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.

The Miracles of Jesus

 By Tomie DePaola

This is a fantastic book.  The pictures are done in the style of Medieval religious paintings.  The stories are written so that a three year old can understand them.  Mostly.

 But the miracles of Jesus are all pretty great stories and reasonably entertaining for children of any age.

I've sifted through a lot of terrible Christian books and I haven't seen anything better than this.  My daughter was intrigued.  Confused, but intrigued.

We don't do a lot of religion right now because it all goes over her head.

Pinkalicious Soccer Star

By Victoria Kann

Oh wow I hate this book.  Guess who picked it out.

Dad gets the main character a pink soccer ball, and they play soccer against the mean angry girls who only wear black.  They say "Pink stinks!" because they are bullies.

You know, I've got this thing against asking kids what their favourite colour is.  They just say stuff because they hate saying, "I don't know".  And when they say, "I don't like green", like my daughter does, it doesn't mean anything, because there are so many shades of green.  I showed my daughter my new neon-lime-green sweatshirt and she was amazed and loved it, because, actually, she doesn't hate all shades of green.

 This shade of pink, however, is the same shade as Pepto-bismal.  And it's the only shade they use in the entire book.  Colours are exciting and this book about one specific ugly shade of pink that is already heavily marketed to girls is so dumb.

And kind of racist.

The message of the book is, I guess, to believe in yourself, but it gets lost on this weird trip across the world on a unicorn  seeing other girls who like pink.  Because the other message is that it's okay to like pink (like anyone is questioning that).




Look, I like pink.  I wear pink.  Heck, I even dress my son up in pink.  (pink on boys looks so rad.)

But look at that colour.

Of course my daughter loves this book.

All Around the Town

This is a book from my husband's childhood in Britain.  It's nice to have a book of British vocabulary, and it's also nice to have a super large picture book to pour over, but content wise, this is pretty sub-par compared to anything by Richard Scarry.

First off, the printing is cheap.  Some of the colours aren't printed in the lines.  The colour pallet is pretty bland and unappealing. 

The names of the characters are annoying, and only some of them have names.  The others are just "bunny" or "cat".  Though I guess that's a pretty minor complaint.

Some of the pictures have weirdly drawn perspective problems.  I'm not quite sure what's happening with this fence.  There are worse pages.  You can still tell what's going on, at least.

Scarry employs a lot of slapstick, and this book does not.  Some of the buildings featured are based on the same building frame, which is kind of boring.  My kids don't like reading the story, which is REALLY boring, but they do like looking at all of the objects and animals.

Overall, it's worth picking up if you can find it at a second hand store, but I wouldn't spend a whole bunch of money on it.

The Real Mother Goose

Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright

Hey, hey, hey!  It's the full book!  And it's widely available and constantly being reprinted.

This is a great compilation of all the essential nursery rhymes with tons of early 20th century Classical revival style illustrations.  Very Ars Nouveau, I think.

I'm no art historian, and I recognize that that description is kind of terrible.

 Look at this Robin Hood.  So effeminate.  Tall and lean with a baby face.  Pale blended watercolours with a fine outline.  I love it.

There are many, many full page illustrations, and most pages have smaller illustrations intertwined with the text.

The text is a little old fashioned.  A lot of death and gore and stuff, just the way it's always been.  But you can always pick and choose which rhymes you read aloud.  It's a big thick hardcover.

And It Was So

 Published by the Westminster Press Philadelphia
Illustrated by Tasha Tudor

This book is not bad at all.  Totally Presbyterian, but the parts they pull from the bible are heavily edited to be understood by kids, so whatever.

 The only problem I have with it is that it pulls from way to many sections.  It starts with Genesis, which is great.  And then it moves on to a whole bunch of psalms.

It sneaks something in there about the son of God being born and how he loved children and stuff, which is nice.

The pictures are really nice.  But it's all blonde white kids, and there's this one page about spreading the news throughout the world that has bunch of kids in traditional outfits from foreign countries.  It's a bit white-savior/racist.  But it's an old book, too.  Maybe there's a new edition?