Jo Ellen Bogart

This book is just plain fun from the first through the last page. It is rather busy, and usually I don't like that, yet this author and illustrator pulled it off.

I loved the colors and the soft green background. Chickens are going to a fair and throughout the day there are lots of clown chickens, and doctor chickens and moody chickens dancing the blues, and chickens in pink underpants and chickens on strings that pluck.

And, while I never liked the books of Richard Scary because they seemed show more way too over the top, though this book is similar, somehow the author makes it work. And, it is sheer fun to get in the spirit and watch those little chickens haing a blast!

Four Stars! show less

With beautiful watercolor illustrations, and simple text, Big and Small, Room for All is a quiet meditation on the concept of size, exploring how the very notion of large and small depends upon context, and emphasizing the idea that everything has its place in the cosmos. In a series of comparisons, Jo Ellen Bogart works her down from the vast sky to the microscopic creatures too small to be seen, demonstrating throughout that there is "room for all."

It's difficult to pinpoint the exact show more appeal of this little concept-book. Gillian Newland's artwork has an appealing, luminous quality to it, and Bogart's text is simple and effective, but I would not describe Big and Small, Room for All as an especially brilliant title. I suppose that in the end, it works because it succeeds in prompting the young reader to consider the complexities of the concept in question. A solid entry in the author's growing body of picture-book work, and an appealing debut for the artist. show less

Although the first page asks the reader to "Turn the page to join the fun - count some chickens! Start with one," this really isn't a counting book in that way. There are way more than one chicken on that page and the following one - in fact, there are a ton of tiny chickens on every page. The text honestly seems like a way to string rhymed words together in couplets with images of chickens, and the illustrator just went with it. There's so much going on the page that it's more of a seek and show more find than a counting book. WHICH, at the end, you get instructions for. The very last page asks you to find the number of certain chickens ("How many chickens are sitting on the stoop?" on each page. It just felt like there were several different ideas cobbled together to make this book more chaotic than it needed to be. show less

Hmm, I have mixed feelings on this one. It's really cute. Maybe too cute. Twee cute. Wordless, so lots of visual literacy cues. But I had some issues with the pacing and plot. WHERE DID THE EGG COME FROM? It just appeared. I was distracted the whole rest of the book.