Tag Agnese Baruzzi

Tiny Bear Can, Too! / Where Do You Sleep?

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Tiny Bear Can, Too!
Yusuke Yonezu
minedition

Here’s a case of ‘anything you can do’ as an adorable baby bear copies the actions of a series of animals, for instance ‘If the frog jumps … Tiny Bear jumps too1’ This ursine character is certainly energetic for it also seeks to emulate cat’s stretch, snake’s wriggle and five other actions in turn.
Tiny humans will certainly enjoy demonstrating their own rolling, standing on one leg, flipping over kicking their feet up and hugging a loved grown-up. Equally they will delight in lifting the flaps – two per spread – as an adult reads aloud the simple repetitive text.

I envisage this interactive little board book being read to destruction.

Where Do You Sleep?
Agnese Baruzzi
minedition

Each of the featured young animals has a different place to sleep that suits them (eight if you count the owl in the hollow of the tree on the cover illustration revealed by pulling the tab.)
Small children will also discover a baby fox beneath the roots of a tree, a kitten in a basket beside the couch, a hedgehog with adult under a pile of fallen leaves, a bat dangling in a cave, a fledgling snuggled in a cosy nest, a husky in a den beneath the snow and a squirrel in a tree trunk hole. The final spread addresses the little listener who, as expected will fall fast asleep in a cot.

Each of the tabs stands out from the full page scene as the artist has used a colour that contrasts with the background and to keep the toddler’s interest, it’s not located in the same place on every spread.
Interactive fun that can also help little ones develop their fine motor skills.
Agnese Baruzzi’s text, four lines per animal, is written in rhyme that won’t cause the adult reader to cringe when they read it aloud and she also makes effective use of texture throughout.

Board Book Shelf

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Hidden Animals
Find the Wolf
Agnese Baruzzi
Templar Publishing
Here are two wonderfully playful board books from Italian artist, Agnese Baruzzi.
In the former, the peep-through die-cut pages beguile readers with a series of different coloured shapes which, when the page is turned become transformed into in turn, a bird, a fox, a bug, a cat,

a dog, a jellyfish and a lion.
Part of the fun, once children have worked out what is happening, is to guess the animal from the coloured background on the left-hand side before the page is turned. I was wrong on a couple of occasions.
Find the Wolf takes readers on a hunt for a ”WANTED’ wolf . As we walk through the woods we see for instance, two pointy ears or a set of grey paws. Or are they?
Here Baruzzi uses two die-cut circles on each right hand page and by asking such questions as ‘Are those his eyes?’

leads us to believe’ that behind them the missing lupine lurks. But on turning over we see something completely different.

The elusive creature (or traces of same) is actually lurking somewhere on every recto which further adds to the delicious hide and seek element.

Up and Down
Rosalind Beardshaw
Nosy Crow
This lovely board book, published in partnership with the National Trust is Rosalind Beardshaw’s latest addition to her A Walk in the Countryside series.
Winter has well and truly arrived; so the two small friends don warm clothes and boots before setting off into the great snowy outdoors.
Then it’s Up hill and Down on their sledges, followed by on foot encounters with a variety of creatures both feathered and furry

as they spend a wonderful day together savouring the delights of their rural romp.
There’s plenty to enjoy and discuss with toddlers in addition to the inbuilt ‘opposites’ the minimal text offers.

Bizzy Bear Ambulance Rescue
Benji Davies
Nosy Crow
Toddlers will delight in making the ‘nee-naw’ ambulance sounds and manipulating the moving parts in the new Bizzy Bear board book.
Bizzy Bear assumes the role of paramedic in his latest episode and he’s responding to an emergency call out. A little cat has had a cycling accident and Bizzy rushes to the scene where he helps lift the patient into the ambulance

which then rushes the injured kitty to hospital where he’s treated for what looks like a broken leg. Short and sweet!

The Snowflake Mistake / The Bot that Scott Built

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The Snowflake Mistake
Lou Treleaven and Maddie Frost
Maverick Arts Publishing
The latest scientific research shows that what we’re told as children – that every snowflake is different – isn’t altogether true, although there are a great many structural variations. Now here’s a modern pourquoi tale explaining the popular idea that every one is different.
Princess Ellie lives with her mum, the Snow Queen, in a floating ice palace high above the clouds. In that palace is an amazing machine that collects clouds, squishing, crunching and stamping them to make into identical snowflakes.

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But when Ellie’s mum has some business to attend to elsewhere, the young miss, (who would much prefer to be out playing) is left in charge of the machine. She decides to speed up the snow production …

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and that’s when things, or rather the machine goes terribly wrong, and with a BOING! BANG! POP! it grinds to a halt.
With the only alternative being no snow for the children to enjoy, Ellie knows she must find another way of making snowflakes. Out comes her scissors and with the help of the birds, she makes snowflakes of all shapes and sizes, not perfect exactly, but every one beautiful, every one different. Hooray!
Full of wintry delight this rhyming story is another invention from the creator of the Oojamaflip – another quirky machine. Maddie Frost’s digitally rendered collage-style illustrations, especially those of the snowflake machine, are great fun and the final page provides information on how to make a snowflake.

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The Bot That Scott Built
Kim Norman and Agnese Baruzzi
Sterling
It’s Science Day for Scott and his classmates and it’s Scott’s turn to demonstrate his robot. Things don’t go quite to plan though and that moment of glory rapidly descends into chaos as angry ants rampage, freaky frogs frolic and feast on flies, there’s a big-bellied boa on the loose and a whole lot more besides.

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The cumulative rhyme dashes along at a frenetic havoc-making pace; and with lashings of alliteration and illustrations packed with hilarious details as the whole session turns from calm to mayhem, young listeners have plenty to enjoy as the catastrophes cascade into being until finally, a sense of order is restored. PHEW! Now who could have pressed that button in the first place, one wonders.

Who’s Hiding? & Remarkable Animals

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Who’s Hiding?
Agnese Baruzzi and Jenny Broom
Templar Publishing
Things are not exactly as they seem at first glance in this superbly designed animal book. On each left hand side of the spread is a playful, descriptive verse with an invitation to guess which cleverly concealed animal is lurking beneath the concertina fold of the opposite page. Thus, a seemingly ordinary lily pond

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opens to confront readers with a large spotty frog sitting yoga style upon a lily pad;

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this having been introduced by Jenny Broom’s interrogative rhyme,
 In the pond, one creature swims,
Stretching out its long green limbs.
Who croaks and leaps and hops like mad
       And perches on a lily pad?
Most young listeners/readers will be able to guess each hidden animal in turn, others will enjoy surmising, before all is revealed in Agnese Baruzzi’s brightly coloured scene once the page is extended. “We could say it’s ‘hide-and-speak’ as well as ‘hide-and seek’ “ commented one of the five year olds I shared this book with.
Each scene comprises a whole host of gorgeously coloured images of the flora and fauna of the particular habitat shown and the final unfolded spread shows a broader view with all six of the animals to spot.

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I’d say this is one to inspire young children to be curious not just indoors while reading, but outdoors too. Try showing it to slightly older children from say 6 or 7 too; they may well be inspired to have a go at making their own fold out spreads, and perhaps testing them out with younger children.

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Remarkable Animals
Tony Meesuwissen
Frances Lincoln Children’s Books
Ten creatures can morph into (so we are told) one thousand in this fascinating and clever book. Each page is divided into three equal sections; these can be independently flipped so that from a single real animal it’s possible to create all manner of weird and wonderful ones. Thus an alligator

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might be transformed into say an ‘Allerpit’

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– Powerful enough to drag a man into the water, these primitive beasts/have an undesirable habit of crawling into beehives to feed on honey. They can be/ kept in a humid aquarium with wood bark to hide in. Pretty ridiculous but such witticisms are delivered in a deadpan style adding to the enjoyment of the whole. Moreover in addition to the ‘To the reader’ notes at the back of the book, there is also some zoological information for each creature if the pages are correctly aligned.
Tony Meeuwissen’s choice of colour palette is arresting

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and the detail in his paintings means that the eye is bound to linger long to take in each and every portion of the animals and the possibilities all the different combinations present.
Sturdily bound, this versatile volume should stand up to the countless readings it will surely receive and I suspect, not just by children.

Use your local bookshop localbookshops_NameImage-2