Delos -
I just gave this book to a 5 year old and she loved it immediately. She actually completely ignored a glittery Fancy Nancy book in favor of looking through this one.
I'm not normally a fan of Mary Engelbreit's style, country folksy to me. I have never bought anything decorated like this, but you can tell immediately this is a richly illustrated rendition of the classic poem that will have kids reading it over and over again. There were so many details in the pictures. I could point out illustrated examples of unfamiliar words from the poem, plus the kids were making up their own side stories about all the additional details shown. As a kid, I always loved a book like this, that I could look at/read over and over again until I really "grew into" understanding it fully, and I can tell this book will be like this for her and her little brother.
The words are written large enough for little ones learning to read to follow along with their finger (and about 4 lines of the poem per page), but not with a font so large that readers with a wee bit of experience would cast it aside as being a baby book for a younger sibling. The poem does not read like a dumbed down version (if it was abridged in any way, I didn't notice).
I'm not normally a fan of Mary Engelbreit's style, country folksy to me. I have never bought anything decorated like this, but you can tell immediately this is a richly illustrated rendition of the classic poem that will have kids reading it over and over again. There were so many details in the pictures. I could point out illustrated examples of unfamiliar words from the poem, plus the kids were making up their own side stories about all the additional details shown. As a kid, I always loved a book like this, that I could look at/read over and over again until I really "grew into" understanding it fully, and I can tell this book will be like this for her and her little brother.
The words are written large enough for little ones learning to read to follow along with their finger (and about 4 lines of the poem per page), but not with a font so large that readers with a wee bit of experience would cast it aside as being a baby book for a younger sibling. The poem does not read like a dumbed down version (if it was abridged in any way, I didn't notice).
