Genre: informational, fiction
I think this is a great book for struggling readers and for ELL students who can easily pick up similar sounds of words throughout the text. I used this book as an example for my alphabet book presentation because it caters to students who are at different reading levels and because the illustrations are very descriptive. The illustrations can tell the story without the words being there. The author uses repetitive words that begin the letter "R" to really focuses only on this letter for students and gives details as to what objects and things begin with this letter. ( )

This book is all about the letter "R". Duncan uses her familiar style of alliteration to tell the story about Rosie and her flowers. I would share this book with early childhood students to practice sound, letters, and vocabulary. ( )

A picture-book celebration of the letter "R," Rosie's Roses follows its eponymous procyonine heroine, Rosie Raccoon, and her brother Robert, as they make their way to their Aunt Ruth's for a birthday celebration. As Rosie's four beautiful roses - tied up with a colorful ribbon - disappear one by one, she becomes more and more distraught, convinced she will have nothing to give her aunt. Fortunately, her loss is Mr. Rat, Mr. Rabbit, Mrs. Robin, and Miss Squirrel's gain; and Aunt Ruth, as it turns out, already has the rose she likes best...

I cannot say that Rosie's Roses was really my cup of tea, as I found Pamela Duncan Edwards' story just a little too treacly-sweet, and Henry Cole's illustrations a little too cute, for my taste. These things vary, of course, and I imagine that some readers might find the overall effect here very winsome. I've certainly enjoyed Cole's work on other books - Mouse Was Mad was darling! - so fans of his might still want to take a look at this one. Despite being rather underwhelmed, I did appreciate the book's potential as a tool for teaching alliteration, and thought the incorporation of an "R" into every page (I didn't find them all!), was very clever. ( )