fresita's Full Review: Tony Mitton - Down by the Cool of the Pool
Here's a book that makes kids want to get up and move! Tony Mitton's "Down by the Cool of the Pool" is packed with energy, excitement and FUN.
Synopsis:
When Frog begins to dance by the pool, he asks if anyone else can dance like him. One by one, the other animals join in, each contributing his own unique moves, until the pages nearly burst with movement.
Illustrations:
The colorful full-page pictures are enough to catch any child's eye. Set around a small farmyard pond, the water originally reflects the blues and greens of the sky and grass. As the night wears on, the yellow light from the setting sun casts a bright glow over the scene, somewhat resembling a spotlight. Soon the glow turns to orange, then bright pink.
The cheerful animals come ready for the party, most with strands of flowers around their necks or on their heads. The illustrations show lots of little details kids enjoy finding. Even the tiny insects watching the scene have their own personalities.
My Thoughts:
My kids love this book. Their favorite part is the dancing pig wiggling her tail around. My girls also like the inclusion of a pony among the farm animals.
I like all the descriptive words used to depict the different animals' dancing styles, such as flap, wiggle, stamp, skip, hop, bound, prance, frisking, drummed and capering.
Each time another animal joins the dance, the story builds, repeating what the other animals are doing. Accumulative stories such as this one help kids remember the new words introduced in the book.
In the end the animals all fall into the pond, but still continue their dance until the sun sets. After all the animals have left, the last double-page spread shows a flaming sunset against purple skies and hills.
Although the book ends on a peaceful note, I wouldn't use this one as a bedtime story, since by the time I finished reading it, my kids were jumping around, imitating the animals' moves.
There's a lot of pink on the front cover, but this isn't a girls-only book. Only once during the story is the sky pictured in the bright pink shown on the front cover, so there isn't enough pink to make boys think of the book as "girly."
I recommend this story for both boys and girls who like fun animal stories.
Written by Tony Mitton and illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees.
Frog, Duck, Horse, and Pig dance and sing their way through this wacky story with rhyming text and vibrant full-color illustrations.More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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