Fly With the Birds: A Word and Rhyme Book

A first vocabulary book for small children follows a young girl through the day, from early in the morning until late at night, as she takes part in a variety of familiar activities and imaginative escapades.

PreSchool-K?In playful rhymes, a child narrates her day, from waking up and selecting an outfit to wear, through myriad activities, and finally to bedtime and dreamland. The narrative is imbued with a strong sense of adventure, lifting everyday happenings from the mundane to the fanciful. "Stuck in the traffic, we creep and we crawl,/ Buses and cars hardly moving at all,/ So closing my eyes/ I say two magic words...Hey, presto! A bus that can fly with the birds." Bright, childlike illustrations with fold-out flaps that label items depicted in the art and reveal surprises enhance the fun and capture the imagination.? Sally R. Dow, Ossining Public Library, NY
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edwards (The Forest Child) and Kitamura (When Sheep Cannot Sleep) follow a child through an ordinary day in this well-organized, imaginatively designed vocabulary-builder. Each spread includes a triptych of the blond narrator's daily activities, a poem and a gatefold flap that lifts to reveal the poem's final line. On the flap appears a group of words and pictures that can be matched to the illustrations. When the child imagines escaping a traffic jam, for instance ("Stuck in the traffic, we creep and we crawl,/ Buses and cars hardly moving at all,/ So closing my eyes, I say two magic words.../ Hey, presto! A bus that can fly with the birds!"), the vocabulary list sends readers on a search for a bicycle, van and trailer; the first picture shows passengers sitting miserably on a stalled bus, but the concealed picture is of a bus hoisted into the air by a flock of birds. Edwards's 11 rhymes about pets, shopping and the weather prove serviceable at best. However, Kitamura's angular illustrations, drawn with a steady pen and filled with compatible solid colors, nicely serve the word-game setup. Despite the complex arrangement of images, text and gatefolds, the overall effect is invitingly clean. Ages 2-6.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A day in the life of an imaginative girl, told in singsong. Readers rise with her, get snarled in a traffic jam, go on a picnic, hoe a row, patrol the house, and slip off to bed. Each episode features a foldout page--full of labeled objects--that gives a fantastical twist to the last line of the verse on that spread: ``Stuck in the traffic/we creep and we crawl,/Buses and cars hardly moving at all,/So closing my eyes,/I say/two magic words/Hey, presto! A bus that can fly with the birds!''). The rhyme is buoyant and lilting and readers are sure to admire a girl who'd rather go spelunking with moles than weed another inch of the garden, or who orders thunder, snow, and rain with her picnic instead of just soaking up the sun. Edwards (The Forest Child, 1995, etc.) makes his book almost insistently edifying, particularly when the items in each scene are laid out and identified; it fractures the whimsical wordplay. Kitamura's bee-busy, lighthearted illustrations prevent the exercise from becoming too professorial; his trademark clutter will keep children poring over the pages. (Picture book. 2-6) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.