Picture Book Thursday

I talked Holly into doing an animal edition of Picture Book Thursday since Lilah has so many great penguin books!

The Penguin Who Wanted to Sparkle by Sophie Groves and Kath Smith: This is a sweet, simple tale about Pip, a baby penguin who wants to sparkle. She plays with her friends and discovers that the sunshine makes the snow sparkle. The pages have sparkly bits on them that Lilah loves. The illustrations are lovely, and the story is cute. We picked this up as a bargain book, and I'm glad we did!

Where Is Home, Little Pip? by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman: The team that brought us to wonderful series of books that starts with Bear Snores On tackles penguins. As expected, the illustrations are gorgeous, and the story, of a lost little penguin looking for home, has a happy ending.

Little Penguin's Tale by Audrey Wood: This has Wood's trademark whimsical illustrations, and a really, really funny story. Grand Nanny Penguin decides to tell the youngsters a cautionary tale about a penguin who didn't listen to his Grand Nanny's stories. He goes off and has wonderful adventures, but Grand Nanny gets a bit carried away and says he's eaten by a whale. When the youngsters are horrified, she backtracks, retelling the end. Lilah gets all worked up at the whale part: "Mama! Whale eat Ping in his mouth!" but when I assure her that the whale didn't eat the penguin, she seems fine with it.

Your Personal Penguin is a board book/free song download from Sandra Boynton. Davy Jones of the Monkees sings the sweet song, which is illustrated in the board book as the story of a penguin who just wants to be the hippo's friend. We used to play this song or sing it aloud when Lilah was upset as a baby, and it magically calmed her every time. She still loves it! The song is also on Blue Moo, the fourth musical by Boynton, but the board book is worth having for younger kids.

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Well, Allison tried to talk me into an animal post...but I couldn't settle on one animal. We have a lot of bear books and cat books. But that wasn't exciting me today. So I just started to pick out books that we liked that were animal-related. Turns out I do have a theme! They all started with "L", well, sort of. You'll see below. :-)

Okay, so Ladybugs are not really animals but they are still fun. Two of our ladybug favorites are The Very Lazy Ladybug by Isobel Finn and Jack Tickle (is Tickle a real last name??) and The Ladybug Girl by David Soman. The Very Lazy Ladybug is a pop-up book where a ladybug cannot fly because all she did was sleep all day and night. She tries riding on different animals (kangroo, tiger, crocodile, etc) to travel on her way until an elephant sneezes shooting her in the air and she finally learns to fly. The pop-ups are quite fun as are the illustrations. Hard not to like this book.

Okay okay, The Ladybug Girl doesn't really have an animal in it (well, the little girl has a dog that follows her around). But it follows my theme of "L" things and is a really cute book so I'm throwing it in. We don't own this one, but discovered it while browsing at the book store. Lulu's older brother doesn't want her to play with him because she's too little so she becomes Ladybug Girl and finds her own fun right in her own backyard. Great book showing how entertaining it can be to use your imagination and make your own fun. The sequel entitled Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy comes out March 5th!

We like books with our names in it around here. My daughter Lily received Lily + the Imaginary Zoo by Seneca Clark and Sandy Giardi as a gift. I mostly put it on her wishlist because it had her name in it. I was so pleased when we received it. The story follows Lily and her mom around Boston. They visit the Boston Public Library, where the lion out front comes to life and reads a book with Lily. A tortoise and hare statue in Copley Square race with her. She feeds the "ducks" in the Public Garden and plays with a donkey statue near old city hall. Lily literally turns famous statues/animals into her own personal zoo! The illustrations are almost collage-looking and simplistic enough to look similar to children's drawings. There is a Boston map in the back of the book and a little blurb about each of the sculptures Lily visits. This would be a fantastic book for kids visiting Boston or perhaps homeschoolers learning about Boston or the East Coast.

The last book is actually part of a series by the San Diego Zoo. Baby Lion #12 in the San Diego Zoo Animal Library. These are little board books with photos of the featured animal provided by the Zoo. Each contains facts about the animal's family, food, and habitat. If your little one has a favorite animal I'm sure you can find it in this series. The publisher also contributes 7% of the proceeds from the books to support global conservation programs. I just discovered there is a SeaWorld Library as well with aquatic animals. And yes, Allison, they have Baby Penguin! :-)