Skip to main content

Five Faves: Board Books You Can Sing

Lots of kids LOVE to sing! Singing is especially fun with friends and caregivers, but it doesn't always feel natural to burst into song (well, for some of us). These board books are great because they take classic tunes and put them with fun illustrations and some of them put new words and themes to the music. 
The Llamas in the Field
Written by Aly Fronis
Illustrated by Luke Flowers
New York: Little Bee Books, 2020. Board Book.

Set to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus," this book is perfect for kids who love making animal sounds. At this farm, we get to sing about all different kinds of animals and what noises they make, and many of them we don't hear about all the time. Sure, we have the familiar cows, but also coyotes, alpacas, and of course llamas!

Written by Hannah Eliot
Illustrated by Anna Daviscourt
New York: Little Simon, 2022. Board Book.

Set to "I'm a Little Teapot," this book describes a fun winter's day with snowmen friends. This is not just great for singing, but the detailed pictures give a lot to talk about. Consider stopping between pages to point out what the different snowmen are doing and wearing.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Robot Beep
Written by Jeffrey Burton
Illustrated by Zoe Waring
New York: Little Simon, 2020. Board Book.

We don't need to just look at the stars twinkling! With this robot take on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," readers can blast off through those stars with a robot who does not want to go to sleep. This book is also nice for winding down for bed as little robot learns it's good to power down.

Rock-a-Bye, Baby
By Hazel Quintanilla
Toronto, Canada: Flowerpot Press, 2022. Board Book.

To those of you who know this nursery rhyme: don't worry! Both parent and baby end this book safely after the "fall." This cute take on "Rock-a-Bye, Baby" show parent and baby sloth cradled up to go to bed, when the branch they're hanging from inevitably breaks.

By Stevie Lewis
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2020. Board Book.

Hope you didn't get sick of this song! In this book, we see a young girl who is hoping to see a baby shark at the zoo. Once she finds the baby, it is soon joined by a mama shark, daddy shark, and grandma shark. Showing the kids doing the hand motions to go with the song, this book is great for teaching kids about the song that took the internet by storm.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Review: Fowl Play

  Fowl Play By Kristin O'Donnell Tubb New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2024. Fiction 277 pages. Still reeling from her beloved uncle's death, Chloe Alvarez is comforted and confused when at his last will and testament reading, Uncle Will gifts her his African Grey parrot, Charlie. Charlie has a robust vocabulary and loves to make Alexa requests for her favorite songs, but when she starts saying things like, "homicide," and "cyanide," Chloe becomes convinced that Uncle Will may have met his demise by murder instead of a genetic disease, as was previously thought. Ultimately, bringing in her brother, Grammy, and Uncle Frank (and of course Charlie,) Chloe's ragtag and adoring family support her search for answers ---going on stakeouts, engaging in fast pursuits, and searching for clues. But as the suspects stack up and the mystery grows, Chole will learn that the process of death and grieving is complicated, and in the end her Uncle Will's words that, ...

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry Edited by J. Patrick Lewis National Geographic, 2012, 183 p. Poetry In this beautiful poetry collection, the National Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, has teamed up with the amazing photographers at National Geographic. The result is 200 poems about animals, all illustrated with stunning nature photography.  The poems are well chosen and include rhyming, free verse, and shape poetry. Some of the poems are funny, many are contemplative and all are nicely typeset on top of the full color photographs. One of my favorites is a shape poem about flamingos, with a photograph of a flock of flamingos which seem to be standing the the shape of a flamingo (how did they do that?).  Lewis ends the collection with a brief but interesting section about writing animal poetry.  This selection is sure to turn any animal lover into a poetry lover.