George Shannon

A is for seed...tomorrow's apple.

Readers with a grasp of the alphabet and letter-sound correspondence will quickly catch on to the pattern here, and it's a very inventive concept for an alphabet book, and beautifully designed!

My one small quibble is that they used "cheese" for the letter C, and the "ch" digraph isn't one of the usual sounds for C; they could have used a hard C, like in cat, or a soft C, like in Celia.

The central idea of “Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar” is a very important lesson for children and even adults. The message is that it takes many people from different places with different abilities to help one another and make things we all enjoy. It causes children reading to think about all the hard work and partnership that goes into something as simple as baking and eating cookies. Throughout the book the author chronicles all the hard work that goes into cookie production show more such as harvesting sugarcane, gathering eggs, churning butter, and even making oven mitts and cookie sheets. Why I liked the book so much is that each time the author described an effort that went into making cookies the person doing the work was always of a different ethnicity and in a different part of the world. If the illustrations had only depicted a certain ethnic group the book’s message of partnership would not have been so strong. I also liked this book because it even got me, as a 20 year old adult, amazed at all the hard work that goes into making cookies. “Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar” was a fantastic book that balanced a practical message with a very insightful one. show less

Rabbit finds two turnips and decides to share one with his friend, Donkey. But Donkey already has some food and passes along the turnip to another friend.

This book tells a 'pay it forward' story in which each animal keeps exactly enough food for themselves and chooses to leave the gifted turnip for another friend they worry might not have found a sufficient amount to eat. It's a lovely story of selflessness and caring. The repetition in the text of certain sentences will engage young show more children and works well for this specific story.

The illustrations are quite pleasant and do evoke a wintry scene. From the book jacket, I learned the illustrator is married to Kevin Henkes, which made me realize there is a similarity in their styles. If you like one, you'll probably like the other, too! show less

Starting with 'Pink is for crow,' Shannon wants us to think differently about the colors in nature. For 'when it has just hatched from its egg,' a crow is pink. And 'Black is for poppy...when we take the time to look inside.' Red, green, purple, white, blue, yellow, brown, and orange all appear in unexpected places, depending on when and where we look. Not only a challenge to the usual cliches, this book should spur curious and creative youngsters to find their own different ways of seeing.