Tag Lucie Brunellière

Get Dressed Belly Button! / So Tired, So Wide Awake!

jillrbennett Leave a comment

Both these board books are from Gecko Press: thanks to the publisher for sending review copies.

Get Dressed Belly Button!
Lucie Brunellière

It’s a chilly day so the toddler must be suitably dressed before heading outside into the cold. Tinies will enjoy watching as the adorable infant is clad in ‘two soft socks’, a ‘toasty t-shirt’ and a pair of jeans; but there’s a belly button still visible. What else will be needed before we’re ready to sally forth? Squeaky sneakers, a cosy warm coat, two woolly mittens, a bobble hat and a scarf and a special kiss. Hurrah! Off you go, little one.
An external narrator, presumably the parent or carer, does the talking in this cleverly designed, vertical flip-flap board book

So Tired, So Wide Awake!
Susanne Strasser

A small bedroom drama unfolds as Hedgehog, Fox, Donkey, Pelican and Crocodile lie fast asleep in bed; but not so Seal. He apparently needs to visit the bathroom so up and out of bed he wriggles. Then in turn, his previously snoozing pals leave the bed and troop to the bathroom: Crocodile has forgotten to brush her teeth, Pelican needs a drink of water,

Donkey has itchy ears and so on, until only a scared Hedgehog remains. Up she scrambles and off she tip, tip tips to find the other animals. Where have they all gone? Somewhere where they can each receive a goodnight kiss before falling fast asleep. Unsurprisingly though, the kiss giver is still wide awake, squashed beneath the heap of slumberers.

Suddenly, a voice calls out, “What a stink! Who did that?” Thereupon, the animals rapidly return from whence they came and crash out in their own bed at last.

Little humans will enjoy watching the build up of tension before it’s revealed where the animals are all going, and delight in the whiffy solution that has them hastily retreating to their own bed. Fun to share with tinies especially as a pre-bedtime read.

Deep in the Ocean / The Big Sticker Book of Birds

jillrbennett Leave a comment

Deep in the Ocean
Lucie Brunellière
Abrams Appleseed

In this large format board book, readers follow Oceanos, a shiny silver submarine, as it takes an exploratory voyage into the depths of the oceans.
From the first opening, we’re immersed in the ocean’s waters along with the submarine’s scientific crew

but as their craft dives deep and travels through a deep abyss, a fierce storm blows up, whisking the little shiny submarine right off its intended course.

Instead, eddying whirlpools cause it to journey to the polar waters of the Arctic; then it’s pulled by a blue whale towards tropical waters of a coral reef, travelling on until one imagines, it resurfaces, with the crew having collected a wealth of information.

There is a free accompanying 10-minute, atmospheric sound track available to download, though to get the most out of the dual experience, you need to synchronise the track timings with page turns.

It’s easy to get lost in the colourful ecosystems with their standout bright flora and fauna depicted in Brunellière’s multi-layered, finely detailed spreads that do a splendid job of capturing the awe and immensity of our ocean ecosystems.

Dive in and be amazed at the riches therein.

The Big Sticker Book of Birds
Yuval Zommer
Thames & Hudson

Following Yuval’s wonderful The Big Book of Birds comes an activity book on the same theme.

Readers are in the company of Polly the Pigeon. She guides us through as we’re told, ‘the feathery world of birds’ and all that’s needed for the journey is a pencil, some colouring pens and ‘a flighty imagination’. Some of the latter might be used in deciding how to adorn the pages with the 200+ stickers provided at the end of the book.

There’s a wealth of fascinating facts embedded within the spreads that are allocated either to specific kinds of birds such as albatrosses or puffins, or to avian topics including feathers, nesting, and migration.

Children might accept Yuval’s invitation to complete a maze,

design a feather for a new bird species, spot the difference, design a bird box, imagine and draw what a dozen magpies might have picked up in their beaks and more. Or what about playing a game of Blackbird bingo or adding foliage to a tree for wild birds to hide among?

I love the way all Yuval’s creatures be they birds or other, have a slightly mischievous look in their eyes, which adds to the allure of the already engaging pages.

Immersive and fun while unobtrusively educating the user(s).