Fiction - Animals - Mammals, Sense & Sensation, Toys, Dolls & Puppets, Poetry - Rhymes, Nursery Rhymes & Fingerplays, Fiction - Basic Concepts

Lots of Lambs

Name: Lots of Lambs
Author: Laura Numeroff
ISBN: 9780547402062

by Laura Numeroff, Lynn Munsinger (Illustrator)

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Overview

“Happy lambs, / grumpy lambs, / Lambs in a coat. / Grandpa lambs, / Baby lambs, / Lambs on a boat.”

Jaunty rhymes make for excellent read-alouds on their own, but add flaps to flip and textures to touch and storytime success is inevitable. Lynn Munsinger’s colorful lambs in contrasting situations (indoors/outdoors, for instance) help reinforce the concept of opposites. A great choice for fans of Matthew Van Fleet’s Tails!

Synopsis

"Happy lambs, / grumpy lambs, / Lambs in a coat. / Grandpa lambs, / Baby lambs, / Lambs on a boat."

Jaunty rhymes make for excellent read-alouds on their own, but add flaps to flip and textures to touch and storytime success is inevitable. Lynn Munsinger's colorful lambs in contrasting situations (indoors/outdoors, for instance) help reinforce the concept of opposites. A great choice for fans of Matthew Van Fleet'sTails!

About the Author, Laura Numeroff

Laura Numeroff

Any kid who's dealt with an exasperated adult is sure to appreciate Laura Joffe Numeroff's If You Give a... series, where children take on semi-parental roles with unexpected, demanding animal guests. Numeroff is an expert at silly situations, catchy verses and stories that absorb and engage.

Biography

If you give a series-prone author an inch, she'll take a mile -- and fortunately for fans of Laura Numeroff's books, she took her concept and is still running with it. Her aphoristic animal stories show what happens when you give a little something ... and get a big list of follow-up requests.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and its companion titles have become favorites not only of parents, but of teachers who like the books' visual elements and domino-effect storylines. Numeroff's other popular titles, What Mommies Do Best/What Daddies Do Best and What Grandpas Do Best/What Grandmas Do Best, are loving paeans to activities shared with adults.

A would-be fashion designer who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in California with a mini-menagerie of pets, Numeroff's stock in trade is her "silly imagination" and her love of animals. Her versatility as a storyteller has been enhanced by the fact that she works with different illustrators, though it also means that all Numeroff titles may not suit the same reader. Her anthropomorphic stories often capitalize on fantasy, but she also has a knack for rhyme, evident in particular in her books Dogs Don't Wear Sneakers and Chimps Don't Wear Glasses.

Numeroff doesn't seem to run out of ideas for ridiculous situations to put people and animals in, nor does she stop celebrating what's special about family relationships. This is what will keep readers coming back to her titles, series-oriented or not.

Good To Know

Numeroff says her parents instilled a love of science and stamp collecting in her as a child, and she has grown into a collector as an adult. Among her collections: stuffed animals, old photographs, autographed children's books, and Halloween masks.

As a teenager, Numeroff was inspired by her sister to become a fashion designer, leading to her attendance at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for college. "Unfortunately," she says, "I hated everything about the fashion department and I couldn't sew to save my life!" Instead, she took a class on writing and illustrating books for children. Her first effort, about the tallest girl in the third grade, was sold before Numeroff graduated. (Amy for Short is now out of print.)

Reviews

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Frequent collaborators Numeroff and Munsinger team up to show a flock of anthropomorphic lambs at work, at play, and at rest, aided by a bevy of interactive components. Numeroff's verse doesn't skip a beat ("Outdoor lambs,/ Indoor lambs,/ Lambs on the phone./ Singing lambs,/ Quiet lambs,/ Lambs all alone"), and Munsinger gives the ovine cast ample personality (one of the quiet lambs angrily shushes the other, while the "lambs all alone" hide behind bushes and trees, reading, writing, and napping). It's the sort of infectious book that kids will be memorizing within a few readings and helping adults complete the rhymes. Up to age 3. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

"The sort of infectious book that kids will be memorizing within a few readings and helping adults complete the rhymes."
—Publishers Weekly

"A sturdy interactive book about a flock of playful lambs . . . There's enough glitter, shiny surface and sweetly expressive farm animals to occupy a small child time and again."
—New York Times Online

Kirkus Reviews

This insipid ovine litany pairs a monotonous, uninspired rhyme with poorly designed extras and bland scenes of clothed sheep at play. Singly or in groups, the partly dressed woolly baa-baas in Munsinger's illustrations adopt unimaginative, low-energy poses to demonstrate a long succession of "Morning lambs, / Nighttime lambs, / Lambs in a plane. // Sitting lambs, / Standing lambs, / Lambs in the rain," and so on, and on. Additions to the right sides of each spread provide some interaction. Flaps with easily torn hinges, for instance, allow the die-cut "plane" (which isn't even printed on both sides) to move slightly more than an inch; there are also a "snowlamb" coated in blue-grayish sparkly plastic in a winter scene and a kite with a limp segment of real string in a spring scene. A possibility for bedtime use, considering the soporific verse and routine (at best) "enhancements." (Novelty. 2-5)