Bob and Flo and the Missing
Bucket. By Rebecca Ashdown. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $7.99.
Bob and Flo Play Hide-and-Seek.
By Rebecca Ashdown. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $7.99.
It is not unusual for books
for young children to be transformed into books for the youngest children –
that is, into board books. But some transitions seem easier and more natural
than others, and the “Penguin Friends at Preschool” books by Rebecca Ashdown
are particularly well-suited for board-book transformation. Really, the
original hardcover versions of Bob and
Flo and Bob and Flo Play
Hide-and-Seek will appeal (and do
appeal) to pre-readers and very young readers already. The penguin preschool and
the readily understandable, mundane adventures that Bob, Flo and the other
penguins have there are fun not only for preschoolers but also for children too
young to be going to preschool – call them pre-preschoolers.
However, in their new
board-book format, these little penguin adventures are even easier to hold, and
follow, and enjoy, for children too young to read the stories on their own, or
perhaps just learning to recognize a few words here and there. Bob and Flo and the Missing Bucket
introduces the title characters, as Flo starts preschool by bringing her lunch
of raw fish in a red bucket. Flo meets several other penguins, including Bob,
who admires her bucket – which soon turns up missing. For the rest of the book,
Bob has the bucket (wearing it on his head, using it to climb on, filling it
with sand to make sand castles, and so forth); and Flo, diligently searching
for the bucket, does not notice that Bob took it and is playing with it. Or
perhaps she does know what is going on: she eventually finds it at the bottom
of the slide, with Bob stuck at the slide’s top. “Flo knew what to do,” Ashdown
explains, and so Flo fills the bucket with water and uses it to “whoosh” Bob
off the top of the slide’s ladder and down the slide itself, after which Flo
and Bob play for the rest of the preschool day – until, on the way home, Flo
reminds Bob not to forget “our” bucket the next day. The adorable penguin
drawings and the gentle formation of friendship – in a situation that could
have caused anger and hurt feelings – make Bob
and Flo and the Missing Bucket a charmer of a story, and one with a lesson
that is quite suitable for pre-preschoolers.
Bob and Flo Play Hide-and-Seek has the two titular penguins more
used to preschool and each other. The hide-and-seek game starts because it is a
rainy day, and the other penguins at first do not recognize Bob when he walks
in underneath an umbrella. There is some lovely age-appropriate writing here as
the hide-and-seek game – involving Bob hiding and Flo and a penguin named Sam
searching for him – begins: “Counting to twenty is hard. So Flo and Sam counted
to ten. Twice!” The small problem in this book is that Bob does not quite
understand what it means to hide. He stands in plain sight and covers his eyes,
as if that will prevent others from seeing him; then, told to hide behind
something, he holds up a pot from the play stove in front of his face – but
again leaves his body fully visible. Bob is puzzled at being found so easily, but
promises to try once more. And this time he concocts an elaborate plan to build
a sort-of-penguin-shaped-and-colored stack of blocks and hide behind it. Now
Flo and Sam cannot find Bob at all, until he choose to burst out and reveal
himself – again, a small and simple lesson learned enjoyably and at just the
right level for kids who will be attracted to these prettily illustrated,
nicely paced and well-plotted books. The board-book changeover here is complete
and completely successful.
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