Baby Elias Reviews: Sharing A Shell and 2 other awesome books
It used to be that all I wanted to hear was my mummum’s rendition of The Owl and The Pussycat, but that was back in the days when I had no teeth, couldn’t see further than my toes and I spent most of my time sleeping all swaddled up in a pale blue blanket.
How things have changed!
Now I have seven teeth, I can crawl and stand and one day very soon I’m going to walk. Though I still have a soft spot for Edward Lear’s owl and that fowl’s kitty love, I’m almost eleven months old and I want books with good tales, cool pictures and glitter on every page (or something along those lines).
My name is Elias. My mummum says I smell like a little butter biscuit soaked in warm vanilla milk and I’ve usurped mummum’s blog to tell you about some awesome board books to keep in mind if you’re looking for something nice for your own library or maybe for a buddy who’s having a birthday.
I mentioned glitter and maybe that sounds girlish, but glitter is great for boys and girls who are getting their first experience of the world because it shines (and we like that! who wouldn’t) and what’s more it gives parts of the pictures a nice rough texture, which is different to the smooth parts and so it’s interesting for little explorers. One of the jolliest books I’ve come across lately is Julia Donaldson’s Sharing A Shell which has – ta-dah! – glitter on every page. I know she’s famous for the that shaggy creature beginning with a G, but I live in Cape Town and not in a snowy European forest, so I kind of relate better to Sharing A Shell’s rock-pool rhyme.
Look! A crab, a crab with no shell, running along by the sea, tap, tap, tap, you can’t come in, you can’t share a shell with me
…. that’s how it starts and the coolest thing is that when I go to the amazingTwo Oceans Aquarium, which I do at least once a week with my mummum, I can actually see the crabs, anemones, fish and starfish. Just like the ones that illustrator Lydia Monks has captured in her colourful pictures for Julia Donaldson’s story in rollicking verse that I like to hear over and over again, again, again!! Again mummum! (Okay, I know other people call them Mother or Mum or Ma, but at this stage she’s mummummum to me and co-incidentally so is milk called mummummum.)
Sharing A Shell is published by Macmillan, isbn 978-1405020480. It’s available in soft cover too, but board is best for babies like me.
Oh dear, I was going to tell you about another book called Vegetable Glue by Susan Chandler (it’s very Tim Burton-ish for parents and babes with a taste for quirky) and another one called The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (which is a total classic and essential for any board book library) but all this talk of milk has me distracted, perhaps another day … mummummummum…
