Tag Lizi Boyd

Kindness Rules! / Hide-and-Sleep

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Kindness Rules!
Eunice Moyle and Sabrina Moyle
Abrams Appleseed

The Moyle sisters (aka Hello! Lucky), offer, courtesy of an elephant and friends, a lesson, or rather several lessons, in good manners. (Elephants are apparently ace when it comes to faultless etiquette.)

First though our magic manners advocate dons respectacles, positive pants and cape of kindness. Polite greetings, sharing, inclusivity, saying please, good listening and explaining one’s feelings, respecting the property of others, not invading another’s personal space; good table manners and knowing when to apologise are all presented as desirable and elephant ends with a summarising golden rule: ‘Treat others the way you want them to treat you!’,

Delivered mostly in rhyme, and through alluring, lively illustrations these lessons will prove invaluable when little ones start playgroup or nursery.

Hide-and-Sleep
Lizi Boyd
Chronicle Books

With her characteristic whimsy, Lizi Boyd has created another winner for little ones. Right from the start they’re urged to join in the play, look closely and carefully and try to discover the answer to the question, ‘Who is hiding?’ in the meadow and forest scenes.

Alternate pages of this tall book are split a little more than halfway down, which encourages readers to participate in the game and search for creatures among the flowers, trees, beside the pond and as day turns to night, on the moonlit hills, among the tree branches and up in the sky.

Every turn of the page reveals more creatures – blinking fish, a sneaking racoon, a resting turtle, a leaping frog, a dashing fox,

a sitting squirrel, a swooping owl and more. Deft fingers can create three alternative double spreads from two as they enjoy the captions that engage and move the game forward in response to the “Who is hiding?’ question it the bottom corner of each recto.

Just before the animals all, or rather almost all, bed down for some shut-eye, the answer to this persistent question is revealed.

Gentle, playful and thoroughly engaging: Lizi Boyd’s richly patterned, stylised images in jewel-like colours provide delight at every turn of the page; but as for the titular ‘sleep’, well, forget it until the final pages; this is full-on energetic frolicking.

Bedtimes Dramas: Night Play / How to be a Supercow!

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Night Play
Lizi Boyd
Chronicle Books

This is billed as a bedtime story in three acts and as the presenter states as the first act opens, it stars Arlo (a little boy) and Friends (his soft toys). That is the intention but as the boy tells us, he is already feeling sleepy and while the toys – a big cat, lemur, rabbit, fawn and two birds are engaged in planning Act 1, the boy falls asleep.

The excitement builds as props are gathered, costumes tried and hastily abandoned on account of their itchiness and weight; sound effects are debated, moves worked on and further sounds added …

till all the noise eventually reawakens the slumberer.

Then with full cast reassembled, the curtains are opened in a dramatic gatefold to reveal …

and the entire show concludes with a bow and (instead of the suggested Act 4) the actors’ sleepy denouement.

Beautifully satisfying, this truly is a theatrical performance with clever design that promotes close attention to detail as well as using a similarly striking pattern for the stage curtains and Arlo’s pyjamas. I particularly like too, the changing backdrops for each spread with additional bit part players and other details for aware viewers to spot and enjoy.

A lovely introduction to theatre for little ones and perhaps, an inspiration for some to have a go creating their own dramas.

How to be a Supercow!
Deborah Fajerman
Barron’s Educational

Here’s a little rhyming book that will resonate with a good many parents.

Three tired little calves attempt to sweet talk their mother cow into allowing them to delay bedtime with accounts of their secret must-do supercow activities.

There isn’t much these lively creatures can’t turn their hooves to. There are dragons to rescue from angry princesses;

there’s gold to liberate from pirates, not to mention call outs to attend to, troublesome machines to fix and much more. Quite simply with such drama, there isn’t time for sleep.

Mum knows just how to deal with her young offspring however. She acknowledges their super powers but beguiles them into donning their night attire,

brushing their teeth, washing and delaying all those vital heroic actions till morning. Oh! there’s also a promise of a special treat  too.

All this crazy action is wonderfully illustrated in spirited scenes of totally endearing bovine characters that will amuse both little humans and their long-suffering adult ‘putters to bed’.

I Wrote You A Note / Mr Darcy

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I Wrote You A Note
Lizi Boyd
Chronicle Books
Herein we follow the journey of a note written by a little girl sitting beside a stream, as it travels from her hands until it finally finds its way to the intended recipient.
During its journey the note becomes briefly, a sail for Turtle’s raft; a resting place for some baby ducklings; a bridge for Spider.

Bird then uses it as nesting material; it’s discovered by a restless squirrel; Snail mistakes it for a house; Mouse fashions it into a sunhat;

Rabbit makes a basket from it; Dragonfly rests beneath it; Goat – well he can’t read so abandons it in favour of grass.
Finally the wind whisks the paper skywards dropping it in just the right place for a friend to find. But what does the note say? Aah! You’ll need to get hold of a copy of this enchanting book to discover that.
This is a lovely, rhythmic read aloud with some natural sounding repetition and gentle humour throughout. Lizi Boyd’s gouache illustrations are enchanting. They, along with the stream, seem to flow across the pages as the note makes it journey; and the sender is, all the while, exploring and interacting with the natural world around her. It’s absolute delight from cover to cover, with text and illustrations working so perfectly together.

Mr Darcy
Alex Field and Peter Carnavas
New Frontier Publishing
Meet Mr Darcy, a genteel, refined and shy character living alone on the edge of Pemberley Park. One day he receives an invitation to tea from Lizzy and her sisters who live in an ordinary park. Seemingly considering himself a cut above such creatures, Mr D. tosses the invitation aside

and goes on his way, cutting short the sisters as he passes by.
The following day, Mr Darcy embarrasses himself by crashing right into a tree while endeavouring to ignore Lizzy, and then suffers another disaster of a very messy kind.

Once again its Lizzy together with several others, including Mr Bingley who, despite Mr Darcy’s rudeness, come to his aid.
Grateful for his assistance, Mr Darcy decides after all to accept the invitation to tea and once there, he feels ‘quite loved and not alone at all.’
If any of this sounds familiar, then it’s because the author, a Jane Austen lover, chose to create this rather softer character in her reimagined Pride and Prejudice for young children with its basic plot, main characters and settings remaining intact. Alex Field’s charming tale about shyness, encouragement and the joys of friendship, demonstrates beautifully how easy it is for shyness to come across as rudeness. It’s made all the more enjoyable by Peter Carnavas’s gently humorous, painterly portrayal of the characters.

I’ve signed the charter  

The Big, Big Bing Book/Big Bear little chair

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The Big, Big Bing Book
Harper Collins Children’s Books
This outsize board book, which is adapted from Ted Dewan’s original Bing books, certainly is a splendid BING THING! Clearly it’s designed for group sharing and I envisage small children lying flat on the floor poring over and discussing the plethora of images they find herein.
It’s thematically organized with each of the half dozen double spreads being given over to a different topic. Thus we have ‘Hello Bing! that introduces Bing Bunny’s friends and relations, Bing’s house (and garden)

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that is simply crammed with everyday objects that are part of Bing’s domestic life.
From there, Bing’s world enlarges to encompass the immediate environment – the woods, his street, the park and playground, Amma’s crèche and more.
We also join in with the numerous Playtime activities that absorb Bing and his pals, each of which is illustrated vignette style,

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then there’s a Colours page with Bing’s own ‘Rainybow Song’ and another for Numbers.

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The final spread looks at two more concepts Opposites and Seasons.
Each double spread is packed with details that will assuredly get children talking, enthusing, laughing and learning in a playful, enjoyable way be it at home or at nursery.

Also full of opportunities for language development is:

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Big Bear little chair
Lizi Boyd
Chronicle Books
Take a comparatively simple size concept – big/small – and turn it into a beautiful, stylish three-story book encompassing the concept but with so much more is what Lizi Boyd does here beginning thus …

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And continuing with …

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and finally, after the butterfly has hatched –

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The second story introduces little bear and moves on to …

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and eventually …

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The bears then come together and another story unfolds and finally we meet the whole cast of story characters.

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Read differently, each page itself could be the starting point for a story that the reader goes on to create.
With its bold, patterned, slightly whimsical illustrations executed with a limited colour palette, no matter how it’s read, this offers an experience full of delight and potential.

Use your local bookshop      localbookshops_NameImage-2