February 2010

  • Piggies in a Polka

    By sarajean on 2/17/10 7:56am
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    If you’re looking for a new children’s book with plenty of whimsy, fantastic art, and a fun rhyming scheme—not to mention something with dancing, polka- playing pigs in it—look no further than Kathi Appelt’s Piggies in a Polka.

    The story has a very simple premise: the yearly hootenanny for piggies all over the world is about to take place in one central barn location. Of course, it’s not just a barnyard boogie, or even a simple polka night; it’s also a roundelay, a piggy rigadoon, and even a piggy mosh pit. In short, every musical instrument and style has a place in this fun story.

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  • The Five Little Monkeys Series

    By sarajean on 2/4/10 1:30am
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    Most of us are familiar with the old nursery song, “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” A popular choice for finger play with toddlers or jumping rope verses, it’s a silly countdown featuring a group of unruly monkeys who jump on the bed at night, one by one falling off and bumping their heads. After each bump, their frustrated mother phones the doctor, who naturally tells her to make her tribe stop wearing out their bed springs already.

    Author Eileen Christlelow has taken the five little monkeys concept and turned it into an entire series for little kids. Her adorable title book, featuring fun and quirky art completed in inks and watercolors, really brings the old rhyme to life, with personified monkeys wearing clothes and behaving just like children would.

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  • The Alphabet Keeper

    By sarajean on 2/3/10 7:22am
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    Mary Murphy’s The Alphabet Keeper is a delightfully funny story about a woman who keeps the alphabet caged in her home. The trench coat-wearing, angry-looking woman is a unique villain, a far cry from the usual rotund moustached man. Keeping all of her letters caged in the dark under lock and key while she grumbles in her chair, she is very much unlike most other villains I’ve at least ever come across!

    One day, as the letter keeper is cleaning out the letters’ cage—very much like a bird cage with an even tighter lack of elbow room—they all escape out the window. Off they go on an adventure, misleading the keeper and taking her on a wild goose chase. The best part of the adventure is that the letters, with their newly found freedom, can add or subtract themselves from anything and change it to something else!

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  • I Kissed the Baby!

    By sarajean on 2/3/10 7:03am
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    Mary Murphy’s books are well-known for their round, friendly illustrations and timeless stories. Whether simple for very young ones or more intricate for older readers, we can always expect a twist, some humor, and some sweetness in her books.

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  • I Am Dodo

    By sarajean on 2/3/10 1:51am
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    Kae Nishimura’s I Am Dodo is a humorous children’s picture book that assumes that one dodo did, in fact, survive extinction—because he is so very, very clever—and, after several years of worldly traveling, is now living in New York.

    Everyone assumes that he isn’t a dodo because dodo birds are extinct; so he can pretty much do as he likes. However, one professor maintains that there is still a dodo somewhere on Earth and that one day he will find proof. Everyone laughs at him, of course, except for his dog, Spotty. When the professor finally does run into the dodo bird, he is overjoyed and knows he just has to capture it for his long-awaited proof; however, the bird proves to be too clever to catch.

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