Everything I Need to Know Before I'm Five

by Valorie Fisher, Valorie Fisher (Illustrator)

Overview

Do you know your letters? Can you count to twenty? Learn all that and more in this all-in-one concept picture book. Perfect for kids heading to kindergarten, this book covers the alphabet, counting, opposites, shapes, colors, and seasons. Award winning author-illustrator Valorie Fisher uses bright, gorgeous photos of retro toys to illustrate these topics in a completely fresh way. Parents will love this stylish and funny approach to basic concepts, while kids will learn, well, everything.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375988769
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	07/26/2011
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	1 - 5 Years

About the Author

Valorie Fisher is the author-illustrator of When Ruby Tried to Grow Candy and How High Can a Dinosaur Count?, which received two starred reviews. She is illustrator of The Fantastic 5 & 10¢ Store and the photographer for the beloved Moxy Maxwell books. Her titles My Big Brother and My Big Sister, both Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award winners, were also illustrated with photographs. Ms. Fisher's photos can be seen in major museum collections around the world, including the Brooklyn Museum, London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Editorial Reviews

Fisher (The Fantastic 5 & 10¢ Store) gives preschoolers a leg up on need-to-know information in this energetic collection. In candy-colored multimedia collages, built with dollhouse-size toys and yard-sale bric-a-brac, she presents such topics as weather, seasons, and numbers up to 20 (from 11 on, she lines up color- coded marbles). In a section on opposites, two dolls stand with arms wide to demonstrate an "easy" stance, while another pair takes the same position—on their heads—for "hard"; one petite doll stands behind an actual-size green plastic frog for "push," while another demonstrates "pull" with a string. Animal figurines pose with shapes (star, heart, circle); blocks spell the names of colors, topped by molded dinosaurs and rubber duckies. An upper- and lower-case alphabet rounds out the book, with Fisher meticulously arranging a pink flamingo and plastic fork for F, teeny teacups for T, and a yo-yo for Y. Considering all the titles on just one of these topics, these vintage/tacky photo-spreads are worth several books in one, even as they display the vast potential in rummage sales and vending machines. Ages 1–5. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review, PublishersWeekly, May 30, 2011:
"Fisher (The Fantastic 5 & 10¢ Store) gives preschoolers a leg up on need-to-know information in this energetic collection."

Review, The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2011:
"There's a faint haziness in Ms. Fisher's photographic style that gives her tableaux a sugared quality; you feel vaguely that you ought to be able to pluck the objects off the page and eat them."

From the Publisher

PreS-K—The retro stylings of toy giraffes in bow ties, sheep in wire-rimmed glasses, and colorful rubber ducks make the pictures in this concept book a delight. Fisher covers numbers 1 to 20, opposites, shapes, colors, seasons, weather words, and the alphabet, portraying these concepts with collage photos of amusing objects sure to spark conversations. The cover art, portraying a doll driving a dump truck full of blocks and letters, is likely to hold appeal for both boys and girls. While the book may not contain everything a child needs to know before kindergarten, it's a great start.—Lindsay Persohn, Crystal Lake Elementary, Lakeland, FL

School Library Journal

Fisher packs a lot—if not exactly everything, or perhaps not even some of the most important things—into this compendium of basic concepts for young children: letters, numbers up to 20, colors, shapes, opposites, seasons.

The title indulges in a bit of hyperbole, perhaps as a lure to a certain kind of nervous but ambitious parent. Small toys, objects and plastic dolls are lined up, combined or used to create clever tableaus to photographically illustrate each concept. Mixing colors, for instance, employs plastic ducks in various shades to demonstrate the result of color combinations. The superb clarity and rich, saturated colors of these photos create page openings that are nearly startling in their brightness. While the people figures are nicely retro with their bland, naive faces, there's little diversity demonstrated or implied. And the collection of concepts misses a bet in another important way: For all the charming silliness going on in many of these miniature scenes, others seem static. It's funny to see tiny figures in aprons and hair buns cleaning up an enormous ladybug, but literal-minded young readers will search the image in vain to find any of those abstract essential concepts (being a friend, taking care of the earth, asking for help) one ought to know before age five.

Cheerful, if not exactly essential, fun. (Picture book. 2-6)

Kirkus Reviews