Bob Staake

In his most beautiful and moving work to date, Bob Staake explores the universal themes of loneliness, bullying, and the importance of friendship. In this emotional picture book, readers will be captivated as they follow the journey of a bluebird as he develops a friendship with a young boy and ultimately risks his life to save the boy from harm. Both simple and evocative, this timeless and profound story will resonate with readers young and old.

This exuberant rhyming book extolls all the virtues - and vices - of the world of bugs. It's an exciting frolic through all the fun of language, including the aforementioned rhymes, alliteration, and onomatopoeia, making it interesting to read and hear. The language, especially the frequent listing of types of bugs, lends itself to a fast-paced reading. Even though the book comes across as the author mostly playing with words and just happening to use insects as a theme, there are actual show more some helpful factual tidbits in here like the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies and the work product of bees. These aren't the kind of facts that will be anything new to elementary school age readers, but it was perfect for reinforcing the insects lesson I was sharing with my toddler class. They were enthralled by the silly language and sat in rapt attention.

Fitting with the book's title, every page is crawling with tons of illustrations of kids galloping amongst bugs of all shapes, sizes, and species. Thus every page is brightly colorful and so full of fun details that each page can be explored over and over again to spot a new one every time . Bob Staake's signature style - to my mind, a mash-up of Cartoon Network animation and Art Deco - is clearly displayed throughout his illustrations. A nice thing to see is that the children depicted are of all different kinds of skin tones. We need more illustrations like this in modern children's literature! show less

Who would ever think that a picture book about unbridled capitalism, rampant consumerism, and aggressive marketing could be a hit? But it is!

In The Donut Chef, a baker is surprised and threatened by a competitor who opens up shop on the same street.

"Indeed, with two shops on the block,
Both selling donuts round the clock,
Well, people asked - you might have guessed -
'Whose donuts are the very best?''

The fierce competition for customers leads to drastically reduced costs and an explosion of new show more flavors,

"If one chef dropped his donut cost,
The next would add more chocolate frost!
If one would scram, 'Buy two, get three!'
The other yelled, 'But mine are FREE!'

They made new flavors, quite bizarre,
Like Cherry-Frosted Lemon Bar,
And Peanut-Brickle Buttermilk,
And Gooey Cocoa-Mocha Silk!"

In the end, it takes "little Debbie Sue, a teeny girl, just barely two," to bring the baker and his customers back to their senses!

This book has potential to be used in more ways than one. It's a fun choice for storytime, it's a humorous introduction to the free enterprise system, it's an inspiration to young artists, and it's a testament to the artistic possibilities of a program as simple and readily-available as Adobe PhotoShop. show less

The Red Lemon by Bob Staake gave me many emotions. It was a book filled with many valuable lessons and fun rhyming schemes. The Red Lemon teaches about emotions and what happens when we as humans can not control our emotions. Staake provides us with an insight into cause and effect relationships when he shows Mcphee throwing the lemon and then years later, his lemon trees are becoming less and less. Throughout this book, he provided many opportunities to practice alliteration and rhyming show more schemes which I thought was interesting. Although, this book is listed as a children’s book, there are many valuable teaching moments within the story line. This book really grabbed my attention and kept me engaged from the beginning to the end. show less