John Schindel; Photography by Steven Holt
John Schindel must be some sort of genius, as evidenced by his popular Busy Book series. Each board book features a different animal: chickens, pandas, bunnies and so on. He collaborates with a handful of photographers, but the end result is always the same - an excellent board book. Schindel adds bits of rhyming text to the photos and the result is a line of board books that kids adore.
The beauty is in the book's simplicity. Unfortunately, that's the very thing that makes it a teeny bit difficult to review properly. The sentences are so short that it's hard to resist quoting them verbatim. I really struggled with coming up with clever ways of restating phrases that are only two words long! The birdies here are busy nibbling, pecking, stepping, stretching and finally, resting. We get to peek at finches, owls, hummingbirds, peacocks and a few others that I couldn't identify. Guess I'm not really a bird aficionado.
Busy Birdies is the twelfth book in the Busy lineup. Busy Gorillas is scheduled for this fall and Busy Elephants will be swinging through in 2011.
Review copy provided by Tricycle Press.
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