Great news! Your friends are having a baby! That pretty much means that everybody you know has at least one or two rug rats crawling around the place. It’s all well and good, but how can you possibly come up with another present for a baby? Thankfully, great books and wonderful nursery rhymes are always in fashion – combine the two and you have a gift that you may just want to keep for yourself.
| Playtime Rhymes by Tony Ross | |
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| Category: Children's Rhymes and Verse | |
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Reviewer: Sam Tyler
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| Summary: Ever needed a little book full of fun nursery rhymes that you can carry around with you? This collection may be petite, but they are perfectly formed. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 10 | Date: May 2015 |
| Publisher: Andersen Press | |
| ISBN: 9781783440481 | |
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Playtime Rhymes by Tony Ross is a simple affair and part of his My Favourite Nursery Rhymes collection of board books. This 10 page hardback book has classic nursery rhymes that are as fun today as they were when you grew up, including; Ring-a-Ring o' Roses, Jack and Jill, Polly Put the Kettle On, Humpty Dumpty and One, Two, Three, Four, Five. I for one love saying how I caught a fish alive, only for it to bite my finger so. If you are asking which finger; it was the little one on my right hand.
Reading these ditties to a child from birth to 3 years is a great joy that has been passed on for generations and should continue so. There is a mixture of nostalgia to your own upbringing and a joy in seeing a new generation learn these nursery rhymes. Playtime Rhymes is a small collection, but each one is an absolute classic that you will already know, what the book gives you is the correct words and syntax so you don’t end up fudging what exactly happened to Humpty Dumpty.
Alongside the poems are a series of simple, but high quality illustrations that you would expect from Ross. Some of the images here have a Quentin Blake feel, but he provides his own sense of wonder in the watercolour style images. The book itself also stands out – at only ten pages it is not large, so is perfect for carrying and reading with a baby or small toddler. Made from strong card children can help to turn the pages and they can easily find their favourite story as each page has a coloured tab that you can open the page with. It is these small features that really add to the experience and manage to make this small collection of nursery rhymes stand out from the crowd.
Perhaps the only real negative from this collection is that it is slight. Ten pages and fewer rhymes means that you don’t get the biggest bang from your buck, especially when Tony Ross has a fuller collection already available. However, it must be kept in mind that this collection is specifically designed for the very young who don’t want hundreds of flimsy pages to leaf through. The way the book is designed is that it specifically meets the need of an adult reading to a baby or small toddler – to have 50 rhymes would have meant hulking an encyclopaedia around. A perfectly formed collection full of great tales.
As mentioned, there are plenty of alternative nursery rhyme books to check out including Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Other Nursery Favourites by Mandy Stanley and The Orchard Book Of Nursery Rhymes For Your Baby by Penny Dann
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You can read more book reviews or buy Playtime Rhymes by Tony Ross at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Playtime Rhymes by Tony Ross at Amazon.com.
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