Let's Read! What the Ladybird Heard - Softcover

Julia Donaldson

4.31

2,530 ratings by Goodreads

9781447235286: Let's Read! What the Ladybird Heard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1447235282 ISBN 13: 9781447235286

Publisher: MacMillan Children's Books, 2013

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Lets Read What the Ladybird Heard

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About the Author:

Julia Donaldson is the outrageously talented, prize-winning author of the world's best-loved picture books, and was the 2011-2013 UK Children's Laureate. Her books include Sharing a Shell, Princess Mirror-Belle and the Dragon Pox and the modern classic The Gruffalo, which has sold over 13.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over sixty languages. Julia also writes fiction as well as poems, plays and songs and her brilliant live children's shows are always in demand. Julia and her husband Malcolm divide their time between Sussex and Edinburgh. Lydia Monks is one of the most original picture book artists working today. Her distinctive use of colour and collage has won her critical acclaim and several awards, including the Smarties Prize. Her collaborations with Julia Donaldson include The Singing Mermaid, the Princess Mirror-belle books, Sugarlump and the Unicorn, and the phenomenally successful What the Ladybird Heard. Lydia lives in Sheffield.

From The Washington Post:

Parades of animals stream through these two titles -- one silly, the other sweet. Start the day with Julia Donaldson's bouncy ode to life on a noisy farm and to one special inhabitant who, unlike the other critters, "never said a word." Never, that is, until "two men in a big black van, / With a map and a key and a cunning plan" arrive to steal the "fine prize cow." That's when the smallest of all goes into action: " 'Help!' was the ladybug's very first word, / And 'Gather around' were the second and third." Flamboyant colors, zany perspectives and a neatly circular tale lead, with satisfying inevitability, to a happy outcome for all but the thieves.

End the day with A Sick Day for Amos McGee (Roaring Brook, $16.99; ages 3-5), by Philip C. Stead and illustrated by Erin E. Stead. A zookeeper by profession and an animal lover by nature, gentle, fastidious Amos McGee tends to much more than just his charges' health. He plays chess with the elephant ("who thought and thought before making a move"), runs races with the tortoise ("who never ever lost"), and spends quiet time with the penguin ("who was very shy"). In a tribute to the ineffable bond between keeper and kept, it is impossible to tell if the animals' expressions are a perfect mirror of Amos's or the other way around. And that is the crux of the story, for when Amos gets sick, it is the animals who take on the business of caring for their favorite human. Thick, creamy paper and a muted palette add to the gentle resonance of a story that ends with everyone tucked in at last for a sweet night's sleep.

Reviewed by Kristi Jemtegaard
Copyright 2010, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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