Big Red Tub

Big Red Tub by Julia Jarman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Stan and Stella are joined in the big red tub by all sorts of animals, until the suds and waves catapult them around the world (twice) and a flock of flamingos tows them home again.

The imagination displayed is great, and it has plenty of repetition, which is fun for a storytime, but the rhythm of the words falters too often for it to be a great choice. I used it with preschoolers, and they really liked it, despite my stumbling over the text more than I'd prefer. This one takes far more memorization and practice to smoothly read aloud than I'd counted on. I keep wanting to rewrite the lines so that they flow naturally.

It's not a bad choice for reading (slowly and carefully!) with your children or grandchildren--it's pretty cute--but I am returning it to the staff library instead of keeping it with my go-to storytime collection.

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Who's in the Tub?

Who's In the Tub? by Sylvie Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Willy is reluctant to take a bath, but once he gets in, he doesn't want to get out!

I read this to a preschool storytime group, and the kids got a big kick out of Willy and the animals. Was it his imagination, or did his bath toys really come to life?

The cadence of the text falters only a couple of times, so it's fun to read out loud with a little bit of practice. The pages are different sizes--going from small to large and back down again, which adds interest to the pictures that develop from one page to another.

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