Snack, Snooze, Skedaddle
Laura Purdie Salas, Claudine Gevry
The illustrations are really nice and bright! The rhyming lines flow easily and work well with being read aloud. It focuses on the three ways animals deal with winter – migrating, hibernating, and tolerating. There are examples provided for each one, including some not usually covered in books about winter! The end of the book has information in greater detail about the topics and animals covered, and there is a glossary for terms that may not be known by the children. I would use this book in conjunction with a science lesson for school-aged children, but not for toddler storytime. There are a few pages that may not go over quite as well with the little ones. In the whale pages, they bring up mating, and I don’t really want to be the one to explain that concept to 3 year-olds in the library! The snake page might be disturbing (perhaps more for the parents than the children) and the fox page? I would prefer not to have tears at storytime.
My Footprints
Bao Phi, Basia Tran
I have to say, this one was not for me. I picked it because of the cover, which is adorable. The story is about a child, Thuy, who is being made fun of at school. Thuy walks away and notices her footprints in the snow. She notices a bird and imitates it, and continues on her way home. She remembers a deer she saw once, and thinks about animals and their families. She pretends to be other animals, and makes their footprints in the snow. I think the main issue I have with the story is every time Thuy says “My footprints.” It doesn’t seem to go with the story, and it breaks the flow for me. We find out why Thuy was being made fun of at school. It also feels like there are too many hot topics being addressed here. While these issues definitely need to be addressed, I feel like having them all together seems a bit too much.
To Catch an Elephant
Vanessa Westgate
This story is very cute! The illustrations are very bright and casual and doodly. A boy decides he wants a pet elephant, and goes to Africa to get one and bring him home. Everything goes well until 2/3rds of the way through the story when the elephant starts to fade a bit. Then he brings the elephant back to his family where he belongs. This would be a great story for children who are always asking for exotic pets or wild animals, and it explains why it is best to leave them be. (They use the word “roam” and while it is a nice opportunity to expand a child’s vocabulary, the story may be served better with a different choice there.) The language is conversational which is a big hit with a lot of children. I could see this working well with storytime. There are different modes of transportation that children will recognize.
I was provided all three ARC’s free of charge via NetGalley in exchange for honest reviews.
To Catch an Elephant was published on July 5 2019, My Footprints will be published on September 1 2019, and Snack, Snooze, Skedaddle will be published on September 3 2019.