Blogging about books read to Ruby could become a full time occupation. All I can do is dip my little bucket in the stream every now and then and show you what I caught in it. Here goes!
Christina Booth, Are These Hen’s Eggs? (Allen & Unwin 2020)
Mrs Roberta Kennedy, a retired school teacher, reads to children at Gleebooks in Dulwich Hill every Thursday morning. When we attended last week, the usual contingent from a nearby childcare centre didn’t arrive so Ruby made up half the young audience and this was a wonderfully intimate experience for her, especially as the other little one was sick and not that interested.
Are These Hen’s Eggs? is hot off the press, and though it’s the first book by Christina Booth that I’ve encountered, she has written and illustrated a lot (link to her website here). This one has a story of friendship and cooperation – the hen’s eggs are scattered in a storm and other animals help to retrieve them – and it slips in a sweetly amusing lesson, because as the eggs hatch we get to see a range of creatures that are born out of eggs, culminating in a very cute turtle (I was half expecting a snake, and was relieved that Christina Booth went for cute rather than scary).
Alex Barrow, If I Had a Sleepy Sloth (Thames & Hudson 2020)
Also hot off the press (after all it’s a bookshop and the merchandise must be promoted), this is great fun. I must admit that what I remember is the incidental facts about sloths: moss grows in their fur and they have very long claws. I can’t tell you if these facts were in the text or in Mrs Kennedy’s asides. But the images are splendidly friendly.
Didier Lévy (text) and Fred Benaglia (images), How to Light Your Dragon (Thames & Hudson 2020)
A child tries all sorts of tactics to rekindle his pet dragon’s fire. In the end, it’s his affection that does the trick. We’r never quite sure whether we’re on the child’s side or the dragons. Do we hope the fire will come or do we wish the child would just leave the poor fireless creature alone? Either way, we love the images.
This is translated from French, original title Comment rallumer un dragon éteint. I couldn’t find the translator’s name anywhere, sorry. Didier Lévy is a prolific creator of children’s books, and I hope this isn’t the only one that’s available to Anglophone children. many of them ringing the changes o fairytale themes. Fred Benaglia is similarly prolific in the Francophone world.
Chris McKimmie, I NEED a Parrot (Ford Street Publishing 2019)
Mrs Kennedy showed her virtuosity here. Realising that the books she had selected in advance weren’t appropriate for her audience of a solitary two year old (plus grandparents), she scrimmaged around on the shelves and chose this, and did a brilliant unrehearsed reading. The child narrator here wants a parrot and goes thought a list of the things she doesn’t want – the whale in the cover illustration is the most outlandish, but not by much.
Eunice Moyle and Sabrina Moyle, Super Pooper and Whizz Kid: Potty Power! (Harry N Abrams 2018)
This wasn’t part of Robbie Kennedy’s repertoire. It was in the board book shelf at Marrickville Library, and some inner demon prompted me to pick it up and read it with appropriate gusto to Ruby. It’s a rude and irreverent explanation of the use of a potty with adventurous typography and wealth of synonyms for bodily functions. I don’t know that the synonyms did much for Ruby, but she stayed interested. The bit I liked best was where the child, once sitting on the potty, has to wait … and WAIT …and WAIT.
Julia Donaldson (words) and Axel Scheffler (images), Tabby McTat (Alison Green Books, Tenth Anniversary edition 2019)
This Tabby McTat is a busker’s dear friend. When Tabby is distractd by a beautiful female cat named Sox and the busker gets into serious trouble they are separated. It’s a book about love and loss and change and hope. Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler are one of the power partnerships of current children’s literature, and this is my favourite of their books. Donaldson makes rhyming look easy and her wit is brilliant as well as age-appropriate – Ruby loves the song that Tabby McTat sings with his human busker friend:
Me, you and the old guitar, How perfectly, perfectly happy we are. MEEE-EW and the old guitar. How PURRRR-fectly happy we are!
Or at least, she quotes it when the book is picked up and has told me I can’t do the song: ‘No song, Poppa!’ I must be doing it differently from her father, who is a very good reader of children’s books.
Are These Hen’s Eggs? is the fourth book I’ve read for the 2020 Australian Women Writers Challenge.
Me fail? I fly! 