At Children’s Book Store, we are always pleasantly surprised when we receive new children’s book releases that are enjoyable to read. Board books can sometimes fall into the, well, how do we say this diplomatically… the creatively challenged category. At least for books that adults want to read to their wee ones.
Sandra Boynton is to board books what Dr. Seuss was to the easy readers: she’s funny, and that makes reading her books a good time. Boynton has been writing for at least a quarter of a century, and her ever-growing list of titles shows it. She’s such a creative force to reckon with that you can be assured that most board books penned by Boynton are going to deliver some fun stuff for the knee-high, blanket and bunny set (or as some might prefer to call them, kids).
Her latest endeavor for the pint-sized is, “Tickle Time!” And, it inspires just that. This book is so good a getting the giggling going, that we don’t know how inclined kids, or the adult for that matter, will be to falling asleep after reading it, so you may want to save this one for a playtime book.
“Tickle Time!” is pure silliness and kids will love the opportunity to get in their daily quota of chuckles. The language has just the requisite right amount of playful thematic nonsense, i.e., “gitchy, gitchy, goo” as well as Boynton’s signature illustrations. Kids will love the rhymes, the opportunity to tickle and be tickled.
Our personal favorite is “The Going to Bed Book.” You really can’t go wrong with an author that makes the animal characters “brush and brush and brush their teeth” and “all go up to exercise” before bed. Those of us at Children’s Book Store who have kids of our own found that, miraculously, this board book encouraged our own actual kids to enjoy both of the most annoying features of being a kid: teeth brushing and bedtime. To that, we say hooray, and may Boynton get a free batch of chocolate cupcakes at random!
Boynton is a hugely popular author of children’s books, and she appears to love what she does, but in her own quirky way. “I’ve written/illustrated a lot of books for discerning children, and some other books for peculiar adults. I wrote my first children’s book, Hippos Go Berserk, in 1977 as a January Project while I was still a student the Yale School of Drama,” she wrote, in her “unbelievably fascinating autobiography.” Well, we can’t argue with her notion that “peculiar adults” will like her work, because we are certainly on her growing list of fans.