Giraffes Can't Dance, Number Rumba: Giles Andreae

Sometimes other authors just beat you to it in this profession! This just happened to me. Giles Andreae nailed the concept I was playing around with for a board book. I wanted to portray animals doing the tango, the waltz, the jive. Giraffes Can't Dance, Number Rumba Counting Book caught it before I could dance my way straight.

Totz will enjoy seeing the recognizable giraffe again from Giraffes Can't Dance. Each page has an animal peeking from the book's border. That animal will take the stage to leap to the beat when the page is reached. Clever, fun, and energized, your totz will be tapping along and counting the animals rocking out.

Giraffes Can't Dance
Number Rumba, Counting Book
by Giles Andreae
illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
Scholastic, 2013

Giraffes Can't Dance: Giles Andreae

How about a rhyming board book to illustrate that everyone can dance? Even a giraffe? That's exactly what Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees offer in Giraffes Can't Dance.



As all the animals turn out for the Jungle Dance, the giraffe is mocked for being clumsy and a silly fool. But when the giraffe departs and comes across the cricket, the former listens to the latter:

"Listen to the swaying
grass and listen to the trees.
To me the sweetest music is
those branches in the breeze."

Gerald the giraffe breaks into a dance that everyone can appreciate. "We can all dance," he said, "when we find music that we love."

Add this reprint, now in board book format from Cartwheel Books, to your totz' library and kick up your heels together.

Giraffes Can't Dance
by Giles Andreae
illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
Cartwheel Books, Scholastic