Saturday, January 20, 2007

Ramona's Picture Books This Week

Gennady Spirin's A Apple Pie is an elegant alphabet book. Yes, elegant ... the illustrations by Gennady Spirin, which accompany this traditional 17th century rhyme, are beautiful, as is all of Spirin's work.

And, not only did Ramona enjoy the detail and whimsical word choices on each page, Anne and Betsy enjoyed the beautiful script and the mini-history lesson about the alphabet. An afterword tells us that in the 17th century, "I" and "J" were used interchangeably, so there was not a separate page for "I" (although this book does include one ... "Inspect the apple pie.") This book goes on the "acquire a copy" list.

Ramona's other favorites this week:


I Loved You Before You Were Born, by Anne Bowen, is the sweet story of a grandmother who anticipates and plans for the birth of her grandchild, expressing her overwhelming love with the title phrase.




A Visit to the Zoo is a fairly typical photos-from-a-zoo book, but Ramona loves it. Anything with photos of animals? She's there. Plus, she has so much fun typing the word "zoo" into the computer at the library. So, we always search for the word "zoo" and always come home from the library with a zoo book or two or three.



Demi's Mary is an astoundingly beautiful book. But then, everything Demi illustrates is astoundingly beautiful. To see such love and care applied to a children's book about our Blessed Mother does one's heart good.

6 comments:

Suzanne Temple said...

Karen, are these books you purchase or do you get them from the library, or both?

Karen Edmisten said...

Suzanne,
These were all from the library, but the Spirin and Demi books are now on my wish list. :-)

Alice Gunther said...

Karen, I just purchased Mary by Demi on Friday afternoon!!!!! It is incredible. I also love the Spririn book (and anything he has ever illustrated). I'll need to check out the other two. Thank you.

Karen Edmisten said...

Alice,
Demi and Spirin are the only real keepers out of this bunch -- I should have added that what *really* touched me about "I Loved You Before You Were Born" is that Ramona zeroed in on the cover art, asked what the title was, and beamed when I told her. :-)

The Bookworm said...

You are whetting my appetite for when we get back to picture books again :)

Anonymous said...

We read Spirin's book in the fall, I meant to post a review. We LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it. It's one to keep at home.

Thanks for the mention of Demi's book.