"Who's that?"

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Animal Faces arrived today.  What an excellent book!  Isabel sat right down with it to examine the animals.  She opened to the page with camels:

 "Who's that?"
"That's a camel."
"Oh.  Who's that?"
"That's another camel."
"Who's that?"
"That's another camel.  They're all camels."
"Oh.  Who's that?"
 
We moved on to the seals, the rhinoceroses, the polar bears, the lions, and the foxes.

"Where's the wolfes?"
"The wolves?  I'll find them."

I found the wolves.

"Ohhhh, wolfes.  [pointing at each] One wolf, one wolf, one wolf, one wolf, one wolf, one wolf.  Aroooo!"

These two reactions -- "Who's that?" and "counting" -- are hallmarks of the reading experience with Isabel these days.  She's taken to asking us to read her fairly long picture books, books with text at a level that she doesn't get yet, and we work our way through them with her, narrating around the pictures as much as reading the actual words.

The biggest hit at the moment is our old favorite, Charles Santore's The Wizard of Oz. Isabel can identify all the characters, and explain the high points of the plot.   She's excited to dress up as Toto this Halloween (Eleanor planned out our Oz-themed costumes in March, and hasn't budged since then).  I think her repeated "Who's that?" is a way of reinforcing knowledge she already has, sometimes gaining new knowledge, and playing with the idea of testing my knowledge and getting me to come around to her point of view.

On the illustration of the Munchkins last night:

Isabel: "Those are goblins."
"No, they're Munchkins."
"Oh.  Who's that?"
"Munchkins."
"Who's that?"
"They're Munchkins."
"Who's that?"
"Munchkins."
"Who's that?"
"They're called Munchkins."
"Who's that?"
"Goblins."
Isabel, finally satisfied: "Oh."

We're loving age two around here.

Love, Annie

BIG!

Dear Annie,

Ah yes, two years old: Isabel's definitely bigger all the time.

Do you know
Little Gorilla, by Ruth Bornstein?  Little Gorilla lives in the forest and is loved by all the animals he meets.  Then one day he starts to grow (we see animals looking up, off-page), and he ends up BIG.  All his friends come to his birthday party, and they all still love him.  It sounds ridiculously simple-minded, but it's sweet too.

I wanted to look at some big-as-life books today.  First, there's
Life-Size Zoo, by Kristin Earhart (editor) and Toyofumi Fukuda (photographer).   It's big: 14 inches high and 20 inches wide when it's open, but some pages fold out one more time, giving you a 40-inch wide panorama.  and what you're looking at is a picture of an elephant, a tapir, a koala, or a hedgehog printed in the size it would be in real life.  A giraffe with its tongue sticking out spans the whole width.  And a tiger, at 20 inches across, sure is big:

life-size

Lots more about this book and two others by the same folks at a blog called Bookie-Wookie, featuring a dad and kids talking about what they've been reading.

Then there's the amazing Steve Jenkins, who creates lots of stunning non-fiction books illustrated with cut-paper collages.  In
Actual Size he does with collage what Fukuda did with photos. The gorilla's hand on the cover (book is 12 inches high) makes anyone -- grown-up or child -- feel small.  And when an animal is too big for the page, we get wonderful detail.  I had no idea a giant squid's eye is bigger than a gorilla's hand!  Here's more at Jenkins' website.

Animal Faces by Kyoko Toda and Akira Satohis, is alas, out of print -- although I've just ordered a copy sent to you from alibris for Isabel's birthday.  The picture on the cover is of a life-size wombat -- harking back to an earlier wombat entry here.  But the beauty of this book is in the smaller photographs inside.  Every two-page spread has 21 photographs of one species of animal: gorillas, tigers, camels, elephants, etc.  The beauty of it is that each photograph is of a different individual.  Kids of many different ages can get lost in comparing all the different faces.  Check out the rhinos:

I bought as many copies as I could find of this great book when it went out of print, so that I could keep selling them.  It took about a year to run through them all, and now I miss it.  I hope it's a hit at your house.

Love,

Deborah