the ride down there, and then had another book bag for the ride back.  I stuffed a few books under each child's car seat.  I cracked myself up!  I earned a "look" from my husband, which of course made me chuckle a bit.

For the record, we did read all of them many, many times.

But for this past weekend's trip to St Louis to visit my husband's family, we took just one.  This one. 

(Ok, I cannot tell a lie.  We packed two, In the Town All Year 'Round and Planes by Byron Barton that we had checked out from the library so we could read it on the plane.  Then we bought two at the airport's bookstore: Lorelei chose Ladybug Girl at the Beach and Ben chose Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car.)

Anyway, back to this great book.  It's a look-and-find, and is organized by seasons.  There are seven huge, gorgeous pages chock full of little details for each season, and the scenes are the same for each season.  They are, of course, altered according to what is happening in each season.  For example, in the town square picture in Winter, everything is decorated for Christmas; in Spring there's a farmer's market and flowers everywhere; in Summer there are picnics and a flea market with a storm brewing overhead; and in Fall leaves are streaming throughout the picture and geese are flying South.  You get the idea.

Lorelei received the book for her birthday, and, after she and Ben read through it once (and I snapped the picture above) I promptly tucked it away for the airplane ride.  We looked at it for about 30 minutes straight on the flight there and on the flight back, which is pretty good for a 3 year old and a little 19 month old!  Because Ben isn't talking just yet, he can point to things when you ask him to identify stuff.  And there are plenty of hot air balloons, helicopters, tractors, and airplanes--just a few of his favorite things!

We LOVE this book.  Is it bad if I hide it away until we go on our next airplane ride?

Wow! America! by Robert Neubecker

Wow! America! by Robert Neubecker

Rating: 5 patriotic stars

Confession: I'm an Army brat.  Because of that, and because I lived abroad for several years as an adult, I really love and appreciate America.  And I've been to 47 of the 50 states. (Rhode Island, Arkansas, and Alaska, in case you're wondering.)  And when I was little, my parents made the wise decision to really focus on discovering our own country.  When we moved to a new place, my parents would make a point to visit lots of touristy places as well as plenty of out-of-the-way spots.  That meant that when we lived in Hawaii Dad would drag us to Shark's Cove instead of just going to Barber's Point where all our friends would be.  And when we did go on a vacation that didn't involve visiting family back in Erie, Pennsylvania, we went somewhere amazing in this great country. 

And we drove to nearly all of our destinations (except in Hawaii, where inter-island flights called "hops" were the way to go).  Our first stop?  A bookstore.  Hmmm...I was a reader as a child and now my children are readers...

We came across Wow! School! last week at the library; a smart librarian had propped it up on top of the stacks and we picked it up and shoved it in our overflowing, very heavy library bag.  All three of us fell in love with it, especially because Lorelei will start --gasp!-- preschool in the fall.  I'll review that book later...  We ordered Wow! America! the next day and picked it up this morning (when the sitter didn't show up.  Grrr). 

I am in love, love, love with this book!  This is one we might have to buy.  Maybe I'll just suggest to the grandparents that this is a great book...hint, hint... Enter sheepish grin here.

Izzy, the star of all the books in this series (Wow! City! is next on our list), is in all the pages, with her yellow Labrador, too.  And in this book, her little sister Jo.  They scamper across the country.  For me, it was like a journey into my childhood--we moved around a whole lot, plus my husband's from Louisiana and lived in New York City for almost a decade.  So the New Orleans page and the New York page came with an extra story with them.  Then the Grand Canyon, which I've never seen.  It opens up to a third page!  And the cowboys page...well, I do love me a good cowboy book, and I'll take just one page if that's all I'm given.  And the Washington, DC, one is great because we live nearby and my husband works even nearer by. 

And, coincidentally, we leave for Missouri tomorrow, so the pages for the Mississippi River were appreciated and timely.  Finally, my husband and I are going on a leaving-the-kids-with-Grammy trip to the Rocky Mountains, so...wouldn't you know it?  There's a page for the Rocky Mountains!  I couldn't have asked for a better display of the U.S.  Bravo, Neubecker, and thank you for this great one.  I hope more people find it and appreciate it as much as we do.

I just took a bunch of pictures to let you see the great illustrations for yourself.  It is a really great book, with a lot going on, with minimal words so kids like Lorelei who are learning to read can focus on just a few at a time.  Go buy it!  Go check it out!  Trust me!