Over the years, I’ve come across several animal baby books. Some talk about the relationship between mother and baby, while others focus only on the babies. But until I came across this book, I’d never seen one quite like it.
Happy Birthday to Whooo? By Doris Fisher, is a delightful animal riddle book that includes birth announcements within the text! Each set of pages in the book focuses on a particular animal. On one side of the page, there are clever facts about the animal. On the other side of the page, there is a colorful birth announcement for the animal baby. Children will be delighted to learn facts about eagles, leopards, elephants, blue whales, kangaroos, flamingos, camels, lions, seahorses, giraffes, skunks, and great horned owls.
Fisher cleverly designed the text to provide interesting and often unknown facts about animals. For example, did you know that in the first few weeks of his or her life, a baby whale drinks, “…enough milk to gain 200 pounds every day?” The birth announcements are wittily constructed to allow children to guess the baby animal before looking at the pictures. For example, the announcement for the baby giraffe names the mother as, “Mrs. On Stilts,” and gives a weight of 150 pounds and an initial height of 6 feet.
Lisa Downey’s illustrations in Happy Birthday to Whooo? are lovely. The birth announcement pages are constructed so that the child doesn’t have to guess “too” hard to figure out who the baby animal is, because various parts of the animals are sticking out behind the announcement. The pages are colorful but soothing, making this a lovely bedtime story as well as a great read-aloud story any time of the day or night.
Because Sylvan Dell Publishing publishes this book, it contains a section at the back called, “Creative Minds.” Filled with activities and information, this section is included in all Sylvan Dell Publishing’s books, making them wonderful tools for parents and educators alike.
Happy Birthday to Whooo? will delight young children, who often have a fascination with animals. And the riddle pages with the birth announcements will let curious children learn and guess, essential skills for early learning.
ISBN: 0-9768823-1-0
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