Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
What Does Kitten Hear? A Big Book of Animal Sounds
Board Book
For ages 3 to 6
Clavis, 2016 ISBN: 978-1605372525
Our world is full of sounds of all kinds, and the sounds that you hear on a farm are very different from the ones that you hear in a city or in a zoo, on a beach, in the woods, in a park, or in a house. We are going to visit these seven places, and in each one children will encounter wonderful sound words that they will enjoy learning and saying.
We begin on a farm. Kitten is sitting in a pig trough and she is looking at a rooster who is crowing. The rooster is only one of many farm animals that are making a noise. A guinea pig is squeaking, a rabbit is nibbling, a sheep is baa-ing, pigs are oinking, a cow is mooing, and a horse is neighing. Even the geese flying in the sky are noisy.
As one would expect, the city is a noisy place. Cars and other vehicles make all kinds of sounds, the church bells toll, people call out greetings to one another, a dog barks, and pigeons coo.
The noises we encounter on a beach are gentler. Seabirds call to one another, a seal barks, and visitors on the beach make sounds of contentment as they play and lie on the sand. Of course there are a few louder machine noises like the roar of a motorboat engine, and the “toot” of a yacht horn.
The woods are truly quite. Here the only human noise that can be heard is the distant “vroom” of an airplane. Otherwise all we hear are the sounds of birds and animals. Oh, and the sound a gnome makes when it breaks a mushroom.
In this wonderful large format board book, children will learn all kinds of sound words as they explore the richly illustrated spreads. Their connection with the book will be interactive because on every spread they are asked questions about the scene that they are looking at. They are also invited to find items that are shown in the artwork.
