Perfect Picture Book Friday/ Hello Baby!

Hi Readers! 🙂 

This is my third blog post of books that made it into the First Author for Spoonfuls of Stories Contest and was distributed into the boxes  of Cheerios to millions of parents to encourage them to read aloud to their children. They know that reading aloud to kids in their formative years increases their chances of reading in later life, and doing better in school because of it. I am so taken up with this promotion that I am featuring an  author, Ron Rauss, who won that contest in 2010 with his book finally coming out June 2012 called, “Can I Just Take a Nap.” I will also continue featuring Cheerios books on Friday as long as they’re not on Susanna’s list already. For as my readers know I try very hard to only review books that haven’t made the list yet. So grab your donut and coffee and read on. 

Title: Hello Baby!

Written by: Mem Fox

Illustrated by: Steve Jenkins

Published by: Simon and Schuster , 2009, Fiction

Themes: Love, Mother Love, Identity, humor, rhyme

First Few Sentences: Hello, Baby! Who are you? Are you a monkey with clever toes? Perhaps you’re a porcupine, twitching his nose. Are you an Eagle, exploring the skies?  Perhaps you’re a gecko with rolling eyes.

Resources: for Mem Fox’s own blog and web site go here: http://www.memfox.net/welcome.html. She explains her website for teachers parents and writer’s. There is a section where she tells us how to read a book aloud. And she reads several books aloud on her web site. About Hello Baby she says it is an African book because all the animals are from Africa and she devotes the book to African friends. There is an Australian version, too, now. A guide for children’s books including Mem Fox’s is http://childrensbooksguide.com/general/hello-baby.

Summary of book: There is a series of searching questions asking the identity of the baby when finally the answer is given; that of the baby being a mother’s treasure. Yes, I told the end. I kept thinking of how to explain this book to some one who hadn’t read it and I had to give it away. The rhythm is singsong perfect and will lull a child to sleep.  There just wasn’t any other way to describe the book. It’s a very simple book with just three or four words on a page. The illustrations explain the text better than I could without them showing just the snout or tail of the animal that the mother alludes to.

Why I love it: Maybe I should have done this selection last week closer to Mother’s Day because it is a mother talking to her baby. It is a precious tale with a precious ending. Sweet and universal. And because the book is so universal it speaks to everyone and is perfect for sharing with your preschooler to reassure him/her that she/he is loved. And the humor in it is great because it saves it from being too soapy, too overbearing. The humor makes this story cute. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to bring a message to the table/ (or bed if you’re reading as bedtime book). The illustrations are cut paper which make them seem to be like three D.

For more books with resources please visit Perfect Picture Books at Susanna Leonard Hill’s blog. And if you’d like to be whisked away through cyber space to the resource page and the list of more marvelous recommended perfect picture books just click on the perfect picture book badge on the right. 🙂

Weigh in at the comments if you think you’d like this book and why. 🙂

Now I’d like to change my course in the road. I’d like to join in the Random Act of Kindness BlITZ at http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/ . I’d like to   take advantage of their BlITz and show my mentor Barbara Carducci an act of kindness. I’d like to give her a shout out. She was introduced to me by Sue Walls an children’s book author of ‘Backyard Birds of the Piedmont” before she published her books.  Bobbi is the director of the Young Voices    Foundation and has been published several times. Her latest book, “Storee Wryter gets a Dog” is doing very well in the schools and Bobbi is teaching a writing class almost every week.  Please stop by and show Bobbi at http://Schizophrenicwriter.wordpress.com/  how awesome she is! And then if you know someone special that you’d randomly like to acknowledge, don’t be shy. Send them an email, give them a shout out, or show your appreciation in another way, Kindness makes the world go round. 🙂

Bobbi, for my gift I am offering to critique the first three chapters of your next book. I know you’ve been working hard on it. 

For those of you like me are joining late go to the bookshelf muse and grab your gift from them. They are wonderful amplification of their thesauruses on emotion. Click on over, join the Blitz and grab your gift. Don’t forget to link up to the linky link so others can get to know you.