{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} – Audrey Wood Edition

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This post is a part of my “Board Book Beauty – Savoring the small as I read to my toddler” series. To see all of the posts in the series, go here.

A word of explanation, before jumping into the meat of this post: we don’t own a single Audrey Wood book (a situation I should probably remedy), and yet her books are great favorites around here. Most library hauls include at least one of her books, and we’ve borrowed Silly Sally and Piggy Pie Po enough times that I’m sure it’s unfair to the other kids in the community. We only have Piggy Pie Po at the moment, so I apologize for the lack of photos on this post.

{Pretty}

King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub is a fun and silly story, but it’s the illustrations that make it something special. (I’m not alone in this opinion; it was selected as a Caldecott Honor book – the prestigious children’s picture book award – in 1986). Every page has artistic detail that kept me interested even after reading it a dozen times in one sitting. I wish I had images to share with you on this one, but since I don’t, you can get a little taste by looking at the cover at the Amazon link I provided above.

Also pretty (and fun – a word that applies to most every Audrey Wood book) is The Napping HouseThis one, too, has images which give you the opportunity to discover something new on each reading.

{Happy}

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Piggy Pie Po makes me (and my girl) very, very happy. I’m fairly certain it was one of the first books Katie really fell in love with, and I know it’s the first one she got to know well enough that she was able to finish the sentences as we read. We brought it home from the library on Monday of this week – a trip we took with the specific mission of finding Llama Llama Red PajamaThat afternoon, as I sat on the couch nursing Abby, I encouraged Katie to go find the new llama book in the stack. She brought me Piggy Pie Po instead. She could still recite lines from memory, despite it having been several weeks since we last read it.

{Funny}

All of the books we’ve sampled fit the funny category – at least from Katie’s point of view. Silly Sally certainly does (you can read more about it in the inaugural post for this series), as does The Napping House and Piggy Pie Po and King Bidgood. But for the sake of not putting the same few books in each category, I’ll stick with A Dog Needs a BoneKatie laughed each time we read this. She loved the “silly doggy!” (and was, perhaps, a bit disappointed that Euclid does not behave in the same manner.)

{Real}

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Sometimes, just for fun, I’ll read the Amazon reviews of books I’ve enjoyed. It can be enlightening, and often, good for a laugh. One of the one-star reviews for Silly Sally, written by “A Kid’s Review” and entitled “The Worst Book Ever” says, “I don’t like the book Silly Sally because the author kept repeating the words over and over and over again.” Which is true. And, perhaps, indicative that the reviewer is older than the target audience.

But that is something real to know about Audrey Wood books: they’re often rather repetitive. Which is something that Katie, at least, finds irresistible.

There you have it. {PHFR}, Audrey Wood edition. How about you? Have any pretty, happy, funny or real literary moments to share?

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