Who Can?

by Charles Ghigna, Vlasta Van Kampen (Illustrator)

Overview

Tongue-twisty teasers lead the reader through a miscellany of animals in this brilliantly illustrated hint-and-reveal book.

Careful clues invite the child to guess what's coming next, and rhythm and repetition invite early readers to try out this little riddle book on their own. From toucan to centipede, all will delight in Vlasta van Kampen's colorful art and Charles Ghigna's whimsical words.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459813717
Publisher:	Orca Book Publishers
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	24
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	3 Months to 2 Years

About the Author

Charles Ghigna, or Father Goose®, lives in a treehouse in the middle of Alabama. He is the author of more than 100 award-winning books from Random House, Disney, Hyperion, Scholastic, Simon&Schuster, Time Inc., Abrams, Boyds Mills Press, Charlesbridge, Capstone, Orca and other publishers. He has served as poet-in-residence and chair of creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and as a nationally syndicated feature writer for Tribune Media Services.

Vlasta van Kampen is an award-winning illustrator and has published over 48 books. She graduated from OCA (now known as OCAD) University in 1966. On scholarship, she studied typography and book design at the Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in The Netherlands. She delights in developing animal characters that will entertain the viewer. Her art is storytelling in great detail, rendered in rich, saturated watercolors. Vlasta lives in Coburg, Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

"Not only will this board book be a playful delight to the preschool crowd, but it will also teach them a variety of animal facts, prediction strategies, a rhythmic cadence, and a sense of celebration for reaching the end of the book. Highly recommended."

Resource Links

"This book is adorable with bright and fun illustrations. It makes for a fun engaging read aloud because of the rhyming and the questions. Great fun!"

Kiss the Book blog

"Rich, vibrant watercolour paintings enhance the text and provide readers with plenty of details to examine. Clever, whimsical and fun! Recommended."

CM Magazine

"Charles' rhyming riddles with help from Vlasta's art create a book full of fun for younger readers as they learn about riddles and rhyming, guessing from hints in the words and the pictures. The plus is that this learning is what readers do all the time. It's a terrific new book!"

Teacher Dance blog

"I love this book! And you will, too…Jaunty, rhythmic, and filled with wordplay, it provides many chances to bolster vocabulary and literary understanding. You will find much to consider while reading it together."

Sal's Fiction Addiction

2018-06-11
Little ones are encouraged to guess the identity of various animals through pun-filled riddles. "Who can sing while sitting in a tree? Who can?" So reads the text on the left-side of the first double-page spread. Across the gutter, a telltale bright beak peeks out from a copse of trees, and the page-turn reveals the answer: "TOUCAN." "Who can?" is asked again to introduce a pelican, and the pattern of riddle and reveal continues with question on recto and answer on the following verso. The next set of animals—pandas and barracudas—answers the question "Who does?" The puns get stretched a little too thin when the riddle reads "Who stirs the wheel in the playground? Who stirs?" and the answer is "HAMSTERS." While van Kampen's illustrations are lively enough against white backgrounds and employ warmly saturated colors, the tone of the art is an odd mix of the naturalistic (pandas eating bamboo) and the whimsical (centipedes reading this very book). The project ends with a query directed to readers, asking who can read this riddle book. On the following double-page spread a white toddler sits in an oversized chair reading as all the animals (including fish-out-of-water minnows and a barracuda) from subsequent pages gaze on with admiration.While the seed of a good idea is here, it withers and dies by the end (pun intended).(Board book. 2-3)

Kirkus Reviews