With Sandra Boynton, choosing a book can mean choosing which sort of ridiculous animal company you'd like to keep. A group of barking dogs? Dinosaurs having a dance? A penguin who has decided that a hippo should be its friend? The covers belong together, but the reading can feel quite different from one book to the next.
We'd think about the person reading aloud as well as the person listening. You may be returning to this little book quite a lot, so it helps if there's something in it that you enjoy too.
For a reader who likes to join in
Doggies gives you a growing cast of dogs and different barks to try. You can make all the sounds yourself, leave a pause for someone else or settle on one especially satisfying bark and keep coming back to it. Our animal-sound book guide compares that chorus with a whole farmyard of voices.
Dinosaur Dance! puts the movement on the page. This is a 16-page English board book, with a prehistoric cast that gives an adult plenty of action to describe. If you'd like to take the story a little further, our movement-storytime ideas leave room for dancing, a small gesture or watching from a comfortable spot.
For a familiar moment together
Your Nose! centers on a fox parent and child and an affectionate appreciation of noses. Your Personal Penguin is about friendship, with that determined little penguin and its chosen hippo. Both can be warm gift choices; the relationship in the story is a useful way to decide between them.
For an everyday routine, there's Pajama Time!. Bedtime is the setting, though the getting-ready has plenty of energy. Our copy is a 24-page English oversized lap board book, so it's worth picturing where you'll hold and keep it. The book-format guide explains the practical differences between lap editions, smaller board books and bath books.
A little variety on the shelf
If there are already several noisy stories at home, Happy Hippo, Angry Duck offers animal characters with different moods to notice. You can talk about one of them or keep moving through the story. There's no need to find a question for every page.
Belly Button Book! brings another kind of silliness, with hippos and a body-word theme. A feelings book, a dance book and an affectionate story give a small library some different places to go. You can put a few within reach and rotate another into view when it's wanted, without needing to display every book at once.
If you're choosing a gift
Ask for the names of a few books the family already enjoys. That might lead you to something similar, or it might reveal a whole shelf of bedtime stories and a gap for something else. A second copy can be useful at another caregiver's home, but it's nice to know that's what you're buying it for.
Our Sandra Boynton collection brings the editions together. Start with the story you can imagine sharing, then check its language and size. If the family is still finding its favorites, borrowing a title first can help them decide which animal company they'd like to keep on their own shelf.
Leave a comment