Little Hoot: Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace

I'm so pleased to see Chronicle has released the "Little" books in board book format! They are sold as a beautiful boxed set, but I think each deserves a separate review. So today, I'm appreciating Little Hoot. I first came across Little Hoot through Bookie Woogie's great review.



Author Amy Krouse Rosenthal ponders the trials of a little owl, so tired, he just wants to go to bed. But of course, his parents make him stay up. How hard is that when all your friends are asleep and all you can think of is sleep, sleep, sleep!

What a fun way to explore the opposite of what is maybe a struggle with your totz: going to bed. Genius!

Jen Corace's delicate, varied ink lines and soft watercolor washes are the perfect compliment to Amy's text. I particularly enjoy the sparseness and wide white spaces.

The font is a wonderful, thin match for both story and art.

Note: the board book cover show Little Hoot in green jammies, while on the picture book cover, he's wearing blue, like the above image. Hm. Why the change? Interesting.

Read this sweet, smart board book with your totz because "they owl lived happily ever after."

Little Hoot
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
illustrated by Jen Corace
Chronicle Books, 2009 (board book)

April Pick for the Older Sibling: Aaron Zenz's the HICCUPotamus

There was a hippopotamus
Who hiccupped quite-a-lotamus.
And every time he got’emus. . .
. . . He’d fall upon his bottomus.

Wordplay is one of my favorite things, and it abounds in this clever picture book by author-illustrator, Aaron Zenz. When hippopotamus gets hiccups, his friends employ various “helpful” methods of assisting him to overcome them. (His friends include a yellow elephant, and a rhinoceros using dental flosserous.)

After much hilarity as well as trial and error, hippo is finally cured. And then. Hic! Hic! Hic! His friends come down with cases of hiccups themselves as shown in this page, rendered in Prismacolor pencil:

















Inside Scoop:
Multi-talented Aaron Zenz has worked as a fine artist, graphic designer, multimedia designer, and illustrator. He’s also the author of one of my favorite blogs, Bookie Woogie, which he creates with his children. It's a VERY entertaining format which provides an informative view of what kids really think and say about books as they're reading them.

the HICCUPotamus
Aaron Zenz, author-illustrator
Marshall Cavendish Children's Books (September 2009)
(Previously publication by Dogs In Hats, 2005)

~ Joan Holub, author