Clap Your Hands - Finger Rhymes by Sarah Hayes and Toni Goffe

Poetry is a wonderful way to introduce young children to the idea of rhyme and rhythm. Poems can also incorporate counting and alphabet themes that help children to learn numbers and letters. Read aloud, children can be encouraged to join in as soon as they become familiar with the words. That's something they are likely to do surprisingly quickly.

If you are looking for a collection of short rhymes, Clap Your Hands – Finger Rhymes by Sarah Hayes and Toni Goffe is an anthology of both modern and traditional rhymes, some to be read aloud and some that can be sung. Along with each rhyme comes a series of colorful illustrations that demonstrate actions using the fingers that children can do whilst the rhymes are read or sung. Some involve counting, forwards or backwards, whereas others require using fingers and thumbs to make a circle or a triangle, for example, or to imitate 'incey wincey spider' climbing up the water spout. Here's an example of the kind of rhyme you will find in this book:

'Five fat peas in a pea-pod pressed.

One grew, two grew, so did all the rest.

They grew and grew and did not stop,

Until one day the pod went POP!'

We meet monkey-devouring alligators and witches snapping up pumpkins to make a pie, but even though the pumpkins are personified as little boys and girls sitting on a wall, I never find that children feel threatened by these scary characters that turn up in rhymes and stories. They perhaps enjoy the contrast with the more comforting ideas of baking cakes or cuddling rabbits.

As well as counting forwards and backwards, there are one or two rhymes that could be used to introduce addition and subtraction to young children. (I currently teach a boy approaching his fourth birthday who can count backwards from one hundred and tell me that five plus two equals seven, so don't underestimate pre-school children!) As you read 'Ten galloping horses came through the town, Five were white and five were brown', you can ask the child to put up five fingers on one hand then five on the other and count that they make ten altogether. A few pages later, in 'Chook, Chook...', we meet Mrs Hen; she has ten chickens, four of which are yellow, four are brown, and two are speckled red. So we can deduce that four plus four plus two make ten.

Not all the poems have to be such serious hard work, of course. One simply asks if you would like a cookie, a piece of pie, or a candy stick; another tells us about a turtle who lived in a box and swam in a puddle. The children in the illustrations almost always have beaming smiles, and we see blue-spotted white horses, stripy bees and cats, and stern policemen bowing to each other as they meet in a lane. There is plenty for a young child who is being read to to look at here.

If you want ideas for rhymes and songs, especially those involving numbers, this is an excellent book to use. Unfortunately it seems to be a little hard to get hold of now; I borrowed a paperback edition from the library, but there is a hardback edition available on Amazon Marketplace. Definitely recommended to enjoy with toddlers up to five-year-olds.

Clap Your Hands – Finger Rhymes

by Sarah Hayes and Toni Goffe

Lothrop Lee and Shepard

Hardback, 29 pages

ISBN 074451231X

Price from £3.68 on Amazon Marketplace

ZZZZZ A Book of Sleep - Il Sung Na

ZZZZZ A Book of Sleep is a picture book for the very young, suitable for bedtime, but not an actual story. Il Sung Na begins by pointing out that when it grows dark everyone goes to sleep except for the owl, shown here staring as he sits on a branch in front of a full moon.

Over the next few pages, double-spread illustrations show us that not all creatures sleep in the same way. Koala bears sleep in peace and quiet, whilst elephants snore noisily through their trunks. There are creatures that sleep standing up, and whales that sleep while they are swimming. We see birds sleeping with one eye open (watching what the owl is up to), and fish that keep both eyes open and don't even blink. Giraffes are pictured sleeping alone, resting their heads on cloud pillows, whereas penguins huddle up when they go to sleep to keep out the cold.

The book ends when all the creatures wake up at sunrise, apart from the owl, of course, who then needs to go to sleep until the sun sets again.

Il Sung Na has illustrated his book in a delightful way; my only reservation is that, since the scenes are set at night, the backgrounds are of necessity rather dark and might not be too appealing to young children. To alleviate this, Il Sung Na has decorated many of his creatures in pastel shades and floral patterns. The last two sets of double pages are set in bright sunshine, however. I particularly liked the scene showing all the animals waking up, where a row of birds perch on the giraffes neck, the Koala bear and her baby cling to the elephant's trunk and the penguins slide down the whale's forehead.

The text is in a very clear, large font, and there are never more than four lines to a page – in fact there is only one line on several pages. As well as being perfect for reading aloud to the very young, this could be a suitable book for young independent readers who are still gaining confidence and don't want to be put off by whole pages of text. There is a certain amount of repetition, and the illustrations will give clues to help in deciphering the words.

This is of course an excellent book for learning about the habits of various animals and for discussing the fact that there are so many different ways that a creature might sleep. I read it aloud to a group of three- to four-year-olds and as we went through the book I asked them to pretend to go to sleep with one eye open, then with both eyes open but without blinking. Not as easy as it sounds, they soon discovered.

For very young children this is obviously a picture book that lends itself perfectly to bedtime reading, and parents will hope that with all this talk of sleep their little ones will soon drop off. The paperback is perhaps a little expensive, but there is also a board-book version for £3.99.

ZZZZZ A Book of Sleep

by Il Sung Na

Meadowside Children's Books, 2007

Paperback,

ISBN 9781845392703

Price £5.99

Doing the Animal Bop - J. Ormerod and Lindsey Gardiner

Picture books often have a simple story line with a strong rhythm and plenty rhyming words: Doing the Animal Bop by J. Ormerod and Lindsey Gardiner begins 'If you like to dance and you sometimes sing, Why don't you do the animal thing?' It is hard for children to resist the urge when this is read aloud to get up and try to move in the same way as each animal that appears in these pages, jiggling and jiving, waddling like a duck or stomping like a rhino.

This is not really a story at all, more of a poem that introduces a series of animals, one on each double page, concentrating on the way they move and the sounds they make. As well as rhyme, there is onomatopoeia in the 'Craak, craak, craak' of the penguin song, and alliteration in the 'flim-flam flutter of the ostrich flounce' or the monkeys' 'jive and jiggle'. The hissing of the snake is exaggerated in the line 'you can ssssssing this ssssssong'. The chickens peck and cluck whilst the rhinos roar and rage.

On the final pages the line 'so let's end up with a great big mooo!' (because the cow can only chew) becomes so familiar that children love to join in. There is after that one more double-page illustration of the animals in silhouette dancing off into the night under the pink stars in the dark blue sky. It's as though they are off to party all night.

Both rhyme and rhythm come through in no uncertain terms, creating a lively pace. This is an ideal book to encourage children to get up and move, exercising and trying to stomp, waddle, jive or slither like a snake. You can imagine that it's probably not the best bedtime story, unless you want your child to run off a little more energy before slipping under the covers.

I absolutely love the use of colour in Lindsey Gardiner's illustrations. The backgrounds in particular are striking, and all are different colours. A pink elephant trudges along against an orange background, whilst a pale green lizard moves on a salmon pink ground. The ostrich seems to have borrowed Winnie the Witch's stripy tights, bouncing and flouncing on a deep pink background. In each picture there is a tiny mouse with a yellow tummy and tail; we meet it right at the beginning, and children can have fun spotting where it is on each page throughout the book, as it frequently tries to imitate the other animals.

This is a feast of language and colour, and a delightful way of teaching very young children about the sounds and movements of different animals. Recognising rhyming words is said to be a fundamental precursor to reading, so that is one more reason to make this an ideal book to read aloud, perhaps to children as young as two. It may not be the easiest book for a young reader to tackle, unless a particularly confident one is looking for a challenge. If you are looking for a book that will impart a love of the sounds of words to your children and at the same time get them out of their seats, this could be the ideal one.

Doing the Animal Bop

J. Ormerod and Lindsey Gardiner

Oxford University Press

Paperback, 32 pages

ISBN 0192791400

Price £5.99 (Amazon £4.49)

But excuse me that is my book - Lauren Child

Charlie and Lola are off to the library, and Lola announces that she must borrow her favourite book, 'Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies'. When Charlie comments that Dad took it out for her last time and the time before that, Lola explains that it's the best book because 'the bugs are quite buggy and the butterflies are really beautiful and the beetles are... very silly'.

Once they are at the library, big brother Charlie does his utmost to keep Lola quiet and suggests she look for her special book amongst all the books beginning with B. Lola is quite distraught when she can't find it, and she won't accept Charlie's explanation that someone must have borrowed it. She considers it to be her book. Charlie tries to persuade her to have a look at a few other books, but Lola protests that the one about the Romans has too many big words and the pop-up book with cherry blossom rain just isn't funny. Charlie realises that he will have to find an animal book that will make her laugh, and he shows her 'Cheetahs and Chimpanzees'.

Just then, Lola is shocked to see a girl walking off with 'Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies'. She finds it hard to accept that anyone else can take it out. She has no choice but to give 'Cheetahs and Chimpanzees' a go, and thankfully she finds it to be wonderful. In fact, she says it has the best pictures ever and thinks the chimps are very funny. Charlie must have breathed a big sigh of relief.

This may not be the best or most popular of Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola books, but it is the perfect one to introduce a young child to the idea that when you bring a book home from the library it doesn't actually belong to you. It is also ideal for perhaps persuading your son and daughter to be open minded and try different books or toys, particularly when one they are obsessed with is lost or broken. They might discover something even better when they try something new.

Lauren Child illustrates all her stories herself in her distinctive style. She uses vibrant colours throughout, and the page where Lola talks about her favourite book is dotted with patterned butterflies and a row of wide-eyed bugs marching along. When she finally looks at 'Cheetahs and Chimpanzees', Child uses photo-montage to show her standing in a jungle setting with the book while a friendly grinning monkey watches her from each side.

The text is usually superimposed on the illustrations, and on one or two pages in appears in mauve or pale blue on a black background. Sometimes lines of text curve around the pictures, and the font can vary in size to emphasize particular words or phrases. In some instances, the individual letters of a word jiggle playfully up and down. Lauren Child has Lola speaking at times in an amusing, ungrammatical way that might be typical of a young child, for example when she says that 'Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies' is a 'very great and extremely very interesting' book.

While 'But excuse me that is my book' is an ideal book to read aloud, the creative use of the text does not make it an easy one for a child that is just learning to read. An older sibling, however, who is a confident reader, would probably enjoy reading this to a brother or sister. Many of them are likely to identify with Charlie and not find the book too childish.

I often read picture books aloud to groups of children aged three and four, and if I give them a choice I almost always find that a Charlie and Lola book is asked for. This one is unlikely to appeal to two-year-olds, but might still be approved of by children of five or six. Although it may not be the best in the series, I don't think you can go wrong borrowing a Charlie and Lola story from the library and then deciding if it is worth buying. If I have grandchildren one day, I hope I will be able to enjoy reading 'But excuse me that is my book' aloud to them.

But excuse me that is my book

Lauren Child

Paperback, 32 pages

Puffin 2006

ISBN 0141500530

Price £5.99 (Amazon £3.99)