Tag Rosie Adams

Can I Sit in the Middle? / Can You Catch the Bunny?

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Can I Sit In the Middle?
Susanne Strasser
Gecko Press


A child sits on the sofa to read with Hamster. The enthusiastic creature alerts the other animals – zebra, cat and lion – to join them. Just before the story starts Stork arrives, but then Cat decides to try and take possession of the cushion and Hamster gets up, fetches Fish and hurrah! Let the story begin. Or maybe not: some rearrangement of listeners is demanded and then the patient story reader can share the book. Oh! I spoke too soon for Rhino has mislaid a pair of slippers.

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The large pachyderm upends the sofa to retrieve said slippers and OOPS! They all tumble into a heap. Does that mean no story? Happily thanks to a deft rearrangement of furniture and something else that Cat had found under the sofa, a perfect book sharing situation is created and finally, whoopee! it’s story time at long last.


As this drama unfolds small children will enjoy watching the chain of events, delighting in the details in the gently humorous illustrations and wondering who next is coming through that door to be part of the audience on the sofa.

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Can You Catch the Bunny?
Rosie Adams and Linda Tordoff
Little Tiger


Addressing the target audience of very young children directly, the author asks that they assist little Bunny in finding his way first through the vegetable patch and then out into the forest and from there around the garden and the orchard until finally he reaches the safety of the burrow wherein the rest of his family are waiting. With a wealth of treasures collected on his adventure, little Bunny is more than ready to share his spoils with his fellow rabbits.


Little humans will certainly hone their fine motor skills as they use a finger to touch and trace the trail on each spread as well as develop their powers of observation when with the help of an adult sharer, they look at the details – vegetables, other small creatures, fungi, flowers, mammals, and lots more besides, in each of Linda Tordoff’s scenes.

Say Hello to the Sun / Under the Stars

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Say Hello to the Sun
Dr Lin Day and Lindsey Sagar
Scholastic

This picture book is essentially, based on a song from Dr Lin Day’s Baby Sensory interactive developmental programme, illustrated with Lindsey Sagar’s bright alluring, patterned illustrations.

Starting with the sunshine, tinies are invited to greet in turn the moon beaming down and guiding, growing corn that provides food, twinkling stars,

the cooling rain, colourful flowers to bring cheer and loving friends with whom to play.

Embedded in each illustration is a small circle showing what look like Makaton symbols and the final double spread talks about ‘how to use this book’ and repeats all the signs.

Whether or not you and your little one goes to Baby Sensory classes, this enormously attractive book is worth adding to your collection to share again and again no matter what time of day it is.

Under the Stars
Rosie Adams and Frances Ives
Little Tiger

With glowingly gorgeous illustrations by Frances Ives and Rosie Adams’ gentle rhyming narrative that has a repeat refrain: ‘The world is a family: / we are all one, / …….. together / under the sun.’ an adult fox and a little one spend the day exploring and observing together from sunrise, until the stars twinkle and the moon shines bright in the night sky.

They watch squirrels playing, pause to relax as otter and its little one float on the water.

They listen to the sky humming with the beat of birds’ wings and enjoy their songs. Then in the cool of the forest, bear cubs share their findings, watched by the two foxes;  so too are the deer family and then under the starlit sky the parent fox reminds its cub, and readers, “The world is a family: / we are all one, / United together / under stars, moon and sun.’

Would that this were so, say I.

With its lilting words and beautiful scenes of the natural world, this is a book to read with little ones either at bedtime; or perhaps earlier in the day when there’s more time to talk about the ideas presented.