FIVE LITTLE MONKEYS

A board-book reinterpretation of the well-known nursery rhyme.

Five playful and very colorful little monkeys are jumping on the…bed? Readers familiar with the rhyme would know that of course, but the signal piece of furniture in the rhyme is de-emphasized in the illustrations in this board book. A well-defined and easily recognizable bed would have been nice, given the book’s audience. Instead, more attention has been spent on five very intrusive little diagrammatic boxes on each page, intended to show the reader what the hand gestures accompanying the rhyme are. Readers familiar with the nursery rhyme will not need this, and readers encountering the nursery rhyme for the first time will not know what to make of these boxes. All that is accomplished is to clutter up the page. The large tabs on the side of the page keep track of the number of monkeys still jumping on the bed with the appropriate number of monkey faces on the recto; on the verso, fingers on a hand track the counting. Little hands will find the tabs helpful for turning the pages, but more fun can be had joining a storytime program at the library and reciting the rhyme along with the other attendees.

An unnecessary book.