Soledad Bravi

This was my daughter's favorite book in the whole world for a long time. It's a semi-board-book with a simple format; each page has a picture of something and says, in French, "The XXX says YYYY". All the usual suspects (dog, cat, mouse, hen, rooster, donkey) are present, along with some wilder ones (ghost, kiss, watch, bicycle bell) and some truly far-out ones (canned spinach, an electrical outlet). The text merely says spinach, but we are careful to emphasize its canned nature, since it says "Yuck". (The electrical outlet says "No!") The format is simple enough that the non-French speakers who "read" it to my daughter usually managed to just improvise the english, although they occasionally needed some help (the box of tissues drawing is not self-explanatory). This is the nicest young child's sound book I've seen (the closest English thing is Peter Spier's Crash, Bang, Boom, which isn't suitable for 18-month olds.)… (more)