Jemima Puddle-Duck

with sliding pictures

by Beatrix Potter

I haven't been posting about baby books lately because we've been reading the same ones over and over again. But just the other day visited the library and found a few new ones. This one is kinda cute. I usually don't care for adaptations of famous stories that use little gimmicks, but when the kid has a very short attention span this will keep her sitting in my lap through all the pages. It's quite simple: each page has a very abbreviated part of the story about Jemimah Puddle-Duck and the sneaky fox who wants to eat her for dinner. There's a picture with another picture made out of strips; you pull a tap and all the strips shift and the picture changes. My one-year-old finds this fascinating, and she also loves it because the book is so teeny, just a few inches square, that it fits perfectly in her little hands. I can't leave it within reach or let her read it by herself though because I'm worried she would tear it. And even though the story is abbreviated it's still hard to make sense of- parts are left out, the sequence is not complete and the sentences a bit complex, so I end up just making up simple phrases about the goose and fox. The pictures don't really show what's going on in the story, either. Really, all this book has going for it is the sliding pictures which intrigue the baby.

rating: 2/5 ........ 10 pages, 1994