Yesterday was a slow day at work. Therefore, I took a few minutes to look at the new crop of Sale Books that came in. (Long story short, they are just lovely normal books 
looking for a home, but just have a slightly lower price than usual). Two books that caught my attention were two board books. One, Pirates Don’t Take Baths by John Segal and the other, I actively went looking for as I had been the one to do the data entry on it and Do You Believe in Groovicorns seemed to have potential as Make Believe Idea Ltd. usually has some nice books.
And Pirates Don’t Take Baths did not disappoint. It is a cute little board book about how everyone may not have to take a bath, but if you are a Pirate, they do not get sea sick, but our narrator does. Therefore, other options are given such as it might be hard to take a bath in space, so astronauts do not have to take baths, but as Mom points out, it is hard to do bodily functions in space (the image of our narrator shows that this is less than a pleasant thought) and so forth. However, because our little pigs’ mom is a smart cookie, she shows her picky bather how even a bath can be fun. The art is simple with not a lot of details but gets the point across.
However, Do You Believe in Groovicorns? created by Rosie Greening and Stuart Lynch fell flat. And while the story falls flat, the sequins did not. Or at least, not very easily. The changing color sequin areas of the book start out fun, but basically repeat themselves. The only page slightly different is the page with the disco globe that also shows the artist might know Saturday Night Fever a little too well. There is not a great story as instead of celebrating differences, it comes out and says the “normal” unicorns are dull and not “as good” as their counterparts, Groovicorns. There is nothing interesting about the book other than it had potential and never came about.
Therefore, the moral of the story is, you can always find a great deal on the sale table, but you do have to browse to find the one that fits your likes, dislikes and needs.
