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Amy-Rose’s Reading Diary Part 3

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Amy-Rose’s Reading Diary at 17 months

Amy is almost one and a half now - I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. One minute she was a tiny dot, and now she’s a raging toddler, incredibly fast on her feet and destroying everything in her path. Well, not quite, but she is fairly dangerous!

She’s interested in everything, especially animals. She loves dogs, birds and cats and her current favourite word is ‘wa-wa’ (dog) and she carries her toy dog around with her everywhere.

Amy is currently very taken with ‘Where’s Spot?’ by Eric Hill or the ‘wa-wa’ book. She reads it backwards, forwards, and has already ripped two of the flaps off. But it’s such a joy seeing her pouring over the pictures and spotting the dogs on each page.

 

Another current favourite of Amy’s is the wonderful ‘The Baby’s Catalogue’ by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. This is a picture book packed full of wonderfully funny details - on each page you can spot babies and toddlers engaged in all sorts of activities: from drinking the dregs of a wine glass, to using mummy’s lipstick, and feeding the dog a birthday cake. Amy can pick out tiny details in the pictures - bananas on the ‘Shopping’ page, dogs on every page of course, birds, and babies in the bath. She loves pointing out the dogs especially. This book really stretches young children’s powers of observation and is an excellent addition to any youngster’s library. I’d highly recommend it for any child of one and a half upwards. It’s also available in a board edition, but I prefer the normal paper one, as the pictures are bigger. And it’s also great to get Amy used to ‘normal’ page turning at a young age.

Other favourites are ‘Owl Babies’ by the amazingly wonderful Martin Waddell and ‘I Kissed the Baby’ by another amazing author/illustrator Mary Murphy (who I’m proud to say is a friend of mine!).

I tend to shorten the text of ‘Owl Babies’ for Amy to hold her attention. But it’s a simple story so she understands it - babies love mummy, mummy leaves, babies are upset and miss mummy, mummy returns, babies and mummy are happy. The atmospheric illustrations by Patrick Benson are brilliant. It’s available in both paper and board editions and it’s another must for the library.
‘I Kissed the Baby’ is a most unusual book. Mary is not afraid to use strong graphic images and strong colours in her books for young children, and this book is no exception. Most of the book is in black and white, with the odd dash of colour, and Amy loves it and responds to it very well. Again it’s a simple story and she can follow it easily. And she loves picking out the different animals on each page. Too ‘arty’ for babies and toddlers - I think not!

 

Amy still loves ‘Furry Yellow Ducklings’ and is also starting to look at Lauren Child’s illustrations to my delight (my absolute favourite modern picture book author/illustrator). Time to start her on Sendak I think! I’ll let you know how she gets on with Max and the Wild Things!

I will be setting up my own children’s bookshop in the near future - I love children’s books so much and bookselling is in my blood at this stage - so I’ll keep you in touch with the plans. No name for the shop as yet - any suggestions welcome. Maybe ‘The Wonderland Children’s Bookshop’ or ‘Spider Webb’s!’ What do you think?
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