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If I Wrote a Book About You

by Stephany Aulenback; Denise Holmes (illus.)

If I Wrote a Book About You, by Nova Scotia writer and editor Stephany Aulenback and Chicago-based illustrator Denise Holmes, follows a mother and daughter through a typical day, during which the mother tells the girl that, if she were to write a book about her, she would write it using the very stuff of the world around them.

For example, the mother would use the branches of the trees to write that the girl is “captivating”; she would use the telephone lines to write that she is “amazing”; and she would use bath bubbles to write that she is “adorable.” There are 21 such scenes featured in the book. Thankfully, Aulenback avoids simple adjectives in favour of choices that will challenge young vocabularies.

Holmes’ drawings – tender and sweet, modern yet timeless – perfectly capture the book’s tone. The featured words are playfully woven into the illustrations  (“radiant” is a squiggle of sunshine, “delectable” an arrangement of green peas), encouraging kids to have fun finding them. However, the book falters in the numerous instances in which Aulenback botches meaning with incorrect sentence construction. To wit: “If I wrote a book about you, I would write that you are entertaining with the toys on the floor.”

One tastes a bit of ash pointing out grammatical missteps in an otherwise delightful volume, but the same errors appear with half the featured words. In a book presumably intended to impart linguistic knowledge, it’s difficult to overlook such inaccuracies.

 

Reviewer: Shaun Smith

Publisher: Simply Read Books

DETAILS

Price: $18.95

Page Count: 32 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-1-92701-846-0

Released: May

Issue Date: June 2014

Categories: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

Age Range: 4-8