Is it a stormy-night scare or a bedtime book? Both!

Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!” his lamb baas back. 3-6)Ī succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.Ī grumpy bull says, “DADA!” his calf moos back. On the final page, children are challenged with the question, “What can you spy with your little eye?”įun to use with preschoolers and younger elementary students in storytimes and as a springboard to encouraging children to observe their environments more closely. (Picture book. Gibbs’ digital illustrations are bold and crisply outlined, dramatic in their up-close views and, depending on the bird in question, vividly colored vague hints of natural settings are shown.

With clues provided about each bird, such as coloration, eating habits or flight, young readers have opportunities to guess and to learn simple facts about birds at the same time: “I spy with my little eye… / something with black feathers and big wings.” “My head can change color,” adds the bird, which is revealed to be a condor with the turn of the page. Each left-hand page allows a peek at the particular bird’s own eye. In this instance, what’s revealed is a portion of the wing of a colorful denizen of the skies. The series’ familiar, child-friendly format is maintained: A die-cut “spy hole” on the right-hand page of each spread (and also incised on front and back covers) offers a tantalizing glimpse of the featured creature. Another title in this author-illustrator’s charming I Spy… series ( I Spy on the Farm, 2013, etc.), this time featuring some easily identifiable, recognizable avians and some perhaps not so much.

I Spy in the Sky by Edward Gibbs