Hey! Wake Up!

Everyone wakes up and begins their morning routine by yawning and streching, brushing their teeth, eating breakfast, and playing with their friends till snack time. This book uses repeated text and rhyming to make an easy, fun read for small children. ( )

This is a great book for me in lieu of coffee :). It's a quick read, but the caffeine-infused perkiness of the writing sticks with me. I can definitely identify with the bleary-eyed parents shuffling off to shimmy shimmy shimmy themselves awake, and Willow loves all the colorful animal drawings (on a side note: all 4 animal parents in one giant bed together makes me giggle every time). And yes, I do shout out loud "GOOD MORNING, SUN! HAPPY MORNING, EVERYONE!"... ( )

Seven animals in two groups start the day and go to play.

Another fun board book from Sandra Boynton. We get a little more depth in these characters than in many of her other books, as we follow the "big guys" (elephant, hippopotamus, bear, lion) and the "little guys" (rabbit, pig, cat) through their morning activities. Big and little play together sometimes, and sometimes apart; sometimes they like the same things, sometimes different (broccoli stew for breakfast?). Good for a storytime with early learners-- they'll have fun acting out yawning, stretching, and shimmying along with the characters in the story. ( )

This is a quick, bouncy book about a group of animals and their morning routine.

You can overthink the broccoli stew bit (my nieces think it's really funny to say "ew" at broccoli, because they LOVE broccoli - and so do I, but I think having it for breakfast would be a little much!), and you can overthink the rabbit not being tall enough for basketball (what? He *is* too short to play that game!), but once you're done with that you're left with just this - a short, bouncy book that will wake everybody up when you read it at the top of your lungs in the morning to the tune of... well, any tune at all. ( )

Another favourite Boynton board book that we read so often we had it memorized. Good fun in the morning, and to help teach children about routines. Our preschoolers thought the part about the "broccoli stew - ew!" was very funny. ( )