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We Wear Pants ISBN: 9781408893609
Abey, Katie
Published by Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2018
This wonderfully zany picture book is about getting dressed, so you may well wonder why it is under both 'Sight' and 'Toilet Training' in the browse section. Well, there are a large number of double page spreads, each of which deals with a particular piece of clothing. The first is 'pants' and while it isn't really about toilet training as such, there are pictures of animals on toilets, animals with their pants down, all sorts of different kinds of pants, and the theme couldn't be better for encouraging kids to get out of nappies and join the pants brigade, particularly as the message is so subtle, hidden as it is in all the other bits of clothing that the following pages show. The format is the same all through, and there must be 35 to 40 animals on each spread - all wonderfully colourful and funny. One little character is a rebel; he refuses to wear whatever that particular item of clothing is and instead insists on wearing the one that will come next in the sequence. There are little bits of true information along the way, such as 'pants keep your bottom covered' and 'wellies keep out feet dry'. And one of the characters always reminds us, 'Don't forget your hat' or pants or whatever. One of the two page spreads is about wearing glasses, and in this one, all the animals are fully equipped. 'Glasses help you see better,' we are told, and children who aren't too happy about wearing theirs will find solace in the fun of the animals wearing them. Children will love the busy-ness of the pictures and parents too will enjoy the often subtle jokes that fill the pages. One caveat: this is going to be so popular with children and will take so much looking at and talking about that story time is likely to go on for some time! And it will want to be read over and over. Huge fun.
Age: 2+