The illustrations are lovely, and the metaphor of home as the heart of summer in a dark, cold world is just philosophical enough for a young child to appreciate without confusion. I’m sad that the book is apparently out of print but very happy that our library has a copy. 
I’ve yet to see a Priddy book that I don’t enjoy. Unlike the lousy picture above, Roger Priddy’s books are full of bright, sharp, close up pictures of things that make children smile. Smiley has a car book (thanks, Stacia!); Tulip has an animal book, and there are others around here somewhere, I’m sure. One of our favorites, though is Tulip’s go-to car trip book, the wipe clean ABC book. It’s a solid, well constructed board book with 26 pages. It’s just the right size for a child’s lap, and the dry erase marker fits in a handy little cut-out. The pictures are predictably beautiful, and the letters are a nice size. It keeps my girl busy for long stretches of road trips.
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A month or so ago, I took my children to the book store with the purpose of selecting a touch and feel book for Smiley Face. Tulip and I gathered up a stack of options that reached to at least her knee before we plopped the baby down in front of the stack and let him get to work. Smiley Face touched; he felt; he even slobbered a bit. At the end of our visit, he had chosen Millie Moo.
The pages are full of high-contrast animals, and each one is unexpected. There’s no lamb with wooly fleece in this book, though there is a furry fish. A few of the rubbery textures aren’t as, well, textured as I would have liked, but the furry ones are more than I could have hoped for. As much as Smiley loves the textures and pictures, he enjoys the fabric buttons on the cover and the holes in each page even more.
As far as I can tell, it’s hard to go wrong with a Priddy book. We own several, and we love them all. They are bright, wonderfully busy, and generally well constructed. The ones I have from Tulip’s babyhood still look brand new, unlike some of the other brands that are too beaten up to let Smiley handle. My only complaint about this or any Priddy book is the last pages of the book, which are not board book pages like the rest of the book. I wonder why the publishers made that choice. I knew before I even bought the book that those two pages wouldn’t last, and now a month later they are indeed ripped out. Still, I would definitely recommend this book, though I would also recommend neatly removing the last pages before your baby removes them not-so-neatly.
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Tags: touchand feel book, priddy book, millie moo, book, children’s book, review
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Amazon.com: This is the House that Jack Built: Books: Simms Taback
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We have repeatedly checked Simms Tabeck’s The House that Jack Built out of our local library. At this moment, we have the book on tape version in the car. We may break down and buy it at some point. Tulip and I both enjoy the illustrations, and I particularly like that Taback shares a bit of the rhyme’s history at the story’s conclusion. My only complaint is that I’m not at all interested in getting into the topic of the cat killing the rat. I just read that the cat chases the rat to avoid the violence.
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Tags: children’s lit, review, book
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This beautifully illustrated story written by Audrey Wood and illustrated by Don Wood is a perennial favorite at our house. It’s engaging for Tulip, and while I love it just as much as she does, the pleasantly repetitive tale (think of The House that Jack Built‘s sort of repetition) is easy enough to pick up that after a few reads, Mom can “rest her eyes” while still doing the tale justice and keeping the kid glued to the page. It’s a book we’re happy to own in hardback.
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