Shirt Tales

Each book in this trio of board books treats a situation in which children are having to transition (sometimes most reluctantly) from being a “baby” to becoming, as the series title says, a “Big Kid”. And humour is the tool that the authors and the illustrator use to motivate young readers/listeners to take that next growth step. Throughout the series, the text is presented in quatrains rhyming ABCB. In each case, the board book’s opening stanza initially poses the expectation being placed on the child before asking how animals might respond to that same expectation.

A child’s moving from using a “potty” to sitting on an adult-sized toilet can be a mountain to climb for some children (and their parents). And the opportunity to move from an outgrown crib to a “big” bed may be welcomed by some children but resisted by others. Similarly, children’s adjusting to having to dress themselves, as opposed to being dressed by parents, is not always eagerly embraced.

Toilet Tales finds a lion, a giraffe, an elephant, a mouse, a snake and a seal all dealing unsuccessfully with this bathroom fixture. Each quatrain’s contents present an animal’s challenge while Ariana Koultourides’s cartoon-like illustration offers a visual representation of the challenge. For example, with the elephant, the text reads:

The elephant’s huge.
Would he even fit?
There’d be nothing left
if he tried to sit.

Koultourides’s art then portrays an elephant towering over what appears to be a diminutive toilet, leaving no doubt that there would be “nothing left if he tried to sit”. Delightfully, the next pair of pages pose an entirely different challenge – a tiny mouse being dwarfed by the toilet bowl and at risk of falling in. A nice touch is that, in the two instances where a toddler is shown seated on the toilet, Koultourides’s illustration makes clear that a potty seat has been appropriately inserted over the adult-sized toilet bowl.

With Bed Tales, the authors confirm that “this new bed’s for you” as a whale’s weight would crush it, a bear would just hibernate in it, an elk would have no place to rest its antlers, a zebra could become invisible should the sheets be stripped, a monkey might swing from the overhead fan as opposed to staying in bed, and a kangaroo would probably jump up and down before going to sleep in its mother’s pouch. A nice illustration touch is that four of the book’s six animals also appear as the child’s stuffed toys, and so, even though the book’s closing verse says:

Your new bed is perfect.
The size is just right.
But it’s no good for animals,
so good night and sleep tight!

Young readers might want to amend the “But it’s no good for animals” line by adding “unless they are ‘stuffies’”.

Shirt Tales “explains” why animals don’t get dressed. Shoes on a penguin could lead to slipping on the ice; hat-wearing tortoises might have their vision impaired and could fall in a hole; a coat-wearing hippo couldn’t float; a sweater on a polar bear would make it too hot; dirt-rolling pigs would soon soil white shirts; and the eight arms of an octopus would struggle with socks.

Once again, the board book’s closing quatrain returns to the theme that was introduced in the first two lines of the opening quatrain and confirms the “big kid” connection.

Getting dressed by yourself
is a fun thing to do.
Not for animals, though,
just big kids like you.

Koultourides illustrates a different child of indeterminate sex in each book, with two of the children representing minority cultures.

Though parents may want to purchase individual titles as the “need” arises, all three books should be in collections serving preschool audiences.