Bao 1 Qigang Bao
GSW 1110 2032
Van Buskirk
12 September 2013 Evaluation of a children’s book -- Babushka’s Mother Goose
As we are aware, children’s books play an important role in children’s life,and more and more children’s book have been published today. Then choosing effective children’s book for children has become more and more important and difficult for children’s parents. The Children’s Book Council often complies a list of the “Top 100 Children’s books” that children’s parents can realize which book should they buy for their children. Most books in the list are interesting, educational and easily understanding and healthy. The Babushka’s Mother Goose written by Patricia Polacco is one of an excellent book that being argued whether should be included in the top 100 children’s books. It should be on the list of top 100 children’s books because the book is colorful and engaging to its audience, it uses language appropriate to the intended audience’s reading level, and it promote children to think about values.
Babushka is a loans word from Russia which means old woman. The book written by Patricia Polacco is according the stories and children’s poems that her babushka told her in her childhood. Actually, the most happy time and treasured memories for her childhood was getting from listen to her babushka’s stories and poems. She mentions that “ as she began her telling, I would rest my ear on her breastbone and feel her voice resonate are still the source of my well-being and trust of life itself.” (7) It shows she really did enjoy the stroy time her babushka gave her. She calls her babushka a great borrower of stories. The content of the book are actually makes up by many small stories and children’s poems. Most of those stories and children poems are relate to animals and babushka. For example, the book has a children poems that is written about pony “ I had a little pony, it was a dapple gray. It had a wavy mane that looked like curly hay. I sold it to babushka for her most prized brown goat. And I will not sing my song again without coat..”(53) Many small interesting stories and children’s poems are being introduced like that in the book. Children will be happy if they read this book.
The first engaging feature of this book has colorful and beautiful pictures. People easy to feel bored if the book is only all full of words. Sometimes adding some colorful and beautiful picture can make the sorties more graphic and actualize. For example, in the stories of Nina’s Kittens, it talks about the babushka adopts more than a million cats finally. The author really draws a lot of cats into the illustration. Children can see many cats are looking at babushka in her garden. It makes children feel interested in the stories and encourage them to do a imagination.
The second reason why this book should be in the top list is uses language appropriate to the intended audience’s reading level. Actually, all the words and sentence are used in this book are easily understood by children. Author try to not use any complicated sentences and words in this book. Many stories just simple and short.
For example, in the children’s poems, it has few sentence that say “ Misha had agoat who are his favored coat. The goat spat out the button, that landed on a mutton.”(32) Most of sentences in the book are very simple like those. Children will not feel any trouble if
