Where is Baby's Belly Button

 By Karen Katz

This one is also very popular.  It's a lift-the-flap book.  Plus it's all about body parts.  This is one of the very few books that my youngest will ask to read.

There is one African-American baby and there is one East-Asian baby and the rest are white.  Equal numbers of girls and boys.

So that's something.

I Said Bed!

 By Bruce Degen

You can totally tell that this is the illustrator behind the Magic Schoolbus series.  But he isn't the same writer.

No matter, this book is fantastic.

 The interactions between the mum and boy are pretty bland, and then the crazy imaginary adventure is full of colours and lines and patterns.  It's really visually appealing.

My daughter can read this book.  It's got tons of repetition and very simple sentences.  Sometimes the characters only say one word each.

Scat Cat

 By Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Illustrated by Paul Meisel

This is a great early reader.  It's full of tons of easy words.  I read it with my daughter and point to the words that she should be able to read on her own.

In particular, she can read "Cat", so she can figure out "Scat".

Basically every animal and person tells the cat to scat except for the cat's owner because he loves the cat so much.


 It has lots of repetition.  The problem I usually find with repetition, though, is that my daughter is smart enough that she doesn't need to look at the words once she's heard the pattern.  She also has excellent memory and it is rare that we can read a book a second time without her already knowing how it goes.

This book had enough material that I can randomly ask her different words every time we read it. 

Five Little Monkeys Reading in Bed

 Written by Eileen Christelow

This is part of a series about the 5 little monkeys that is obviously inspired by the "jumping on the bed" rhyme.  (There is a book in the series based on the rhyme, too, though I haven't read it.)

I got this one out in desperation because my son hated every book in the house save one Sandra Boynton book that we were all tired of.

 He really didn't like this book, either, but didn't mind flipping through it on a car trip.

It's not written particularly well; you have to bend the sentences a bit to make them match up rhythmically.  The story is okay.  The monkeys make so much noise reading books in bed that Mom takes the books away, and then gets caught reading them herself.  My daughter thought it was funny.

I kind of really like that it's a single mom with five kids.  And, like, quintuplets or something.  That's brutal.

There are lots of books in this series.  Pretty much any kid who has heard the original rhyme would go crazy for any of these books, like my daughter did.  We ended up buying the one where they make the birthday cake, and I don't mind having it around the house, even though I have the same complaints about it.

The Doorbell Rang

 By Pat Hutchins

This book was almost good.  My daughter loved it for the direct repetition on each page.  Plus it has a catch at the end; the doorbell rings, but they don't tell you who it is.  "BUT WHO IS AT THE DOOR?"  She would yell at me, never satisfied with my answer.

My husband, on the other hand, found it too repetitive and a little bit creepy.  He also hated the art.

It's a math story about 12 cookies divided many different ways.  But they don't tell you that it's 12 cookies, so maybe it could be a fun math game for an older kid?  maybe.

Personally I didn't love it or hate it.  But I didn't keep it in the house for very long, because I think owning it and reading it every single night would wear on me.