Chil­dren’s

All Afloat on Noah’s Boat

Tony Mit­ton; Guy Park­er-Rees, illus.

  • Review
By – March 9, 2012

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.

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.

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