Life is a Bowl Full of Cherries (edition 2011)

I read the book, in exchange for an honest review from netgalley.com. The cover of the book grabbed me at first. The book discusses silly food idioms, such as "flat as a pancake" or "the big cheese". The illustrations by Robin Hagan was amazing. I loved them. THe illustrations were colorful, graphic, funny, and comical. The book also discusses what idioms are.

Oelschlager's book "Life is a Bowl Full of Cherries," just recently become available on mainstream book sites. Designed in a format similar to a counting book or ABC book, this book has a non-linear format that focuses on showing idioms to children in a literal way. Clearly, the book is designed to show that idioms are figures of speech, but some of the idioms may be ones that younger children have never hear of ("Cold Turkey", for example). One of the greatest issues I had with the book was to identify what an idiom actually meant, you had to look at very small print that was upside on the bottom of the page (or, in my case, I had to turn my computer upside down to view it). Robin Hegan, the illustrator, does a nice job illustrating each idiom, adding human like characteristics to each image, but the book manages to fall short. The book could be used as an aid in instruction on idioms, but it would not be a good teaching tool on it's own. ( )

This picture book will help students understand common idioms such as “big cheese", "couch potato", and "flat as a pancake". Each two page spread features a term to be defined and bright, cartoonish illustrations. The captions in the illustrations may use other semi-related terms. For example the crackers on the “Big Cheese” page say, “cheese” when having their pictures taken and the other foods on the "flat as a pancake" spread complain that the pancake's singing is "flat". This may confuse some younger readers. Readers may turn the book upside down to reveal a kid-friendly definition and sample sentence. This book is a good addition to the field of grammar picture books. The format would lend itself well to an “illustrate an idiom assignment”. ( )