Mother Goose Remembers by Clare Beaton (Barefoot Book Review)

 

Mother Goose Remembers

Compiled and Illustrated by: Clare Beaton  

Read Alone: Ages 4-7 Read Together: Ages 0-4

Hardcover with CD; Full-color illustrations; 64pp;
9 x 10.25 inches

Awards and Honors:

NCSS–CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 2000
Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book of the Year, 2001
Society of Illustrators Original Art Exhibition, 2000

Recent praise:

“Beaton stitches and appliques her way through 46 nursery rhymes, including a few less familiar treasures…. She exquisitely and inventively crafts each picture from felt, antique fabrics and bric-a-brac. In “I Had a Little Nut Tree,’ for example, the tree is made from eyelet fabric and dotted with tiny wooden beads. Beaton’s work evokes the cozy domesticity and unhurried days of a bygone era, and many adults may find it refreshing to find a Mother Goose untainted by zingy modern ironies.” - Publishers Weekly

Book Review:

This book is a compilation of 46 popular nursery rhymes with unique hand-sewn illustrations by Clare Beaton. Her illustration technique is so distinctive you would think it is a real 3-d hand-sewn book! Her artwork consists of antique fabrics, old jewelry, threads, bric-a-brac, laces, and other stuffs put together to form a collage! Her rendition of these nursery rhymes in a collage and not in ink gives the child the longing to touch them. Look at this nursery rhyme from her book and tell me if you do not think you would like to touch them as well. Look closer, even closer…

A partial list of the nursery rhymes compiled in this book are the following:

Humpty Dumpty – page 9

The Grand Old Duke of York – page 10

To Market, To Market – page 17

The Woman who lived in a shoe

Sing a Song of Sixpence – page 20

This Little Pig Went to Market – page 22

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep – page 25

Ring Around the Roses – page 27

Little Bo Peep – page 29

Little Miss Muffet – page 33

Rock-a-Bye Baby – page 34

Jack Be Nimble – page 57 (my all time favorite – I can still memorize it: Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be quick, Jack jump over the candle stick!)

Hey Diddle Diddle – page 58 –

 

I highly recommend this book for the new mothers, and pregnant women who would like to learn the many nursery rhymes that babies would like to listen to. Also, this book is a great gift for baby showers – especially that this book comes with a CD plus an introduction from one of the Barefoot books publishers, Tessa Strickland explaining about the significance of Mother Goose and where did it originate. I learned from her Introduction that a mother goose is a carrier of the great Hindu goddess Sarawasti, the goddess of learning language, music and arts.

- Alpha

 

The Great Race (The Story of the Chinese Zodiac) – book review

 The Great Race

Written by: Dawn Casey
Illustrated by: Anne Wilson

Read Alone: Ages 6-10 Read Together: Ages 4-8

Hardcover; Jacketed; Full-color illustrations; 32pp;
8.25 x 10.75 inches

Ever wondered why the names of animals are used in the Chinese zodiac? Ever wondered too how come there is NO cat in the Chinese zodiac? This book tells it all in a playful, colorful and easy-to-remember story.

The story starts with the Jade Emperor hosting a race to start a calendar and name each year after a different animal. He had announced that whoever will finish a swimming race across a wide river first will be declared the first animal sign of the calendar. The oder of how the animals will arrive, will be used for the order of the chinese calendar.

During that time the rat and the cat were the best of friends. However, near the end of the race, the rat pushed over the cat down the river so the rat could jump to the finish line and win the race. The cat who hates the water tried very hard to get out of the water but just couldn’t make it to the shore. This is the reason why there is NO cat in the chinese calendar. This is also the reason why up to this day, the cat and the rat are the worst of enemies. 

The rat won the race and as the Jade Emperor said, “Rat may be small but he is also smart!”! The other animals who came after rat were in the following order:

2nd: ox

3rd: tiger

4th: Hare

5th: dragon

6th: horse

7th: snake

8th: sheep

9th: monkey

10th: cockerel

11th: dog

12th: pig

Reading this book to my daughter is like learning a new lesson for me. I was like, “huh, now that is the reason why…?”. I really enjoyed the book as much as my daughter did. Although she can not associate the meanings of the story behind the book, i could tell based from her attentiveness and interest with the book, that this captured her as well.

But what I love about this book is at the very end of it there are two pages devoted to the characters of the 12 animals included in the chinese calendar with the corresponding years that these animals represent. For the fun of it, check your animal sign and see if the characters of these animals are similar to yours:

Rats – are clever, ambitious and quick-witted.

Ox – are honest, patient and hardworking.

Tiger – are brave, powerful and daring.

Hare – are lucky, kind and peaceful.

Dragon – are powerful, strong and energetic.

Snake – are calm, wise and elegant.

Horse – are popular, independent and fun.

Sheep – are artistic, loving and tender-hearted.

Money – are happy, confident and enthusiastic

Cockerel – are adventurous, kind and hardworking.

Dog – are loyal, affectionate and generous.

Pig – are noble, helpful and forgiving

 

- Alpha Sanford

“If you would like to purchase this book, please visithttp://philippines.mybarefootbooks.com “

My Daddy is a Pretzel – a Barefoot Book review

 My Daddy is a Pretzel

Written by: Baron Baptiste
Illustrated by: Sophie Fatus

Read Alone: Ages 4-9 Read Together: Ages 0-4

Hardcover; Jacketed, Full-color illustrations; 48pp;

8.75 x 11 inches 

I can honestly say that this is one of my most favorite Barefoot Books ever! It combines what I would like to see for the perfect yoga book for children – thus, this makes it the PERFECT book to introduce children to yoga. This is also a great book for teachers who would like to introduce the different occupations or work that parents do! 

The Introduction part of the book is very sincere. The author Baron Baptiste really showed how caring and how dedicated he is in bringing the right kind of discipline to his children as well to other children in the form of yoga. He made yoga a more enjoyable, and not frightful to most kids by interconnecting what profession a parent has. An example of which is the page below:

In this page, the mother is a gardener…on the other hand the dad is sometimes a tree. From this, the author builds on an occupation to a yoga position that is related to the occupation of being a gardener, thus the TREE position comes up.

 

In this page, it guides the reader from the first step to attaining this position to the final step. What I love about this YOGA pose page is that, throughout the book the author explains as to what this particular pose teaches us in our daily lives (i.e. Tree Pose teaches us to support ourselves) and then moves to the reason why we need to learn this lesson. For the Tree Pose, “so that we can reach high and remain stable, yet be flexible.”

I love the lessons/sayings from these YOGA pose pages. Here are some of the sayings I find very inspiring, even for young children:

1. “….and as with anything practice makes progress”

2. “Triangles have 3 sides and 3 angles – just as we have 3 aspects: mind, body and spirit”

3.”If we plow well, we can sow well, and then reap the rewards of what we have planted.”

and 

4. from the Fish pose…”Don’t struggle upstream, jump in and just go with the flow, even in turbulent times.”

This book also presented a lot of diversity. The parents and the children that are illustrated are of different nationalities – and the diversity of work from a gardener, to a marine biologist, to a builder and then too a baker, it is just an amazing book! And of course, these poses can be enlarged if you are a teacher wanting to teach a step-by-step way of a certain pose. 

- Alpha

“If you would like to purchase this book, please visithttp://philippines.mybarefootbooks.com “

 

We All Went Safari – a Barefoot Book Review

 This book is amazing! I wish I had this book when I was younger! I could have learned how to count in Swahili

Good points about this book:

1. It opens up our minds (children and children at heart) about the culture in Africa!

2. The different names of children in Africa.

3. The animals in Africa.

4. Counting both visually in numbers and in a different language.

5. It teaches you how to count in Swahili from one-ten. Check out this two other pages of the book. 

AND

 

 

6. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each book will be donated to the African Wildlife Foundation, to aid their wildlife conservation and community building efforts in Tanzania.

Great, great book! And you could help as well when you purchase this!

“If you would like to purchase this book, please go to http://philippines.mybarefootbooks.com “