I was wary at first with the cover art - the whale led me to believe that the illustrations in this book would be a little too...artsy (sorry, I've just seen too many kids neglect those kinds of books). But boy was I wrong. I thought this book was amazing. Other than the first page, which does an excellent job at providing the introduction to the story (her mountain-based family takes a trip to the ocean) in rhyme, it is very simple. There are always two words to a page, one of them always being "WOW!" (great for word-recognition).
What I liked best about this book is that it can be used for a very wide age-range. For instance, with a toddler group, the pictures are very colorful to hold attention and the words very short ("Wow! Fish!"). For an older group, almost every page has details of what the pictures are (instead of just "Wow! Fish!", they have labeled the tuna, the sailfish, the swordfish, etc.) so you can interact with them and see how much they know about sea creatures. Also, Izzy and Jo (the sisters/main characters of the book) are hidden on each 2-page spread (a couple open further, poster-style), so it may also be fun to turn the situation into one similar to "Where's Waldo?" and let them find the kids on each page.
I am very excited to use this and (now that I know what the WOW! books are like) other Neubecker books in my storytimes! Do you have any stories to share about these books?
Amazon recommends this book for ages 3 and up.
My rating:
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