Little readers will take to the repetition and counting, while parents will be moved by the last spread: a sweet depiction of mother and baby. The last stanza switches its focus from two children to one “sweet little child,” and reveals the narrator as that baby’s mother. Each stanza introduces a new pair of babies, and the illustrations cleverly incorporate the children from the previous stanzas onto one page, allowing readers to count not only fingers and toes but also babies. Her pencil drawings, with clean watercolor washes laid in, are sweetly similar to those in her early board books ( Clap Hands, 1987, etc.). Oxenbury’s charming illustrations depict infants from a variety of ethnicities wearing clothing that invokes a sense of place. Whether from a remote village or an urban dwelling, a tent or the snow, Fox notes that each “of these babies, / as everyone knows, / had ten little fingers / and ten little toes.” Repeated in each stanza, the verse establishes an easy rhythm. 3-6)Ī pleasing poem that celebrates babies around the world. This lesson in assertiveness-hardly clouded by the notion that a good swat is the answer to fear-gives preschoolers a congenial view of the things that frighten the kitten in gleefully expressive illustrations adults may gain a new sense of just how big and forbidding the world can appear to the very young.

When the kitten mistakes the dog's nose for an ``eensie-weensie'' spider and takes a swing at Scratchpooch, ``Kapow!'' and this scaredy cat is transformed into Tiger Cat: ``WOW!/are eensie-weensie spiders/scared of me!'' The upbeat message-that courage may be only a matter of perspective-lights up a cheerful comedy from Rankin (The Little Cat and the Greedy Old Woman, 1995), who shows Tiger, in the last scene, going nose-to-nose with a huge neighborhood dog. The narrator also dislikes crocodiles (``Auntie B.'s shoes'') and the dark forest that is really the four hairy legs of Auntie B.'s dog, Scratchpooch. She was born in Dartmouth and grew up hearing stories of the Halifax Explosion, which are featured in her books Who’s a Scaredy-cat and December, 1917, Revisiting the Halifax Explosion. ``I don't like GIANTS,'' reports a small quivering kitten, but Mama Meow reassures her child that this particular giant is their kindly owner, Auntie B.

Who's a Scaredy Cat by Joan Payzant