Tag Melissa Sweet

Where’s My Jumper? / You Nest Here With Me / Let’s Count Vehicles / ABC Town

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Where’s My Jumper?
Nicola Slater
Simon & Schuster Children’s Books

Meet Rudy: he’s lost his jumper – a pink one and a tad on the short side, but his favourite nonetheless.
The adorable little creature has searched everywhere, upstairs and downstairs, indoors and outdoors and round about. He’s looked in the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, even underground. Where can it be? In his search he encounters a host of quirky creatures – tumbling cats, jiving llamas, prima pigerinas, ski-dogs, soapy blackbirds, jibber-jabbering sea creatures, muttering mice, three crocs,

and passing foxes but of his missing garment there is no sign.

Will your little ones find Rudy’s jumper before the end of the story.

With its die-cuts pages, flaps and lots of funky animals to count, it’s terrific fun and delivered through an enormously engaging text and equally frolicsome, bright, bold illustrations.

Hours of pleasure guaranteed with this sturdy board book that is bound to be read over and over …

You Nest Here With Me
Jane Yolen, Heidi E.Y. Stemple and Melissa Sweet
Boyds Mills Press

Making use of real scientific facts in the form of a narrative rhyming text, a mother and daughter team, Jane and Heidi, have written a delightful board book to share with your little ones at bedtime.

A human mother nestles her sleepy little daughter in for the night and then goes on to share with her the many ways birds bed down to sleep.
‘ … Terns all nest in colonies / Upon high cliffs, above rough seas. // But you nest here with me. // Some owls nest on oak tree boles, / Some down in abandoned holes, … ‘

Lilting and loving, the mother’s words are very easy on the ear, informing gently while helping to induce a safe soporific effect for the listener through the repeated use of ‘But you nest here with me.’

Working beautifully in tandem with the text are Melissa Sweet’s mixed media, gouache and watercolour illustrations executed predominantly in soft hues of green and blue.

As it originated in the USA, the names of some birds will be unfamiliar to UK readers but I’d still recommend this to share with the very young both at bedtime and as an introduction to birds and their nests and other elements of the natural world, at any time – perhaps before a nap or a snuggle together.

Let’s Count Vehicles
illustrated by Josh Cleland
ABC Town
illustrated by Tamara Petrosino
Highlights

There’s plenty to interest pre-schoolers in these two ‘Hidden Pictures’ titles both of which have gatefold flaps beneath which are large busy illustrations of scenes within which spotters have to locate the items pictured on the outsides of the flaps as well as those mentioned in the question, for example ‘Can you find 9 trains and 10 cars?’

The various locations, which include in the counting book, a funfair in the park; urban sights, a building site and a harbour, are populated by anthropomorphic animals.

So too are the town scenes in the ABC, which depict shops of all kinds – including I’m happy to say, a bookshop; a hospital, garden centre and fire station. A library and museum and a karate centre dominate a double spread; there’s an urban park square complete with bathing pool; and a railway line traverses another spread.

Engaging, fun and educative too, both these sturdy board books are great for developing vocabulary and visual skills in addition to the mathematical and alphabetic elements of the titles.

Baabwaa & Wooliam

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Baabwaa & Wooliam
David Elliott and Melissa Sweet
Walker Books

Wooliam is a sheep – a sheep with a penchant for reading: how cool is that!
Baabwaa is also a sheep: she enjoys knitting – a more likely activity for a farm resident. These two are best friends. ‘Sounds kind of boring. But they like it.’ so we’re told.
One day the friends decide they should inject some adventure into their lives; so, it being perfect sunny weather with birds singing, off they set. However their field is surrounded by a wall; and circumambulating the field seems a rather dull kind of adventure. Nevertheless it’s what they do – three times. “Is this what adventures are like?” Baabwaaa asked. “All this walking, I mean.”
It certainly leads to an appetite for grass and while they’re munching their lunch another sheep appears. Or is it? This particular one has a long tail, a whiskery snout, dirty wool coat and ‘horrid teeth’. A pathetic attempt at a sheep disguise methinks.
Suddenly the whole adventure gains pace.
“It’s that Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing I’ve read about,” says Wooliam knowingly,

producing a book he just happened to have in his rucksack, to prove it to the sheep/ wolf.
Woe is me! The lupine creature can’t read as he tearfully admits. “It’s not my fault, I’m just not the reading kind.” No matter: Wooliam can teach him and thus begins a highly unlikely friendship. Baabwaa meanwhile knits their new pal a replacement for his awfully dirty coat.
Learning to read is rather a protracted business, broken up as it is by bouts of wolf chasing sheep around the field.

He ‘s merely following his nature: “We can use the exercise,” is Baabwaa’s philosophical take on the interruptions. Eventually though, the wolf is sufficiently proficient to be horrified at the way he’s billed in books: ”It says here I’m cruel and sneaky!” he complains. “And your point?” said Wooliam. Deliciously droll humour such as that pervades Elliott’s entire comical narration, which is an absolute gift to readers aloud and an equal delight for those on the receiving end.
Equally brilliant are Melissa Sweet’s mixed media illustrations, which extend the telling and breathe additional vitality into the three players,

all of whom are a mix of opposing characteristics.
You can dine on this one over and over …

Little Red Writing

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Little Red Writing
Joan Holub and Melissa Sweet
Chronicle Books
It’s Write On! Day at Pencilvania School, and all the little pencils, encouraged by their teacher, Ms. 2, are about to take the story path. There’s a buzz of excitement in the classroom as the pencils start thinking about their story ideas.

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Little Red decides her story should be about bravery and Ms 2 hands her a basket of red (noun) words telling her not to stray too far from the path and off goes the heroine on her writerly way. Before long though she decides that walking isn’t exciting enough for her narrative so she goes into the gym where a host of verbs help liven things up.

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But then she cartwheels clean off the page and into ‘a deep, dark, descriptive forest thick with adjectives.

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Feeling entangled by the adjectival foliage, she cuts her way out (thank you basket word) only to become stuck in a seemingly endless sentence.
Just in time though a truckload of adverbial assistance appears on the scene; assistance that quickly turns overwhelmingly exciting, causing our heroine to lose the plot and start scattering the contents of her basket all over the page, completely filling it.
Now what’s this tail doing on the next page? Surely a tail should be tailed, decides Little Red and off she goes on its trail all the way to …

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But that growly voice belongs not to Principal Granny but this lupine character,

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so it’s just as well that there’s one red noun left in Little Red’s basket and she puts it to use very effectively indeed…

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and just in time to save Principal Granny from complete oblivion …

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With its plethora of word play, Joan Holub’s text bubbles over with humour and Melissa Sweet’s collage, pencil and watercolour illustrations – an amalgam of classroom ephemera, calligraphy, and images of Little Red engaging in her storying adventure, are whimsical wonders.
An ingenious play on the Little Red Riding Hood tale, the whole thing is full to the brim with helpful advice for young (and not so young) writers. What better way to demonstrate ‘read before you write’. Every primary classroom should have a copy.

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