Kids Book Review: The Ear Book

The Ear Book

Author: Al Perkins

Illustrator: Henry Payne

This little, miniature-sized, board book was picked out solely by Little Pumpkin when we were yard-saling this spring. I had stopped to look through
a few boxes of kids books, and she dug this book out and hung on to it. It was not a book I had picked out as I had never seen or heard of it, but apparently she thought it was something special. Since it was quite inexpensive, and it was in excellent shape and nothing wrong with it, I went ahead and bought it. Since then, it has been one of her most requested books for us to read to her.

In this short, little book are a young boy and a dog with their ears turned towards different and various sounds. The text mentions multiple times how good it is "to hear with ears." It goes through sounds you might hear in your house and outside, sounds from your feet and hands, and just random sounds that you might hear in various situations. Since it is a short book, it does not go into a whole lot of detail, but is very simple and to the point.

The illustrator has a somewhat real, whimsical look to the pictures. And, on both the boy and the dog, their ears are a bit accentuated. The author has used simple rhyming throughout the text, and it is very easy to get into a bit of a sing-song chant, if you will, when reading the book. There are a few spots in the book that I have incorporated vocal variations to match what we are reading about, or a few simple motions kind of acting out the text. Pumpkin has begun to anticipating those spots in the book and tries to imitate the sounds, or do the motions, too.

This board book is, I believe, a shortened version of a full-size, regular hard-back book. It is also considered part of the Dr. Seuss collection of "Bright and Early Board Books" even though it is not written by Dr. Seuss. Even though this was not a book that I would have originally picked out, we have made it into a fun little book. With the rhyming, kind of sing-song text, I have to wonder if that is part of what makes if fun for Little Pumpkin to listen to.

I would categorize this book as a fun little book for toddlers, age 0-3, pretty much. I'm not sure that it would be on my list of recommended books, but it is apparently one of Little Pumpkin's favorites. It appears that this board book version may be hard to find in your regular stores. It is available on Amazon, of course, and may be available to order through Barnes and Noble or Target.