If Steve Antony’s tongue-in-cheek Betty series is to be believed, it’s almost uncanny how much a baby gorilla has in common with the average 2– to 4-year-old human child.

If Steve Antony’s tongue-in-cheek Betty series is to be believed, it’s almost uncanny how much a baby gorilla has in common with the average 2– to 4-year-old human child.
In this deceptively simple counting book, five creatures lurk around a “creepy haunted house” until they run into something apparently even scarier that sends them running.
Antoinette Portis’s brilliantly observed and succinct (only three different words are used throughout) picture book, Wait, sweeps us along on a mother and son’s commute, as they make their way to the train station from home on foot.
“In the city there is a zoo. In the zoo there is a lion. In the lion there is a… dentist [!!!]” So as not to spoil the story, it suffices to say that cumulative stories are almost always a hit with kids since it’s a clever way of building narrative momentum, as well as anticipation for what’s coming next — particularly when they are as fun and well done as this one.
That The Napping House was one of the most read books in our household when my kids were littler, as well as one of the few “baby” books that both of them STILL request for occasionally, speaks volumes about the incredible enduring popularity of Audrey and Don Wood’s memorable cumulative tale.
When a little girl offers to make her daddy a sandwich with all of his “favourite things”, things get a liiittle out of hand…
The Very Lonely Firefly centres on the eponymous protagonist’s search for the other fireflies, and along the way introduces various common light sources.
Originally published with a different title and illustrations, this is probably one of the lesser known works by Ruth Krauss.
Sporting an irresistible bright cover, What This Story Needs Is a Pig in a Wig is styled like an author’s train of thought, with more and more rhyming elements appearing in the book as the story progresses: a pig in a wig, a boat in a moat, a frog, a dog, and a goat on a log…
Reminiscent of Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard’s Noisy Book series from the ’30s-’50s, Kevin Henkes has adopted the simple, direct and child-friendly style of writing in the refreshingly quirky Circle Dogs
that takes us through a day in the life of a pair of pet dachshunds.