Bear Series – BEAR IN A SQUARE (Board Book Review)

 

Written by: Stella Blackstone
Illustrated by: Debbie Harter

 

This is one of the books that is included in the Bear Series that is written by Stella Blackstone (I believe there are six of them, and each of these books are also written in Spanish edition). I have seen four out of the six books in this series and each one of them is phenomenal. The four books that I have seen and read to my daughter are the following: Bear in Sunshine, Bear about Town, Bear’s Busy Family and Bear in a Square.

I remember the very first Bear Series that I read – and I saw it in my doctor’s office waiting room! I honestly got hooked on it for my daughter and wanted too buy the full series for her!  That particular book was “Bear in a Square”, which happened to be my daughter’s most-wanted book this week.

I can see why it is her favorite of the week. First, the words in each page are simple and direct. Each page asks the reader to be interactive with the text as well as the pictures. It asks the reader to find the particular shape that is hidden in the page. For her age, one direct sentence to learn and identify shapes is all that she needs to learn the concept of shapes. There are exactly 10 different shapes that are presented on this book. It goes in the order of: square, heart, circle, rectangle, moon shape, triangle, diamond, zigzag, oval and star.

Secondly, I think she is fascinated with the bold and fantastic colors that are embodied in each of the pages. The BEAR in the book is always present in all the pages as part of the search. Not only that but the scenes where the shapes are hidden are diverse. An example is, “Find the hearts in the queen’s hair” and the scene on this page is a castle with a vivid picture of a queen with two hearts on her hair. Other scenes that are used are the school, the pool, the sea and the cave.

This book can be used in so many different ways. As the book progressed to different shapes, the number of shapes is also increasing. First there is only one square to find, then 2 hearts, then 3 circles…and so on until the last shape which is the star with the last number of 10. A child can easily identify what is also asked on the text, by checking on the right hand side of the book to see what shape is being asked for. A child can also self-correct himself as to the number of shapes that are present in each page by looking and comparing the number of the shapes on the right hand side to the number of shapes the child has identified.

What I like about this book is that my daughter really sits down until the end of the book and gets to enjoy each page of the book. I guess, what goes in her mind is that the pictures are so real, they are almost “touchable” to the eye. 

 

 

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