Ladybug Girl
We love Ladybug Girl! This is a story about a little girl living in her own little world, as most little girls do. It begins with Ladybug Girl, Lulu, "zipping into the kitchen", full of energy and ready to play. But the rest of her family is busy and her older brother says she is too little to play with his friends. So Lulu is left to entertain herself. She sulks into her room with a grumpy face and mutters "There's nothing to do!" (my daughter loves to discuss the grumpy face and make one herself at this point). We like to linger on this page for a while, looking at Lulu's room through all of her toys, some of which are hiding under covers and in open drawers.She wanders through the house for a while and then decides to go out. Outside Lulu discovers all kids of marvelous everyday things that turn into little adventures. She finds a line of ants struggling over a rock and lifts it for them! (and takes on a superhero persona). She runs through a puddle, that's probably big enough to have sharks in the deepest part. She turns a crumbly rock wall into a fort and balances all the way down a fallen tree trunk, without falling once! She lies down in the sun, enjoying it's warmth and then climbs an apple tree. In the distance she sees her brother playing with his friends and squishes him between her fingers, this entertains my little one immensely. "I'm not little," she says. "You're little." Nothing supernatural or extraordinary happens. It doesn't need to. What I love is that the story is about finding joy in everyday things - a lesson often taught by children. What really makes this book for me is the drawings. They are stunning. Lulu's face is so expressive, allowing the reader to see her move between emotions - delighted, bored, frustrated, accomplished. And her hilarious bassett hound Bingo mimics them all. These expressions are great discussion points for a preschooler. I like to see if mine can recognize her emotions based on her facial expression and talk about what might have caused them (and see if we can mimic them ourselves). My little girl loves Lulu. She loves her adorable Ladybug costume, she loves her cheekiness, and she especially loves her dog Bingo. I should also mention the front cover (and the back as well), where you find a series of drawings of Ladybug Girl in various costumes. This is one of our favorite parts of the book! Last night we were too tired to actually read the book aloud, but we peaked at the covers for about 20 minutes discussing the various costumes: pirate, ballerina, witch, movie star (which is a difficult concept to explain), princess, native american, astronaut and unicorn. Some of the costumes are a bit fancy, but most look homemade, like the creative dressing up kids sometimes do with their parents old clothes. I highly recommend this book for preschool-aged girls (this one is definitely targeted toward girls).
After we had Ladybug Girl at home for a while, we were delighted to find Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy at our local library. I think this one is even better than the first! Lulu has been waiting forever to go to her favorite park. When she finally arrives she sees her friend Sam playing alone in the sandbox. They decide to play together but become frustrated when they have different ideas of fun. Lulu hesitantly suggests that they play Ladybug Girl. Striped-shirt-wearing Sam quickly agrees and becomes Bumblebee Boy! Together they run around the playground battling scary monsters and mean robots. Some other kids see them playing and run over to join them. Butterfly Girl and Dragonfly Girl join in and the four become The Bug Squad! This is a perfect book for preschoolers who are just learning to cooperatively play with others. It presents real-life issues that children face and the very likeable characters solve them with creativity and imagination. The drawings are again stunning and make the book for me. The playground scenes are very busy and full of children (as are the best playgrounds in real life!). If you look carefully you can find all sorts of interesting and silly things in the background (like kids dumping sand on their heads and things like that). It's not often that we finish a book, turn back to the beginning and read through it again. But we read this book over and over. Sorry local library patrons, we will have this one out for a while! (until we are cut off from renewing it any more and finally break down and purchase our own copy). This one is certainly more gender balanced and will be interesting for both girls and boys.
David Soman and Jacky Davis are a husband and wife team who were inspired by their own two-year-old daughter (this is so easy to see). They write the books together and then David, who has previously illustrated other children's books, illustrates them so beautifully! You can check out their website for more information: http://www.ladybuggirl.com/ These are affiliate links. A percentage of purchases made through these links go to support maintenance of Children's Books to Love. Or browse other book reviews; you may also like:
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Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy
There are four other books in this series:
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