Steve LightRezensionen

Kids look for both shapes and the monsters at the fairgrounds.

I loved the illustrations in this! The story is about a girl who loves planes. In a [b:Where the Wild Things Are|19543|Where the Wild Things Are|Maurice Sendak|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327878051s/19543.jpg|3020535]-ish plot, Zephyr gets in trouble and is sent to her room (there's a funny wordless set of panels where she even has to relinquish her gum as punishment). Then she finds a secret little door that leads to her fantasy come true...a hangar full of flying machines! She flies an especially interesting looking plane, crash lands, and spies some highly improbable creatures through her binoculars. After a brief adventure with the improbable creatures, Zephyr makes it home in time for breakfast.

Otto loves it!

The first time I read Black Bird Yellow Sun, I was not impressed. I read it primarily focusing on the colors. The book contains all of the primary and secondary colors, along with pink and gray. But, like all children's books, I read it multiple times. I noticed how the order follows the day of the bird, from sunrise to sunset, and flows from one page to another. The bird plays in the green grass, but then a red snake appears, and it flies away to the grey mountains. I started to appreciate the book more. It's still not deep, but you could imagine a story. On each page, there is a black bird and an orange worm. I pointed them both out, teaching gestures. Some children may enjoy the search and find the worm.

Recommended age: 0-2 years

Writing style: The text is straightforward. Each page begins with "Black Bird" and then follows with another colored object, like "Blue Moon."

Lexile range (unofficial): 10L - 200L
Decoding difficulty: 2/5
Vocabulary difficulty: 1/5
Sentences difficulty: 1/5
Patterns difficulty: 1/5

Illustration style: The illustrations are a collage. The backgrounds use thick paint, textured like a sponge pressed into the page and lifted. The bird and worm are cut out of cardboard and placed (usually) on top.

Reality-based: Sure. There isn't much of a story here, but everything flows if you think of a bird going about its day.

The back of the book reads "From morning's yellow sun to evening's blue moon, Black Bird discovers the colors of the day."........and that's really all that can be said about it.

It is great for early literacy in that you can talk about the colors on each page. It's also a great beginning reader as there are approximately 16 words in the entire book. And the illustrations are interesting with apparent paint splotches and paper cutouts.

But it's kind of dull to read. Did not love it at all. It's more boring than I wanted it to be.

Ms favorite. Requests it A LOT. Mx likes too, and prefers dad (over mom) to read it.

Genre
Picture books for children
Writing Style
Participatory
Illustration
Black-and-white
Subject
Fairs
Monsters
Searching
Shapes

The book is about various types of airplanes, the sound each plane makes and how fast they go. it has colorful illustration. The book encourages children to image the different places plane go, the excitement of air travel and about different types of planes.

Age: 3-5 years
Source: Pierce College Library

Original rating: 🌟🌟🌟
Revised rating, 10/15/18: 🌟🌟

Illustrated in elaborate line drawings, this picture book depicts a young boy looking for his dragon all around a city (New York?). In each 2 page spread, as the boy wonders what the dragon is doing, increasing numbers of related objects (5 water towers, 8 fire hydrants) etc. are identified in text and with splashes of color. The line-drawing dragon can be spotted in each spread as well.

Reminds me of some of the imaginative picture books of my childhood. The focus on city life is a nice touch.½

With a short text, plenty to count, and a dragon to locate on each page, Have You Seen My Dragon? makes for a fun read-aloud, but it's the potential to settle in and really explore all the details in the illustrations that makes this a rich read for me.

Super cute art. Loved the interesting shapes-nonagon!

When the little girl goes to look for her monster at the fair, she asks the reader to help her find her friend. She goes searching around all the circus events: pie-eating, the bearded lady show, the egg display, the livestock, the hay rides, the monster trucks, and other things. After going through the whole circus, she finally finds her monster and they go home together.

Each page has a shape that is featured and is the only aspect of the page that is in color. Children can look for the shape, from common ones like rectangles to uncommon ones like quatrefoils, as well as finding both the monster and the girl in the black and white illustrations. These aspects help make it an active book to read with a child, and the unusual and normal shapes help make it a learning experience (although the child has to be old enough to not get overwhelmed with the many different kinds of shapes). This will be a fun book for children who enjoy both monsters and shapes.

Let’s Go!

Three different animal friends set out for Elephant’s Old Junk Tree to find a broken part for their truck. They have an adventure getting together for the trip, and going there. But the best thing is when they arrive. The junk tree provides lots of exploring fun, including a chance to get very dirty, but not the part they came for—or does it?

Despite each of the animals having distinct personalities, they are all able to be friends, and have lots of fun with each other. In the end, working together provides what they need.

Little ones through first grade will like this over-sized, hard-backed, five-star picture book. The author, who is also the illustrator, provides intricate drawings about each of the animal’s homes, the road trip, and the Junk Tree. Children who enjoy detailed or mechanical things will be delighted with this imaginative tale.

Candlewick Publishers has provided Tickmenot with a complimentary copy of, Road Trip, for the purpose of review.

Steve Light has done some very interesting things, artistically speaking, and one of the things I find unique is the wide variety in his board book offerings. This title is closest in style to Black Bird Yellow Sun but is much more playful.

The first spread shows the long, cat-like Mama Tiger stretching against a blue sky and puffy clouds. The tail of her little tiger is just barely visible on the edge of the book. As the pages turn, Mama Tiger seems to be searching for something. She splashes through a river, tries to catch a vivid red fish, takes a nap in a tree (keen-eyed readers will spot someone else peeking over a limb of the tree), watches a bird, sniffs the flowers, and finally gives a loud roar, a zigzag of thick, dark purple. A pair of ears peeks over the splotchy purple hill and the last spread reunites Mama Tiger and Tiger Cub, curled up together and sleeping in the purple night.

The backgrounds of the pages show thick, textured paint, the kind of image you'd get from sponge painting. Across these splashy swathes of color, Mama cat, slim, striped with black pen marks, cavorts and wiggles, looks worried and frustrated, and finally peaceful as she settles in with her cub.

Verdict: The simple text is perfect for babies and the bold, colorful pictures make these an easy choice for storytime and bedtime reading.

ISBN: 9781536206777; Published May 2019 by Candlewick; Borrowed from another library in my consortium

Loved the illustrations.

This darling board book has just a few words on each page allowing the colorful illustrations keep the attention of the smallest "readers'. These cute pictures will capture hearts as the cub follows Mama around.

This is a book about planes and their sounds. Ages 2-5. Source Pierce College Library.

It's great way to introduce geometric shapes in young child with fun picture and literacy.

A quaint little text with simple words enjoyed by young children. This book slotted nicely into a large construction based interest of my class. I enjoyed the diversity and variety of job roles. Overall my class enjoyed the book, although they showed a bit of a divide in their interests. Several began strong and enjoyed the clear words they could read and follow, however, lost interest in the story when the pattern changed to listing job roles. Others in my class enjoyed the book from start to finish, as they do with anything which relates to construction or building.

When their father leaves his lunch behind one day, two children pursue him to his construction work site, witnessing the building and breaking, breaking and building, that together make up the process of creating structures...

With a minimal text and his signature eye-popping artwork, author/illustrator Steve Light crafts a lovely picture-book tribute to the creation of architectural wonders in Builders & Breakers. His afterword, which contains more text than the entire rest of the book, discusses his love of classical, Gothic and art deco styles of architecture. Having greatly enjoyed Light's Have You Seen My Dragon? and Have You Seen My Monster?, I really appreciated this one, with its return to that same illustrative style. I don't know that I would have followed the 'story' that well, if I hadn't already known what it was going in, but leaving that issue aside, this is one I would recommend, both to Steve Light fans, and to any child who enjoys tales about construction sites and/or the construction process.

Working off of a child's love of construction, the book is nearly guaranteed to appeal to younger readers. The story itself is simple with effective repetition to emphasis the building/breaking vocabulary. The artwork truly shines and brings the concepts to life. It is the layers of color and texture that really capture the readers' eyes.½

This is the cutest little book. I have a young son and he loves to build things. I entered this book giveaway because of him. When it came in I was so excited to read it with him. Now it is one of his favorite books.

If you know a little builder, they will love this book. When a young brother and sister need to take lunch to their father working at an urban construction site, they have all kinds of adventures along the way, seeing how people build large buildings in the city—huge construction tools and machines. The illustrations are charming, the pictures tell the story so a child does not even have to read to enjoy it, even very young children will enjoy it. And, the builders are not just white men, there are some women and builders of different races/ethnicities too.

The illustrations of this book are different than usual because the all of it is black and white except the animals that are being talked about on that certain page. This book can be used for pre-K students through 3rd grade because the younger children can learn about the animals, colors, and counting. In the classroom this book can be used in a math lesson so that students learn how to count up to 20.