Tag Carolina Búzio

Words, Words and More Words

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Let’s go home, Baby Bee
Carolina Búzio
Nosy Crow

Baby Bee has to get safely to the hive and needs the help of little humans to do so. The same is true of some other baby minibeasts: baby ladybird wants help getting to a home log,; baby snail resides in a flower pot; and baby worm also needs guidance back home. There are plenty of things relating to the natural world to spot on each journey and each can only be completed with the help of a small human hand to guide the moving disc that depicts the named baby. Interactive fun that gives little children a sense of autonomy as well as delight at the brightly coloured spreads, each of which has the route on the recto and small, labelled images on the verso.

Pip and Posy’s Big Book of Words
Axel Scheffer
Nosy Crow

Little ones can learn and read more than three hundred words with friends Pip and Posy in this large format book. Its ten spreads have different themes each with flaps to lift and a multitude of labelled images both in and surrounding the scenes, the first being Garden Games. Here we see Pip busy planting seeds and Posy ready to entertain visitors by playing some musical instruments.
Next comes At the Shops where we find customer Posy, clutching a coin to buy a new toy. Sunny Seaside is the third destination and the two friends are enjoying a beach visit. Back at Posy’s Happy Home, Pip arrives bringing her a birthday present.

Christmas, Snow, Bubbles, Night Night follow and the final spread Learn with Pip and Posy presents colours, seasons, numbers (to 10)basic 2D shapes, and four examples of opposites.
Offering lots of potential for discussion, as well as vocabulary building and honing their visual skills, there’s a wealth of toddler learning possibilities between the sturdy covers of this book.

Also helping to enhance young children’s vocabulary are recent titles in a popular series:

Science Words for Little People: Our Bodies
Science Words for Little People: Coding
Helen Mortimer, illustrated by Cristina Trapanese
Oxford Children’s Books

In Our Bodies children can take the plunge and have a day at the swimming pool where they can learn a wealth of body-related words from the brain to bones and senses to growing.
Coding presents basic language such as commands, sequencing, chain reaction and inputs and outputs. Both books feature a diverse cast of child characters, are engaging both visually and verbally and are worth adding to home shelves or collections in early years settings.

Let’s Go Home, Baby Tiger / Eggs! / Pip and Posy: Favourite Things

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Three new board books all published by Nosy Crow: thanks to the publishers for sending them for review

Let’s Go Home, Baby Tiger
Carolina Búzio

By means of the sliding discs on each recto, little humans can help the baby animals featured in this chunky book to find their way home. First comes baby tiger, followed in turn by baby parrot, baby elephant and finally, baby crocodile, each of which responds to the respective adult animal’s ‘Let’s go home baby …’

The moving discs and tracks will help to develop hand-eye coordination as young children endeavour to keep the baby animals upright and not make them dizzy by revolving the discs. There are several items to look for on each journey and the verso pages show what they are.

Lots of of fun learning here.

Eggs!
Katie Dale and Jenny Lovlie

A counting book with an egg theme that invites young children to guess what’s inside the eggs shown on each spread. What could be in the one egg about to crack open in the desert?
The nest beside the river contains two eggs: what is soon to crawl out of each? The jungle nest holds three eggs, each with a baby animal waiting to emerge, but what? Four eggs are ready to crack in the nest beneath the ocean: the babies within have lots of legs. I wonder what they could be … The farmyard nest holds five white eggs, just starting to crack and five fluffy birds are ready to hop right out.
A ‘guess what’ game and counting practice presented through Katie Dale’s rhyming text and Jennie Lovlie’s detailed scenes of the nesting locations of the five featured creatures. With a new life theme it’s just right for Easter and beyond.

Pip and Posy: Favourite Things

Inspired by illustrator Axel Scheffler’s original series and based on the TV show for preschool children, this tabbed board book introduces the best pals Pip (a rabbit) and Posy (a mouse) and their other friends, showing how they love playing together dressing up and having adventures. The friends in turn introduce their favourite toys: Froggy is Posy’s favourite and Piggy is Pip’s.
We also meet Jamila the squirrel, Zac the terrier pup who loves to zoom around on his bike, and level-headed Frankie the cat. All very different but with one thing in common: they love playing together.

I suspect adults and toddlers will enjoy reading this together.

It’s Time for Bed

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A Bear Hug at Bedtime
Jana Novotny Hunter and Kay Widdowson
Child’s Play
Imaginative play rules in this enchanting pre-bedtime romp: snuggle up and prepare for a bedtime hug or two.
A small child meets a variety of animals, large and small as bedtime approaches or does she? Look again and we see that in fact something entirely different is happening as she imagines various members of her family as animals: Gran morphs into a stripy tiger, Mum becomes a monkey,

her little brothers a lizard and a lobster. And Dad? He’s a huge hairy bear just waiting to leap out and engulf his daughter with a wonderfully warm, goodnight hug. Gorgeous!
Beautifully told, wonderfully illustrated and SO full of heart, it’s perfect for bedtime sharing.

Babies Can Sleep Anywhere
Lisa Wheeler and Carolina Búzio
Abrams Appleseed
There’s a distinct retro look and pleasing pattern to this languorous rhyming look at sleeping places. ‘Bats take a nap in a cave upside down. / Hay is a bed for a mare. // Wolves cuddle up in a den ‘neath the ground./ But babies can sleep anywhere.’
This three animals followed by one human infant pattern is used throughout the book until the final spread. This shows an array of sleeping human babes all looking totally blissful.

It’s good to see a mix of well-known and less familiar animals included, as well as the variety of human families on the final pages. Carolina Búzio’s bold colour palette is gorgeous.

I See the Moon
illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw
Nosy Crow
For this delightful bedtime sharing book, Rosalind Beardshaw has illustrated sixteen popular rhymes, lullabies and poems (mostly anonymous but with poems by J.M.Westrup, Thomas Hood and Robert Louis Stevenson).
Populating her moonlit world with adorable children, foxes, squirrels, mice and other small creatures set in scenes generously embellished with silver and gold,

Beardshaw makes each spread sparkles with colour, light and nocturnal enchantment.