MUSIC

This book and its companions explore the joys of performance art, toddler style.

Featuring a multiethnic group of toddlers as well as some toddlers wearing glasses and one who uses a wheelchair, the book celebrates the sheer exhilaration of imagination during toddlerhood. The colorful mixed-media illustrations place the children against a white background, giving them center stage. The accompanying text exudes the same playfulness and vitality as the drawings, begging to be read aloud and always ending with an enthusiastic “I’m amazing!” Performing on all kinds of improvised instruments from pots to bottles filled with rattly things, the children have a blast: “I’ve got a drum, as round as my tum. / BANG! BA-da-BOOM! BA-da-BOOM, Bang…BUM!” In companion title Dance! “Hands go CLAP! / Feet go TAP!” Young readers will be moved to do the same. In Dressing Up! the children explore a box filled with wondrous objects ready to become anything a toddler can imagine, the onomatopoeic text giving clues to their creations. And proving that singing can be done anywhere, in Sing! children sing while swinging, sitting on the potty, or splashing in the bathtub. “Sing loud, out LOUD! / Sing LOUDER! / I’m amazing!” Pair these with Annie Kubler’s Nursery Time board books.

Sheer joy.