Caps for Sale

Caps for Sale is an awesome book. If you don't own it already, you need to go buy a copy right now. I'll wait here until you get back. Okay, okay, you can read the review first if you really have to. But trust me, this is a great one. I loved it as a child, Charlie loves it now, and I still love it as an adult.

The story of this book is very simple. A peddler sells caps, walking around town with all the caps stacked on top of his head in a huge tower. One day, nobody wants to buy any caps, so he goes for a walk in the countryside and falls asleep under a tree. When he wakes up, he finds that all the caps are missing, except for his own cap. Looking around, he finds that a group of monkeys have taken his caps and escaped up a tree. How will he get them back?

This book has some serious staying power. Charlie is as obsessed with the book at almost-three years old as he was at 18 months. The story is cleverly told, but with lots of repetitive phrases to draw in young children. For example, whenever the book mentions his caps, it talks about "[the peddler's] own checked cap, then a bunch of gray caps, then a bunch of brown caps, then a bunch of blue caps, and on the very top, a bunch of red caps." There are plenty of opportunities to count the caps and point out their colors.

The best part of the book is the story of how the peddler tries to get his caps back from the monkeys. The illustrations are great -- the peddler in his suit and cap standing at the base of the tree, looking up, and the monkeys hanging from the branches, each wearing one of his caps. The peddler is a little bit angry, but he's pretty sure he can work things out with a simple appeal.

"You monkeys, you," he said, shaking a finger at them, "you give me back my caps."
But the monkeys only shook their fingers back at him and said, "Tsz, tsz, tsz."

This made the peddler angry, so he shook both hands at them and said, "You monkeys, you! You give me back my caps."
But the monkeys only shook both their hands back at him and said, "Tsz, tsz, tsz."

A few pages later, the peddler is so angry that he's essentially having a temper tantrum, stomping his feet and waving his fists and shouting at the monkeys up in the tree. And the monkeys are still playing their game, imitating everything he does. And then the peddler gives up.

At last he became so angry that he pulled off his own cap, threw it on the ground, and began to walk away.

The monkeys have been copying everything he does up to now, and surprise, surprise, they copy this action, too. They throw the caps to the ground and leave the peddler alone.

So the peddler picked up his caps and put them back on his head--first his own checked cap, then the gray caps, then the brown caps, then the blue caps, then the red caps on the very top.

And slowly, slowly, he walked back to town calling, "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!"

I absolutely love the way they show the peddler's temper tantrum progressing bit by bit as he gets angrier. And particularly, how all of his yelling and screaming and shouting doesn't work at all. It's a great lesson for kids (and grownups!) about how not to convince someone to do what you want.

The other thing I really love about this story is the way the mood progresses in a cycle. It's very calm at the beginning, and then it builds up the huge emotional temper tantrum in the middle, and then once the peddler gets his caps back, it returns to the same calm and peaceful tone of the beginning. I've been looking for books to help Charlie deal with his emotions, and I think Caps for Sale gives an excellent model of how to calm back down and accept the good after an emotional outburst.

A note on versions and ages: I bought the board book version of Caps for Sale when Charlie was about 18 months old. He loved it and wanted to read it every day. Unfortunately, we lost the book while we were on vacation a few months later. Eventually I got around to buying a new one, and since Charlie was two and a half by that time, I went for the paperback instead of the board book. It turns out that the board book leaves out some interesting details of the story, but nothing crucial. I would recommend going straight for the paperback. You can buy the paperback alone, or for just an extra two dollars, you can get it packaged together with a CD that narrates the story and adds some songs. In my opinion, the songs are just so-so, but Charlie loves listening to it in the car. This is the first book-CD package I've tried, but I will certainly be doing some more in the future.

Caps for Sale gets my absolute highest recommendation. It's a wonderful story, well-written, with great lessons, and has excellent power to hold a child's interest.

Blue Hat, Green Hat

There's not too much I can say about Blue Hat, Green Hat. We have enjoyed many of the Sandra Boynton board books since Charlie was a little baby, but they're just so simple that there's not much to say. Don't let the simplicity fool you, though. Boynton's books are excellent for babies and very young toddlers.

I chose Blue Hat, Green Hat to review today because it's enjoying a resurgence of popularity in the eyes of two-and-a-half-year-old Charlie. The story is extremely simple: A series of animals get dressed, one piece of clothing at a time, but the turkey always manages to put his clothes on wrong. Hat on his feet, socks on his hands, coat on backwards, that kind of thing. The only words are the color and name of each item of clothing, and then the word "oops" under the turkey each time. It's up to the parent and child to point out and explain what went wrong for the turkey.

This is a great book for learning colors and the names of items of clothing, but Charlie has those down like the back of his hand at this point. The reason he's interested in it again is that he can dress himself now and he just loves pointing out the turkey's mistakes and explaining what he should have done instead. Additionally, the words are so simple that Charlie can "read" the entire book himself. That is, there are no words other than what he can easily observe from the pictures and say out loud.  No parental involvement necessary! (Though he still likes to read it together with me.) I'm glad to see that this book has a bit of staying power past the infant stage.

One to Ten and Back Again

We've been working on counting a lot lately, and one of our fun counting books is One to Ten and Back Again. This is a board book with two special gimmicks. First, there are ribbons that are strung through the book, with one new ribbon appearing on each page. Second, each page has text written right-side-up and upside-down. The last page instructs you to turn the book over and read the opposite side. The very minimal story is that insects and other small animals all come to sit on a big flower (one bee, two butterflies, three grasshoppers, etc.), and then when you flip the book over, they all leave, one set at a time.

Both of these gimmicks work really well. The ribbons make a very fun swooshing noise when the pages are turned. The ribbons are actually integral to the book, since the animals you're counting appear on the ribbons.


Turning the book upside-down is very exciting to a toddler. It also allows the book to lead you through counting both up and down without having twice as many pages. The design of the book actually makes it very easy to read without getting confused. In fact, the first time I picked it up in the store, I didn't even realize that it had this upside-down feature! (To be fair, I was distracted by keeping Charlie entertained while I shopped.) All of the text to read is written on the right-hand page for the direction you're holding it, so your eye naturally is drawn there. In addition, the upside-down pages have a black background while the right-side-up ones have a white background. This means that you don't even really notice the black background pages while you're reading it the first way, and then when you turn it upside-down, you are already on alert.

My only complaint here is that the slots in the pages for the ribbons to go through weaken the structural integrity of the pages, so it's easier to bend and crease the pages than in an ordinary board book. So far, the creases haven't prevented the pages from turning properly, though.

The illustrations are pretty cute, too. The black and white background serves to highlight the brightly colored flower and insects. As the creatures pile on to the flower, it starts to bend over, ending up pretty smushed by page 10. Then as you count back down to 1 in the upside-down part, the flower gradually stands back up. There's also a little preview on each right-side-up page--the bottom right corner lets you know which animal is coming next.

Oh, and perhaps this counts as a third gimmick--there's a cutout running all the way through one side of the book that serves as a handle. Even a very little kid can hold this book easily in one hand, making it very portable for restaurants or waiting rooms.

The Gruffalo

The Gruffalo (I've linked to the board book edition, which we own, but it's also available in paperback) is a cute little story about a mouse who keeps himself from being eaten by other animals in the forest, using his own cleverness. Whenever an animal wants to eat him, he scares them off by claiming that he's about to be joined by a scary monster called a gruffalo. This works great until the gruffalo turns out to be real, not imaginary, and also threatens to eat the mouse. But then the mouse parades back with the gruffalo to all the creatures he talked his way away from before. Each one looks at the gruffalo and runs away immediately. The gruffalo is convinced that they are actually afraid of the mouse, and runs away, leaving the mouse in peace. I'm almost certain that this is some kind of familiar folk tale, but I can't put my finger on what the original version was.

The book is written in very clever and nicely-flowing verse. So nice, in fact, that I'm going to reproduce the entire first animal encounter here so you can read it:

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood.
A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good.
"Where are you going to, little brown mouse?
Come and have lunch in my underground house."
"It's terribly kind of you, Fox, but no--
I'm going to have lunch with a gruffalo.
"A gruffalo? What's a gruffalo?"
"A gruffalo! Why, didn't you know?"
"He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws,
And terrible teeth in his terrible jaws."
"Where are you meeting him?"
"Here, by these rocks,
And his favourite food is roasted fox."
"Roasted fox! I'm off!" Fox said.
"Goodbye, little mouse," and away he sped.
"Silly old Fox! Doesn't he know,
There's no such thing as a gruffalo?"

What I like most about this book is the subtlety and politeness of the text. The fox doesn't come in growling, "I'm going to eat you up!" and the mouse doesn't say, "No way, my friend the gruffalo is going to come and eat you up instead!" It's all very genteel and implied. Not only does this make for a more fun book, it also brings in more parent-child conversation about the book, if your kid is too young to make these connections on his or her own.

The illustrations are nothing particularly special. They're nice enough, and the gruffalo is drawn such that it is more silly than scary. There are a few details to find in the backgrounds--birds, butterflies, mushrooms, but nothing major is of note here.

One possible objection to this book is that the mouse gets himself out of his predicament through lying, a strategy we shouldn't glorify to our children. But it is morally proper to lie to protect your values, and your life, from criminals who would do you harm. So this really just becomes an opportunity to discuss the ethics of a difficult situation with your children. It's also quite a clever solution for the mouse to come up with, so we can respect him for his creativity and quick thinking.

The author, Julia Donaldson, is apparently quite well known in the U.K. for writing a large number of popular children's books. I haven't read any of the others, but I did want to point out that there's a direct sequel to The Gruffalo, called The Gruffalo's Child, which apparently involves the gruffalo telling his child about the very scary mouse he once met in the forest. I'm also kind of in awe of anyone who can get an entire professional website and Christmas TV special (sadly, not available for the U.S. market) made from just two books. That is some impressive marketing!

EyeLike Nature: Leaves

The EyeLike series uses amazingly beautiful photography of natural objects to tell stories and teach concepts. These have been some of our favorites, though Charlie is still too young for many of the more advanced EyeLike books. Perfect for the one-year-old set, though, are the four board books in the EyeLike Nature series: Leaves, Sticks, Stones, and Snow. For no discernible reason, Charlie fell in love with Leaves while merely liking Sticks and Stones. Understandably, since we live in Atlanta, he could never really relate to Snow. In my view, all four of them are lovely.

Each page features a colorful photo of a child interacting with some form of leaves. There are leaves growing on plants, fall leaves on the ground, piles of leaves, even a child eating salad for lunch. The text consists of a simple sentence or phrase for each picture, such as "There are leaves in my garden." I soon had the text memorized, but the pictures are so gorgeous to look at that I was rarely bored when rereading it multiple times.

Charlie also enjoys creating art projects with the various sets of EyeLike Stickers.