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This book is spectacular for children to recall food items mouse eats. Not only building on recall, the children can sequence items. My son loves the colors, loves to pretend to eat along with mouse and loves to vote on his favorite food item mouse eats. blueberries.
This book is beautiful, exciting for the children, and following it up with an art project for them to paint their favorite fruit or vegetable helped solidify the story.
This book is perfect for teaching about color, description, and, best of all, good food. The bright images are larger-than-life picnic bits and the writing makes it all good enough to eat. This is pretty much a classroom staple for me.
Hrmph, said I. The little mouse is very hungry. It's amazing to look at and it's funny as all get out.A small mouse sniffs curiously out of his hole. Reading the artist's statement, I didn't realize right off the bat that just as the mousey's food items change color, so too does the background of each and every scene. His little arms reach yearningly off to the side.
Additionally, the tablecloth itself is a calming black and white, ably setting off the mouse and his gluttonous rampage.When you first hear how artist Denise Fleming went about creating the pictures for this book your initial reaction is something along the lines of, "Whaaaa.". It blows the mind, it does. The rare spectacular picture book is interesting to children, interesting to adults, and manages to sneak in some sort of learning. And the fact of the matter is, the book flap was absolutely right.
So I flipped through this picture book, preparing to read the same old same old. Reading the cover flap for "Lunch", the book had this to say (about itself), "this is one book about colors that makes the plain old primaries look positively pale". Suffice to say, no paint or brushes created a page of art in this book. Not a lot of the time, it's true, but sometimes. On his tail are green peas, for example. This book has the two elements absolutely necessary to becoming successful.
It blatantly teaches children the names of colors (as well as healthy foods). Beginning with a purple turnip, moving onto an orange carrot, yellow corn, etc. Books about colors sometimes can be overwhelmingly successful. Why go to all that bother and work. I urge you to purchase a hardcover copy of this book (I can't vouch for the paperback) because the book flap goes into incredible detail describing Fleming's incredible process.
Instead, each page is a meticulously hand-crafted process that results in handmade paper with these images intact.
As the little mouse eats (and his aplomb and enthusiasm is highly addictive) he covers himself more and more with particles of the foods he's just devoured.
and everyone ends up winning.
We shall see.
This book is simply fabulous.
So he climbs up the nearest black and white checked tablecloth and proceeds to eat every beautifully colored fruit and vegetable he sees.
By the end of the story the author includes a picture of the now completely multi-colored mouse with helpful notations as to what each item on his person is.
"Lunch", however, doesn't bother with any sneaking.
Seriously consider adding it to your collection immediately, if not sooner.
This is a delightfully fun book to read, but I would recommend it for a 2-4 child; because each page leaves the reader "hanging" on what is the next item the mouse will eat, it is best for a child who can understand more complex concepts. This is one hungry mouse--he eats everything in sight with abandon. By the end of the book, he's covered in all the remnants from what he eaten, leaving a very obvious trail to his home. Again, Fleming has rendered a beautiful, if a bit abstract, visual feast for baby and parent alike. This is a fun book to add to one's library.
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