Last week I in bed with a fever and had the great pleasure of hearing in the next rook the Emerging Artist and the Granddaughter enjoy Rosie’s Walk together, maybe ten times in a row. So much squeaking and screaming and sheer exuberance! (Note to the Ramsey Centre: please consider Rosie’s Walk for your curriculum. It is one of the great achievements of Western Civilisation.) But that book has had its moment in this blog. Here are some new books, all of which were read to us at the library’s Rhyme Time:
Eric Carle, Sleep Tight Very Hungry Caterpillar (Puffin 2018)
Eric Carle, Where Is The Very Hungry Caterpillar? (The World of Eric Carle 2020)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, it turns out, isn’t so much a book as a commercial phenomenon. These books, read to us on separate occasions, have a comfortingly familiar feel. Sadly, though, the existence of these and (I gather from the internet) other sequels/spin-offs somehow takes the shne off the original book (my blog post here).
Petr Horáček, Butterfly, Butterfly (Walker Books 2012)
Though the cover of this book announces that it is a ‘pop-up book of colour’, I was surprised and delighted by its only pop-up spread. Lucy sees a butterfly in the garden one day, and then it is gone. She spends most of the book discovering other colourful creatures, and in the end, failing to find the butterfly again, lies down and waits. Then, in the book’s final spread, there’s a wonderfully theatrical moment. You can see it for yourself on YouTube (here)
Stephanie Blake, Poo Bum (Gecko Press 2013)
The librarian prefaced her reading of this by saying it was for the parents and grandparents rather than the children. It’s a scatological variation on the theme of Maurice Sendak’s sublime Pierre (my blog post here): the little rabbit replies ‘Poo bum’ to every conversational opening. After surviving a terrible event, he (or she) undergoes a miraculous transformation, conversing with courtesy and a rich vocabulary. There’s a lamentable relapse at the end. The librarian closed the book and sighed, ‘I love a bit of lavatorial humour.’
I was relieved to note that it’s a New Zealand title, so I don’t have to include it in my list of books read for the 2019 Australian Women Writers Challenge.
Me fail? I fly! 
From an email from K–, who can’t make WordPress’s comments work: I was delighted to hear about the repeated readings of Rosie’s Walk by Penny. Pat Hutchins was genius. I interviewed her once and could sense her feeling of satisfaction re that book out of her whole outpouring. I’m guessing Ruby’s parents/you don’t have any of Pat’s others, but the Titch ones are fun too, as is The Doorbell Rang. But Rosie wins.
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