La Chenille qui Fait des Trous

 By Eric Carle

I always hated this book when I was a kid.  The first time it was read to me was in kindergarten.  We read it every time we went to the library for the next two years, except for the times that we read "I'll Love You Forever", which I also hated.  I hated it because it was a baby book and I was so tired of listening to my teachers fawn over it forever.  I was getting into chapter books for crying out loud.

But it is a great baby book.  I like reading it now.  And it's fantastic to have a copy in English and in French.  My daughter likes reading it in either language, because she already knows all her foods, so she understands at least a third of it. I'm hoping she'll start learning her days of the week soon.  We read both copies over and over.  I'll have to buy the French one soon.

The Tiny Seed

 Eric Carle

A lot of these books are available as big hardcover books, but I like the board books better.  This one doesn't really make sense for the under two crowd, but it has nice colours and it can be pulled at and chewed on this way.  Having smaller pages doesn't take away from the art, and they didn't edit the books when they made them smaller.

This one is all about seeds from a flower going through all the seasons and finally falling to the ground and making a new flower.  It's about all the seeds that don't make it and why they don't make it.

And then there's this page near the end about how the flower is so big and everyone thinks it's so amazing.  This could have been left out.  My kids just don't care about that.

And then the flower dies and sends off new seeds, continuing the cycle.  It's a good teaching book about the life cycle of plants.

Friends

 By Eric Carle

I was particularly interested in this book after I read the article about it.  It was a pretty disappointing read.

I liked how it started, with the kids doing everything together.  I liked how it was a boy and a girl.

 When the girl goes away the boy goes to find her and goes on an imaginary journey, which is fine.  Lots of pages of just colour.  Nice to look at.

And then this.  They get married at the end, out of nowhere.  Why?

I read it myself, but I didn't read it to my kids.

Walter the Baker

 By Eric Carle

I was pretty disappointed in this one.  I got it because my daughter is all into baking.  We love "Pancakes! Pancakes!" by the same author, and she likes to help me make bread in the bread machine.

It's a folktale.  I'm not sure if it's original or based on an existing one, but the duke and duchess demand that he make a bread that the sun can be seen through three times or something.  Anyway, I'd seen the last page, so I knew the answer and it just made the riddle sound really contrived.

So, here it is.  I've ruined it for you.  If it doesn't sound contrived to you, then it's probably just a hang-up that I have.  The pictures are still pretty great.

The Eric Carle Mini Library

 By Eric Carle

This is a great little gift set that seems to be pretty popular.  The stories in it are actually pretty good.  There are some problems, but they're easy to gloss over.

 The problem with Rooster's Off to See the World is that the narrative is terrible.  But it's a counting story, and you count animals, so it's great for kids.  The ending is underwhelming, but I just play up the fact that rooster is getting a really good nap in and that he's really happy, and nobody seems to care.

 This book is basically perfect, but I didn't read the text until my daughter was much older.  She was obsessed with this book, and she still picks up sticks outside so that she can cut the pretend wheat with her sickle.

It's basically a long-form pancake recipe.

 Another great book.  This one has lots of pop-ups.  It has contributed greatly to our daughter's moon obsession.  I think she literally expects us to get the moon for her at some point, still.  One of the pop-up pages is ripped.  It was inevitable.

There are many problems with this book.  The main narrative of a hermit crab collecting sea things for his shell is great because it teaches about the life of the hermit crab, and also about the names of different things found in the sea.  (Although it omits that crazy shell exchange that they do and says instead that the hermit crab travels for a full month before he finds a new shell.  That's a little frustrating.)
The rest of the book is trying to do too much.  It tries to introduce months, which doesn't work because there's no way to make that concept any less arbitrary to a toddler who has limited memory anyway.  Each page where he collects a new friend is written the same way with different vocabulary.  But so little remains the same, and the vocabulary is so varied, and there's nothing to show exactly what any of the words mean.  So all of the language education in this book is totally lost on a young audience.


All in all, this is a great collection, though.  We love the colours, too.