Ruby Reads (6)

This instalment of posts about books I’ve read as Ruby’s grandfather consists of two kinds of books: two that have been read to the audience of 0–2 year olds at Leichhardt Library Rhyme Time, and three that she requests on repeat.

Gail Jorgensen & Patricia Mullens, Crocodile Beat (Simon & Schuster 1989)

This starts with a scary image of a crocodile who is waiting for his prey to come to the waterhole. Then, page after page, a procession of animals arrives, making at least this reader very uneasy: it’s set up as a macabre variation on Who Sank the Boat?, something like ‘who will the crocodile eat?’

Happily, no spoiler really, everyone ends up alive, though it’s thanks to an extremely improbable intervention, and only for today. Tomorrow the crocodile may well get lucky. It was, however, beautifully read to us with lots of animal noises to match the colour and movement of the book itself.

Jessica Spanyol, Clive and His Babies (Child’s Play International 2016)

Clive is a little white boy who plays with dolls, one of whom is brown. He also plays with a number of other children, some of them also brown. This was read to us at the library. Its message of diversity and flexibility about gender roles, explicitly named on the back cover, is overwhelmingly front and centre and there’s no story to speak of, but who am I to complain? I joined in with gusto all the nursery-rhyme singing and gesturing, motivated at least in part by the desire as the only man there to set a model of gender-role flexibility.

Ingela P Arrhenius, Where’s Mr Duck (Nosy Crow 2019)

No author is named for the text in this lift-the-flap, and there’s no reason why one should be. The reader is simply asked to lift a flap on each spread to see if Mr Duck (not Mr Drake) is under it. Eventually, after finding Mrs Worm, Mr Frog and so on, we do find the duck. End of story.

What makes the book stand out is that the flaps are made of felt, which resists the deliberate or accidental depredations of little hands. The images by Ingela P Arrhenius, described on the publisher’s website as a ‘Swedish homewares designer’, are attractive in an impersonal, Ikea-ish way. The book is definitely designed for 15-month-old people.

Peppa Pig: Creepy Cobwebs (Ladybird 2014)

I’ve never seen an episode of Peppa Pig, and as far as I know neither has Ruby. On the strength of this little board book, we’re not missing much. It’s nominally about creepy things, but includes – among other non-creepy things – an image of Peppa Pig and family riding in a space ship. There’s no narrative line, and I find the images crude and uninteresting. Ruby, however, took the book from me after a couple of readings and proceeded to turn the pages while giving voice to what might have been a Martian rendition of the text. A big success for the unnamed author.

Kimberley Barnes (illustrator), The Wheels on the Bus (Hinkler Books, First Steps 2017)

Not so much a book as merchandise to accompany a song, this is one of several musical ‘novelty books’ we read/play. One of the buttons on the right plays the tune, the other three play the sounds of windscreen wipers, a baby crying and a car horn respectively. (I do wonder if Verna Hills, who Wikipedia says wrote the song, receives any royalties.)

I am reading on my non-grandfathering days. Some posts about that coming soon.