Tag Jo Lodge

Let’s Play, Cheetah / Time for Bed, Panda

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Let’s Play, Cheetah
Time for Bed, Panda
Jo Lodge
Campbell Books

Let me introduce The Googlies, Jo Lodge’s new first words series featuring adorable animals going about their daily lives.
Just right for using with babies and toddlers, each one has five bright alluring scenes that feature an animal character in a simple story, and each character has movable googly eyes and a slider – great for developing fine motor skills.
In Let’s Play, Cheetah, little ones can learn the names of Cheetah’s toys, join in with his choo-choo-ing train,

get physical when he experiments with some musical instruments, creates a picture and finally issues an invitation to play peek-a-boo.

Through Time for Bed, Panda, vocabulary associated with a bedtime routine is introduced. While an adult reads aloud tinies can join in with splishing and splashing, sipping and slurping, scrub-a-dubbing, wow-wee-ing (great to see a bedtime story) with ted …

and zzz-snoring, as well as pointing to items both in the main picture on the verso and the small strips on the recto as Panda gets ready for some shut-eye. (courtesy of a slider).

I’d suggest adding this one to the bedtime routine of human babies.

With their repeat refrains, “Can you say it with me?’, both books are great fun to share either at home or one-to-one in a nursery setting. Look out too for other titles coming soon in the series.

Board Books and a Squidgy One

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Baby’s Very First Faces
illustrated by Jo Lodge
Campbell Books

With its mirror, crinkly pages and high contrast images and patterns, this hand-washable book is just the thing to share with a new baby. It features in turn a daddy, a mummy, and a baby. In case you are reluctant to take it out of your home, there is a Velcro strap that can be attached to a buggy while you’re out and about.

Where’s Baby Chick?
Ingela P Arrhenius
Nosy Crow

Spring’s well and truly in the air: the ideal time to introduce toddlers to some new life with this latest hide-and-seek book. Tucked away behind the felt flaps on the brightly coloured, patterned spreads are Baby Bunny, Baby Lamb, Baby Kitten and Baby Chick. The final spread contains a mirror and asks ‘And where are you?’
Simple interactive delight to share with your little one.

Bake a Rainbow Cake!
Amirah Kassem
Abrams Appleseed
A veritable explosion of colour is the outcome of artistic baker Amirah Kassem’s board book extravaganza.

She gives the essential step-by-step two word instructions at the top of each page, beneath which is a jazzy illustration with either a tab to pull, a wheel to turn or a flap to lift as you ‘Pour it!/ Mix it!/ Colour it! / Bake it!’ and so on until, once the frosting has been applied, it’s time to lavish on the sprinkles and wish. Then turn the page to the final …

Short and VERY sweet! Irresistibly so in fact. Mmm! Yum, yum. Yummy! Second helpings please, will come the cry from the little ones you share this tasty board book with.

Old Macdonald’s Things That Go
Jane Clarke and Migy Blanco
Nosy Crow

There’s a whole lot more sounds than moos and baas down on Old MacDonald’s farm: the farmer has a passion for noisy vehicles, by all accounts.
His car vrooms; his tractor chugga-chugga chugs; the combine goes rattle-swish everywhere. He even has a bus that beep-beeps its way around full of jolly animals.

Seemingly he has extensive farmland for there’s a swoosh-swooshing motor boat and it appears he’s fortunate in having a fire truck on hand to deal with accidents of the incendiary kind, ‘nee-nawing’ into action when things get a bit over-heated.

But there’s even more; I’ll let you work out what choo-choos across the fields and what zoom-zoom’s into the air.

Each of Migy Blanco’s jolly digital spreads shows the farmer and his animals joyfully dashing around in one or more of the vehicles, before the two penultimate tongue-twisting spreads, before the 50’s-looking vehicles whizz towards the finish line. If you can actually slow down though, there’s plenty to pore over in every scene.

Jane Clarke’s rowdy spin off from the classic nursery song will surely have little ones giggling as well as singing along. One wonders what else Old Macdonald might have down on that farm of his; or maybe he could take a holiday and experience all manner of seaside sounds.

Louis Lemur, Laundry Lemur

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Lemur Dreamer
Courtney Dicmas
Templar Publishing
Somnambulist Louis, resident of the top floor of 32 Pebbly Lane, worries the fellow residents of his apartment block with his nightly wanderings. But one night when Louis actually leaves the building

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and snuffles out into the lane, they feel compelled to trail him as his dream-filled wanderings take him to the very edge, whereupon his fearless followers execute a daring rescue.

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Once safely on terra firma, Louis recounts his dreams to his rescuers only to discover how he and they have passed the night. But Louis is one lucky lemur for not only do his friends forgive him immediately, but the following day present him with a wonderful cheer-up gift, guaranteed to keep their erstwhile wanderer securely grounded in his own home.
From the title page,

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we know we are in for a treat with this one. Dicmas’ choice of colour palette is just right for those whimsical, dreamy scenes

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every one of which is a joy to behold and the perfect counterpart to her dead pan telling.

Last year there was a plethora of possums: are lemurs to be the favourite animal inhabitants of picture books in 2015, I wonder. There’s another in

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There’s a lemur in my laundry!
Jo Lodge
Nosy Crow
A top quality small chunky board book in a new ‘Slide + seek’ series for adults to enjoy with the very youngest, where sliding the lower or upper part of the page reveals the particular animal that has taken up residence in an unlikely place in the narrator’s home. So, as well as the title creature we have a sink with a seal, a frog in the fruit bowl,

 

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a snake in the sock drawer, a lion in the lampshade and a bear in the bed. In addition to the delight of revealing the animals themselves in Jo Lodge’s rainbow coloured pictures, there are animal sounds and the repeat ‘I don’t believe it!’ to join in with, and lovely alliterative sentences to relish.
Great for beginner readers to share with toddler siblings too.
Use your local bookshop localbookshops_NameImage-2

Don’t forget February 14th ibgdposterlarge