In this offshoot of the Noah story, the animals get bored while stuck on the Ark, prompting Noah to lead them in a talent show. A romping good time ensues, and culminates with the two quiet butterflies spectacularly breaking out of their cocoons, showing rainbow colors. Brought to us by the popular team of Tony Mitton and Guy Parker-Rees, who together scored home runs with Dinosaurumpus and Down By The Cool of the Pool, among others, this rhythmic telling fails in a Jewish context as it manages to impart a version of the Noah story without any Jewish content. This book would generally work best as a read-aloud, but it contains several pages with multiple frames of pictures, thus making it difficult to actually use at story-time. However, the book continues Parker-Rees’ tradition of vibrant and engaging watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations of fabulous animals, and has been nominated for the 2008 Kate Greenaway Medal for outstanding illustration of children’s literature in the United Kingdom.
Children’s
All Afloat on Noah’s Boat
- Review
By
– March 9, 2012
Natasha Bergson-Michelson MLIS, is the librarian at the Hirschberg Family Childdren’s Library at Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, CA. Previously, she was librarian for Niehaus RyanWong, Inc. and the McKEnna Group, both in Silicon Valley. She also writes for the online tutorial Googleguide.com.
Discussion Questions
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