Tag Karen Blair

Ella and the Useless Day

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Ella and the Useless Day
Meg McKinlay and Karen Blair
Walker Books

Having had a good look around their house, Dad and Ella decide it’s time for a serious clear out and so they get to work right away. Together, they search, scramble, sort, poke, pick and pile all the useless stuff they find into the trailer to take to the rubbish tip, where useless things go. However, before they’ve even set off, their neighbour delightedly relieves them of the tricycle, calling it “Absolutely perfect!” and so it goes on until by the time they reach the dump, their trailer is almost empty,

even the holey blanket has been given a new lease of life. Then Ella realises that the final item is one they can make use of back in her own bedroom.

Meg McKinlay tells a subtle, gently humorous tale of recycling and reusing, creativity and community, that is highly pertinent in our throwaway society, where we all ought to be giving serious thought to living more sustainably. One wonders what on earth can be done with the “fashion disaster” of a suit,

the leaky goldfish bowl, the broken crockery and other things but young listeners/readers could have fun thinking of possibilities before turning to the final wordless spread where in a series of vignettes, Karen Blair shows just what their new owners did with them. Throughout the story, her watercolour and pencil illustrations provide lots of delightful details and underscore the wry humour of the words.

What a Noise!

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Toot
Leslie Patricelli
Walker Books
Far from being embarrassed by the eruptions escaping from its rear end, Leslie Patricelli’s adorable toddler talks about ‘toots’. There are ‘on my trike’ toots, music class toots,

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I need my potty toots, tummy ache toots and in the bath toots – some long, others short. We also hear about the toots from parents and pets. And what is our reaction to all this tooting? We laugh; and that is just what we are likely to do as we share the thoughts of the infant narrator in this hilarious board book.

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Here’s little E. reading her current favourite book.

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Baby Beats
Karen Blair
Walker Books
Herein we have an open invitation to join the toddler quintet in their musical interlude as they clap, stamp, boom, bash, clash, tap, shake, strum and sing.

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Then it’s the turn of the stripey cat to make a contribution before a grand finale after which they all snuggle down for some shut-eye.
Get out your percussion instruments or those saucepans, lids, spoons, sticks, pieces of wood, plastic bottles of rice, beans etc. for your children after you’ve shared this short book; with its charming water colour illustrations and rhyming text, it makes a lovely starting point for a session of music making and movement.
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Say Hello Like This!
Mary Murphy
Walker Books
A host of animals celebrate their individual voices as they practice saying hello in their own noisy ways. There’s the loud licky ‘Bow-wow-wow-wow’ from the dogs, the tiny tappy ‘tip tap tip tap’ of the beetles and the silly, happy HEE HAW! HEE HAW! from the donkeys. All these and more contribute to a glorious animal hullabaloo with just one missing voice…
The lift-the flap element of the book adds to the delight of the vocals as we see the various pairs coming together when the half page is turned to reveal for instance, the antennae tapping beetles, jumpy frogs on lilypads

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or the leaping, cavorting canines.
Mary Murphy’s characteristically bold, bright images thickly outlined in black are full of joie de vie.
With its well-chosen words and use of rhyme this is a pleasure to read aloud and with an open invitation to create a lot of noise, it is sure to become a firm favourite at story sessions with the very young.
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Another funny ‘noisy’ story already reviewed on Red Reading Hub in the post Goldilocks, Bears, Riots and More and now out in paperback is:

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What Noise Does a Rabbit Make
Carrie Weston and Richard Byrne
Andersen Press pbk
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Find and buy from your local bookseller: http://www.booksellers.org.uk/bookshopsearch

Bookmark 5th March in your diary

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