Three little creatures spend all their time brawling and trying to out-monster each other, until they decide to work together to make the biggest, baddest monster ever.

Three little creatures spend all their time brawling and trying to out-monster each other, until they decide to work together to make the biggest, baddest monster ever.
The somewhat pedestrian title ‘Thank You, Mama‘ seems to suggest that this is one of the many saccharine sweet children’s books exalting the greatness of mothers — not that moms don’t deserve them, of course, but I’ve always felt a bit odd reading them to the kids… like I’m undeservingly tooting my own horn. So while I would ordinarily bypass such books, there was something arresting about its Victorian-era-inspired cover art that made me pick it up. And boy was I glad I did.
This is a great board-book series that helps to reinforce positive behaviour and good manners in the little ones. The brightly coloured cartoons are appealing, while the sparse, humorous text in large fonts make it easy even for the youngest readers to understand and memorise the words in no time.
I Want My Hat Back is one of the most original picture books out there that appeals equally to both kids and grown-ups with its spot-on deadpan humour — a result of the happy marriage between the illustrations and text by the talented author/illustrator Jon Klassen.
Manners are nice to have, but the process of instilling them can be kinda boring since more often than not, parents end up nagging their kids to mind their P’s and Q’s. To be fair, though, most kids don’t mean to be rude — they’re probably too preoccupied with having fun to remember the myriad dull rules that adults come up with.
Thus, Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur tries to make learning manners fun for the little ones — and it succeeds, too.
Tea Rex is about a little girl who decides to invite T-Rex to her tea party. And so, she tries to be the perfect hostess, from sending him a proper invitation to setting the table nicely and holding a proper conversation with her guests. Of course, with a dinosaur as her special guest, things don’t go according to plan, to say the least.
That’s Not Funny! tells the story of a naughty hyena who plays a prank on a giraffe and, in the process, sets off a chain of mishaps for other animals. Not only is he not sorry about the pain he caused, but the hyena laughs at everyone — only stopping when he gets his comeuppance in the end.
While the ending might be too harsh for the hyena, I think it does teach kids about empathy, and more importantly, that not all pranks/jokes are funny — particularly for the ones on the wrong end.
Similar to Hippo Says “Excuse Me”, by the same author and illustrator, Penguin Says “Please” uses big fonts and a very simple storyline involving a cute but somewhat spoiled baby penguin to teach kids to be polite and say please when they need to ask for help — and it really works! After weeks of telling her to ask for things nicely — to no avail — my then-18-month-old finally did so shortly after reading this book :)
Hippo Says “Excuse Me” is a story that is told as much by the pictures as it is by the words in it. The premise is a baby hippo saying “Excuse me” to the other animals rather comically as he squeezes his way past them in various situations.
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