I like picture books, but it can be hard writing the 250 word review required of them (after all, when your review must have more words than your book it can be tricky, even for this “run at the fingers” reviewer). Therefore, I have a few fun ones for your reading choices.
Now, The Lodge That Beaver Built was not necessarily my favorite book to read, but it was interesting and fun. This is for the child who likes animals, and building. The facts are presenting in a fiction format. Randi Sonenshine cares about the subject and presents it well. It is Anne Hunter and their illustrations that captured me. Hunter creates the beaver lodge, the pond, the trees, the watery lodge of the beavers, and the other animals we find along the water. The “engineering feat of dam-building and the life cycle of beaver families” comes to life. But it is not all fact and no fun. Text and art combine to complement each other and to keep your interest.
Mika and the Gurgler looks like it might be the second in Agata Loth-Ignaciuk’s books. The first would be Mika and the Howler (the volume one in the title clued me
in plus it is coming in July 2023). I read Gurgler as it was the only reader copy I could find on Edelweiss. The stories are simple, a toddler named Mika tries to navigate the world around them. Things like the washing machine and vacuums are new and strange. The child thinks the worst of them, such as the Gurgler (due to the sound the washing machine is making) is eating/harming their stuffed toy that accidently was left in there when Mika and the other toys were playing in/around it, and now the mother has added the laundry/soap/water. The story did not grab me, but the art of Berenika Kolomycka was sweet, clever, and cute. I think this book is a translation, and that made some text not flow easily for me.
