What Are You Doing, Maisy?

by Lucy Cousins

I remember reading Maisy books with my older daughter when she was small, and now I'm discovering them all over again for her little sister. Maisy is a little mouse with animal friends. She's featured in board books, often with lift-the-flaps (which is always fun but I have to guard against enthusiastic little hands tearing them!) The pictures are simple and bold with bright, clean colors. This one shows Maisy in each picture getting ready to do something, and the text on the facing page has little pictures of the objects involved. When you lift the flap it shows what Maisy does with all those things. For example, on one page it shows eggs, butter, flour and candles, Maisy on the facing page is stirring in a bowl. What is she doing? Lift the flap, and there she is looking proud with a finished cake! The teaching moment of deducing what activity might use each group of objects is only enhanced by the progression of all the pictures- it turns out that Maisy is doing things specifically to get ready for a big event at the end. My little girl loves these books so much that she even says the name; she'll bring me a book repeating "May-sie, May-sie" insistently until I read it. We're going to have to find more than just the three I've currently borrowed from the library.

Rating: 4/5 ....... 14 pages, 2003