Monday, January 17, 2011

Book of the Week: Ten Sleepy Sheep


A quick effort for book #2 as we're in Bunbury and about to go for a pre-court walk.

This was another library find and it's a goody! It's a "count down" book, from 10 to one, but not nearly as simplistic as most books of that kind. Each page is in verse, and there's quite a sophisticated rhyme scheme and lots of lovely language:

"10
Ten little sheep
Leap the cucumber vine.
Long grass bends.
Spider mends.
Sleep, sheep.
Now there are ..."

and then you turn the page. E loves to turn it at the right time.

Obviously by a British or American author as it mentions a few animals/plants I wasn't immediately familiar with - whipporwills, cattails, rose of heaven.

The left hand side of each page has a big picture of what the remaining sheep are up to, and the right hand page the verse and a smaller picture of the lamb that's going to sleep. Each sheep has a colour coded bow so you can track them throughout the book. The pictures are pretty pastels so maybe not ideal for a brand new baby (although the lyrical words are nicely soothing).

At the end of the book the last remaining sheep bleats "Mama, I can't sleep" and gets the response "Have you tried counting sheep?" and then there is a recitation of where the others went to sleep: "one by the vine, one by the rose ..." I just love children's books with a quiet bit of adult humour!

You could use it as a bedtime routine book but we like it so much it's been getting a good run during the day too!

3 comments:

_vTg_ said...

Oops, maybe posted a week early (you can delete that one if you like)
My Book of the Week effort: http://thisgrowinglife.blogspot.com/2011/01/book-of-week-few-good-first-chapter.html

Yours sounds cute- and any mention of a cucumber vine wins bonus points!

ANB said...

No such thing as too early! For some reason Blogger insisted on dating my post Sunday even though it is definitely Monday. I wish my cucmber vines would grow! I planted eight: the snails got two, the heat got four, two remain.

_vTg_ said...

I'm no help on cucumbers- they don't like me either!

Is your blogger set to WA time? I had that problem initially when I was on US time.

.header-inner .Header #header-inner { margin-bottom: 100px !important; } .main-outer { margin-top: 15px !important; }