BookBairn: Throwback Thursday

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Time for another 'Throwback Thursday' post! One of the lovely things that we've been up to over the past months was having BookBairn's grandparents (you may notice they lovingly and dutifully comment on every post!) stay locally for a week and they got to join in with lots of our activities as well as take us out for a few fun trips! One of the best trips we went on was to the local aquarium.

I should begin by saying that BookBairn had recently become rather fascinated by some clownfish stickers that are part of a reusable sticker pad that she adores. So we watched Nemo and Papa BookBairn had picked her up a light-up clownfish toy. So simply we told her we were going to the aquarium to find Nemo. But we found so much more! The first tank was full of terrapins and she loved spotting the 'turtles'; she was fascinated by the sea lions in their outdoor enclosure, especially as they came right up to where we stood to say hello; she liked seeing the snakes; she enjoyed crawling through the little tunnel and popping up to find a tank full of Nemos and Dorys and seahorses! (She loved the penguins but I'm saving them for another post!) And of course we visited the shop and Papa wanted to buy her something. Now, we were all worried she would want one of those ridiculously overpriced giant cuddly toys and Papa would be spending a fortune. But instead she chose two very small plastic clownfish toys at 40p each! A great day out!

That was until the next day she literally lost Nemo on our walk home from yoga. Half way home she said "mummy, dropped Nemo" and of course, I trailed all the way back to the yoga studio scouring the pavements for the tiny fish! We couldn't find him. She declared, "Nemo lost. Very sad." I was disappointed for her but at least she learned a valuable lesson. Well, we popped out to the library that afternoon, walking along the same road and you'll surely have guessed... we found teeny tiny Nemo!

A fantastic book that encourages little ones to hunt under the sea for some of their favourite creatures - a starfish, a jellyfish and a clownfish! But it's a bit more meaningful than that. 'Where's Starfish?' by Barroux is a wonderful wordless picture book about the effects of pollution on our oceans. Sounds pretty hard-hitting for little ones but this book is pitched so perfectly!

As children turn the pages, Starfish, Clownfish and Jellyfish all become harder to spot due to the ever-growing amount of rubbish being dumped in the ocean. The first pages feature mainly other beautifully vibrant coloured fish amongst which our little sea creatures are hiding, but then as more and more rubbish appears more and more fish disappear until there is only our three heroes, a whale and a mountain of rubbish. Finally, whale takes action and pushes all the rubbish back to the shoreline and on to the beach, refusing to tolerate the trash any longer! I was skeptical as to how powerful this book could be without any words, and yet somehow it is even more powerful! And BookBairn enjoys the story even without the consistency of reading sentences aloud. We talk about the pictures and to be honest a lot of her understanding of stories still comes from the illustrations anyway. This book is delightfully colourful and Barroux's illustrations do huge justice to an important message!

On the final page of the book Barroux states that he was inspired to create this book after seeing a plastic bag on the beach that looked like a jellyfish prompting him to write a book about the threat of pollution to our waterways and oceans. He says "we must protect these important underwater kingdoms for the creatures that live in them, and everyone needs to remember to take litter home and put it in the bin!" Taking this message to heart, I love that the edition of the book that we have has been printed on forest friendly paper showing that the publisher values Barroux's environmental message too!

Barroux has created a series of similar books with big themes for little readers and I intend to collect them all. I recently bought 'Welcome', the story of some polar bears seeking asylum after their iceberg has melted, and have 'Where's Elephant?', a story about deforestation, at the top of my to-buy list! And honestly, I can't wait for more.

Hope you have as much luck Finding Nemo!

Mummy and BookBairn x

Click on the images above to find these books on amazon.co.uk

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Over the past few months, you will have noticed that I haven't posted with as regular frequency. We've been on holiday, we've had several winter bugs and, being pregnant, I've been using BookBairn's naps to rest up and nap. But we've still been out and having fun! We've still been readin books. So for the next few weeks, until the end of the year, I'm going to do a few flashback posts to share some of our adventures and the stories we read alongside them!

At the end of the summer, BookBairn and I went to the amazing butterfly house at our local botanic gardens. BookBairn had an absolutely wonderful time running around the hothouse (it was tropical) and pointing at all the "butters". She kept pointing to them and was utterly fascinated! Best of all was when a butterfly landed on her shirt and then on her head! She loved her "butter hat" and giggled and squealed with the kind of joy only a nearly-two-year-old can.

I thought it would be fun to read a few butterfly stories at home to relive the experience and reinforce all the words she picked up: "butter" and "cupertea" (caterpillar). We all know the ultimate butterfly book is the marvellous 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle. I'm not going to say much about this one as I reviewed it some time back in one of our 'Story Book Classic' posts (you can check it out here). BookBairn is dressed as a caterpillar in the photos and was so little, it's super cute, even if I do say so myself!). Now that she is a little older she has started to enjoy the story more and it's a book we often take in the car with us and she 'reads' it as we travel. It's great for this as I know all the words by heart so I can 'read' it and drive at the same time. My favourite thing is that now she says "more more more" every time the caterpillar eats a little more.

After this, I honestly struggled to find many butterfly books and I had to consult the lovely librarians and some of my fellow picture book enthusiast friends on Twitter. Thank goodness we came up with a few but for children's story writers out there: there is a huge gap in the market here.

First we borrowed 'The Crunching Munching Caterpillar' by Sheridan Cain and Jack Tickle from the library and it has been such a brilliant read. It is most certainly a 'very noisy picture book' as the cover suggests and each page has a red and yellow button to press making a noise related to that part of the story. Unlike many noisy books these buttons are printed on the page and the corresponding buttons are tucked in the back cover pages meaning that the book isn't as heavy and cumbersome as other noisy books although it also means you need to have the pages aligned and sometimes BookBairn has found pushing the buttons quite tricky. This book tells the story of a little caterpillar who in between sleeping and munching on leaves he meets fellow beasties and creatures all of whom can fly and he dreams of having wings too. Of course one night he has a very long sleep and more dreams of flying and when he wakes up, like magic, he is a marvellous winged butterfly. I'll be honest, I only borrowed this book because we went to see the butterflies and I wanted to read some stories with BookBairn about butterflies. But this book has become a favourite of BookBairn's. She particularly enjoys pressing the button to hear the birds singing "tweet tweet" - a word that she had not learned before; and she has also picked up the word "munch" when asked "what does a caterpillar do?" she replies with "munch"! It's been a great little learning tool for us which is exactly what I was looking for. I will be looking out for others in the series.

I also picked up 'Butterfly: a book of colour' by Petr Horacek after it was recommended to me by some fellow book bloggers. I had heard lots about Petr's work but never before read any of his books myself so I was particularly intrigued. This book is a delightful story of a little girl who spends one day playing with chasing a butterfly (a bit like BookBairn at the Botanics) and then spends all of the next day searching for the butterfly to play with again, encountering some other creepy crawlies on the way. This is a fab book for introducing little ones to the names of beasties and with it's die-cut-outs its great for little fingers to explore. The illustration in this book is quite unusual, though in some ways it reminds me of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and uses a bright bold palette of colours with tonnes of layering and detail. It's somewhere between a sketchbook of drawings and a collage of watercolour paintings and for some might be a bit 'manic' in it's style. Personally I find some of the pages a bit too busy and wonder if BookBairn might struggle to focus on any particular element at a time. What she does love is the huge pop-up butterfly on the final pages! It is such a treat! And a spectacular surprise. For me I love the little girl's ladybird dress as it makes me think back to BookBairn dressed as a ladybird for a friend's party

. This is a beautiful book with lovely elements and in some ways the crazy colours remind me of the Botanics with all those butterflies floating around. And of course with a pop-up butterfly at the end this story really does feel like you are surrounded by fluttering butterflies as you read.

If you know of any other great butterfly stories it would be lovely to hear from you!

And if you get a chance I would highly recommend visiting a butterfly house with your little ones. It's seriously magical! I think next year we might get caterpillars and watch them transform into butterflies before setting them free in our garden. Now that would be magic!

Thanks for fluttering by,

Mummy and BookBairn xx