Tag Michael Slack

Interact With Board Books

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Sweet Dreams
Hannah Abbo
Little Tiger

Very young children are invited to join mother owl as she hunts for food, soaring across the starlit sky one night. She flies over tall grass that shelters a mother rabbit and her little ones, passes a log pausing briefly to peep at Fox and its cub, discovers a mother mouse and her babies snuggled together under some leaves and finally flies back to the tree where she tucks her three waiting owlets safely beneath her wing.
With its alluring die-cut cover, five differently textured, touchy feely flaps to explore, a gentle rhyming text and scenes of the natural world at night from various viewpoints by Hanna Abbo this is a lovely board book to share with the youngest humans at bedtime especially.

Don’t Ever Conga With A Cow
Harriet Evans and Michael Slack
Little Tiger

This is an addition to team Evans and Slack’s Don’t Ever series, this one being set down on the farm. Young children are warned against disturbing a slumbering rooster; tricking a woolly sheep, wrongly blaming a large pig for the mucky deposits it hasn’t left; getting your rear end too close to a hungry goat

and finally never ever attempt the titular conga with a cow; it’s sure to move to a different tune.
Farm animal silliness with creatures that are guaranteed to make little ones giggle and relish joining in with the RING! RINGs, YEE-HAWS, OINKs and NOM NOMs as you turn the pages making each animal in turn move. Cause alarm and you’re in for a shock.

How It Works: Shark / Don’t Ever Laugh at a Ladybird

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These are two new novelty board books from Little Tiger: thanks to the publisher for sending them for review.

How It Works: Shark
Molly Littleboy, illustrated by David Semple

Cleverly designed with strategically placed peep through parts of every page, this serves well as an introduction to sharks for preschoolers. They will be fascinated to learn that these powerful predators have super-strong tails that enable them to swim faster than a motorboat can move. They may well be surprised to hear that sharks were around before dinosaurs existed. I’m sure humans young and not so young are pleased not to have 300 teeth to clean, the number some sharks possess and having learned that, in contrast to humans, sharks very seldom sleep, young children might try that as an excuse not to go to bed at the proper time.
Playful, fun learning in bite-sized portions, with clearly labelled body parts and “Did you know? interjections from a deep-sea diving mouse that swims up on every spread.

Don’t Ever Laugh at a Ladybird
Harriet Evans, illustrated by Michael Slack

You will probably decide to heed the titular warning of the furious faced ladybird, as well as the rhyming ones concerning the other four irate minibeast kinds that fly, spin forth, leap or slither from the pop-ups on Michael Slack’s wacky brightly coloured spreads. If not, you might easily end up in a honey covered mess after baking with a bee, dizzy from trying to out dance a disco crazy spider, lose your voice while endeavouring to emulate a ribbiting frog, or smothered in slime should you hug a shell-loving snail.
Minibeast madness to read aloud with the very young

Don’t Take a T-Rex Out For Tea / My Big Playbook / Polly Put the Kettle On

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Don’t Take a T-Rex Out For Tea
Harriet Evans and Michael Slack
Little Tiger

The five dinosaurs lurking between the covers of this large format board book practically leap off the pages as you turn them. In turn young children will delightedly encounter a stegosaurus – a decidedly bad sport that can’t bear to lose, a pterodactyl, not a creature to challenge for a race, then comes a diplodocus, an unsuitable dino. to try to hide in your bedroom on account of its colossal size, a triceratops that will put paid to any musical activities you might engage in, and finally be warned: T-Rex is always on the lookout for a tasty treat, so don’t even contemplate inviting one out for tea.
A rhyming text accompanies the prehistoric pop-outs depicted in Michael Stack’s splendidly silly scenes.

My Big Playbook
Ingela P Arrhenius
Nosy Crow

A large format board book, with a die-cut and felt flap to explore on every page. There’s a double spread devoted to numbers 1-5, with other pages of things that go, things you would see outside, shapes, weather-related words. things to find at home, colours, animal sounds and finally, bedtime, which includes a surprise hidden mirror.
Ingela P Arrhenius’ bright, enticing illustrations show either separate items each set against its own coloured background, or a whole scene.
Interactive fun learning for the very youngest to enjoy at home or in a nursery setting.

Polly Put the Kettle On
illustrated by Yu-hsuan Huang
Nosy Crow

The local cafe is the setting for this version of a favourite nursery rhyme, its customers being a variety of anthropomorphic animals and Polly is a panda. Once the tea has been duly served, it’s down to pooch, Sukey to remove it from the stove. Off go all the tea drinkers and cake consumers waved on their way by Polly.
One of the ‘Sing along with me!’ series that has a sliding mechanism to add to the enjoyment on every spread and a QR code on the back cover to scan, which enables you to listen to the song. With ever fewer young children starting nursery knowing any nursery rhymes, this is a good place to start.

Dinosaurs on Kitten Island

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Dinosaurs on Kitten Island
Michael Slack
Farshore

Despite there apparently being plenty to amuse them on their own island, the dinosaurs are bored with sandcastle construction, skeleton reassembling and the other possibilities at home, and so they decide to pay a visit to Kitten Island. After all those kittens look like friendly creatures so despite what the narrator says about them, the prehistoric creatures are having none of it and potential catastrophes notwithstanding, off they go.

Game 1 is Launch the Lizards (courtesy of a geyser) but was that sudden flight and soaking really what the visitors came for? Lesson learned: surely that’s enough. It doesn’t appear so and nor does the second game ‘Deflate the airship’.

However apparently undaunted, the dinos are daft enough to participate in some ‘hairball floaty’ racing. Hmm! this could be their worst experience to date … Or not?

Seemingly these three friends revel in a high level of risk taking or else they’ve left their dino-brains at home for even after another unsettling outcome they precede to game 4, Fall-o meow that begins with them plunging into a dark chasm.

However it ends with them all in Tiny Baby Kitty Playroom, which is absolutely full of even tinier kittens. Now this looks a pretty safe place where both kittens and dinosaurs can play happily together.

Um …

With its brightly hued scenes, this is huge fun and hugely silly. It’s sure to go down well with the countless young dinosaur story enthusiasts out there who will definitely relish joining the prehistoric creatures in some loud RAWR, RAW-ing at each opportunity.