Not So True Stories & Unreasonable Rhymes

Carin Berger has created a truly inspired book, a magical trip to a far off land where "One thousand shiny zeppelins soar through midnight skies" and "one hundred ants in lime green pants are feeling so tres, tres". The fanciful and highly detailed collage illustrations are gorgeous and the poetry is so happy and singy and swingy. I have a 3 year old son and a 7 year old daughter and this book has become our birthday gift standard.

this book is one of my three year old son's favorites, and has been for a long time (that's really saying something since reading is his favorite thing to do). the illustrations are full of great detail, color and energy. and the text is whimsical and very musical. it's one of those books that's not only entertaining for children, but parents as well. i would recommend this book to everyone.

The illustrations in this book are a delight for any groovy, arty child, not to mention the mom who reads it for the umpteenth time! And she will! The sweet poems work well whether your child is tiny or big. For my big guy (he's six) he is just figuring out how poetry is constructed. These rhymes are great for him to start noticing how language works. My little girl, four now, she loves the sound of the rhyme and the fun images of the words. Now lets talk about the illustrations. Just for one instance, there is a red dress made of what looks to be tiny pieces of cut out paper carefully tiled like fish scales -- and the dress is really big. Thousands and thousands of fish scales individually cut out and pain-stakingly placed. The illustrator must have gone BLIND doing that work. Very impressive. That's just one illustration. The book is gorgeous. I don't know about you, but I love finding little hidden things in the illustrations the tenth time I read the book. This is that kind of book. For example, when you open the front cover, at first the page looks like two-dimensional holes. But the illustrator is playing with your perception. By putting a little (very carefully constructed) figure in one of the holes, the image looks, suddenly three dimensional. This is all just fabulous for the kids. There are no shortcuts taken in this jewel of a book! Buy it! Better yet, buy lots of them and give them to all of your friends having babies!