Book reviews : 'E' and 'F' books

The thing about borrowing books from the library is, you don't know what you'll get until you bring them home and read them. For last week's books, I can only give a 5 star rating to one book which really impresses me.

Think of an Eel

It's a beautifully illustrated book about where eel eggs hatch (in Sargasso Sea), and how they look like as little eel and how they grow as they travel to the rivers where they stay in adulthood. And what they do when it's time to reproduce, i.e. swim back all the way to Sargasso to breed and die. I think this is one book that we'll borrow again when Sean is slightly older. The books from the series of 'Read and Wonder' are amazing.




Each Peach Pear Plum

It has a clever word rhyme which incorporates many nursery story characters. Sean enjoyed looking for each character in the illustration.




Eating the Alphabet

A good list of fruits and vegetable from A to Z. The illustrations are colorful, but I wish they are more realistic because some of the less common fruits and vegetables are not clearly drawn.





Ernest and Celestine

An warm story about the love of an adult for a child.





Emil the Eagle

A funny story about an eagle who is near-sighted and a fly that has no wings.







Ellie's Growl

Beautiful illustrations, but I'm not so good at making animal sounds so I was not able to fully animate the story as well as it could be.






The Flea's sneeze

A cute book about all the animals in the barn sleeping but not the flea who was having a cold. The flea finally sneezed and woke all the animals up. The story ended up with everyone sleeping, except the hog.






A Flea in the ear

A beautifully illustrated story between a dog and a fox. The fox told the dog who was having a flea problem to dunk himself in the pond. The flea made an agreement with the dog that if he does not drown them, they'll hop off him and never bother him again. Of course when the dog came back, the fox has gotten away with all the chicken in his charge. The dog then tricked the fox about juicy ducks in the pond, and the flea that were from the dog leap on to the fox's back.




Frightened Fred

A cute story about a cat who had a long list of fears and how he finally got over them.








Fifty Red Nightcaps

A story about a boy and 49 monkeys who stole the red nightcaps he was bringing to the market to sell. He tried climbing after them but they were better climbers. He tried bribing them with fruits but they had more fruits on the trees. Finally he got angry and throw his nightcap on to the ground, and so did the monkeys.







The Kissing Hand

A story about a mummy raccoon soothing her child's fear about beginning school. She kisses his palm and told him that he has her love with her all day and whenever he misses her, he just have to put his palm on to his cheek to feel her love.


(Not an 'E' or 'F' book, but I wanted to check it out because it's about starting school. It's great that the library has it, but it's not something to collect.)






You can teach your child intelligence

It's about getting parents to understand what it means by intelligence, i.e. confidence and the ability to think on your feet. It's actually geared towards parents whose children are having problems at school, and changing trying to correct the mistakes we make as parents. It's an old book but it still has some valid suggestion if I ever have problems with Sean when he's older. The book is more about children above 7 years old. For younger kids, the author suggest her other book - How to be a Gifted parent. But I haven't seen it in the library yet.