New Books !

by Carrie Anne

Row, Row, Row Your Boat: A Teddy Bear Sing-Along Book
By David Ellwand
Silver Dolphin (Raincoast Books)
Board book
Age 0-3

Kids will love singing along to this large format board book showing stuffed teddy’s recreating the the scenes song in the famous childhood rhyme. For added fun there is a musical score that can be played along with each page, just press down on the speaker button found on the front page. I love that you can control whether you want to play the music or not versus it playing automatically on each page though I’m sure your child will want to play the song over and over (and over) again.

Hide and Seek Animals
DK Canada
Picture Book
Age 3-5

Search and find books can be a lot of fun for kids but many can be too complicated for little ones offering very intricate pictures to look at. This Hide and Seek Animals contains a collage of animals with a photo list of the animals to look for. Kids will enjoy searching for familiar animals like a dog as well as finding unique animals such as the Greenland shark. The images are photographs and although the picture contains a collection of animals to look at, they are large and not obstructed. The search and find exercise is more about animal recognition than finding something hidden. This is a great book to do together or to give your child to explore on their own for quiet time.

While You Are Sleeping
By Durga Bernhard
Picture Book
Age 3-8

If you’ve ever traveled to a different timezone or have family and friends in a different part of the world, you may have already talked about timezones with your child. While You Are Sleeping is a great way to illustrate this without getting all technical about the different times. This cute lift the flap book starts off with a mother and child reading a story one evening while on the other side of the world another child is getting dressed for the morning. Each picture has a map image worked into the illustration, showing where the activity is taking place (reading in Alaska, getting dressed in Nigeria). Lift the flap and it turns into a clock showing the time. There are very little words in this book. The concept of different times is illustrated wonderfully through images, maps and the little clock flaps. Not only does this address time, it also touches on geography and customs. The inside covers also have a map of the world with the timezones marked and a little illustration showing all the places you visited in the story. This was a fun book with beautiful illustrations that transporter us around the world.

Splish – Splash
Boxer Books/Sterling Publishing
By Nicola Smee
Picture Book
Age 3-5

Join Mr. Horse along with Cat, Dog, Pig and Duck in this fun adventure on the sea. As they row their little boat the waves get bigger — splish, splash — until everyone is knocked out of the boat. Not to worry, Mr. Horse brings everyone safely to shore only for all the friends to head back out to sea again. The large text and illustrations make this book seem bigger than life. You can almost feel the waves sloshing around on the pages. The playful use of text size as the waves get bigger adds to this feeling and the anticipation of what’s to come. This is just a fun book to read out loud with lots of repetitive words and cute characters.

I want to thank Crystal from Raincoast Books, Katie from Sterling Publishing, Donna from Charlesbridge and Chris from DK Canada for my review copies.

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Carrie Anne is a contributing writer on No Time For Flash Cards , she is a mom of 3 , and is the Managing Partner and Editor-in-Chief at EverythingMom.com.