The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty. Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.) Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. 3-7)Ī home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Ruby's sloping iced cake is a gem, and Max's is grandly icky and visibly worm-infested: ``Grandma was so thrilled, she didn't know which cake to eat first.'' (Picture book. Her close-ups of destroyed ingredients and her many ways of showing two children in the same setting suggest she knows her subject well.

Wells's ingenuity never flags, not in the brief text nor in the illustrations.

At one point, she posts a drawing in which Max appears inside a red circle with a line through it. Each time, the grocer understandably cannot read Max's writing each time Max returns home, he finds that Ruby is attempting to keep accidents to a minimum by keeping him away from her work. List from Ruby in hand, he is sent to the store each time he destroys an item, and attempts to add (in a preschooler's version of handwriting) his own sought-after ingredient, Red-Hot Marshmallow Squirters. Max, in the meantime, breaks the eggs, the first in a series of mishaps that lends repetition-the soul of story hours-to the plot. To celebrate their grandmother's birthday, Max is constructing an earthworm cake while bossy Ruby declares that a real cake will be made. The famous Max and his sister, Ruby, are the stars of this self-proclaimed brand-name production-A Max & Ruby Picture Book-but there is no formula here-only extreme originality.

Bunny cakes max and ruby book