Marc Brown's Playtime Rhymes: A Treasury for Families to Learn and Play Together

by Marc Brown

Overview

Fingers ready?
Fingers set?
Fingers play!
It's time for Playtime Rhymes-a treasury of twenty favorite finger rhymes compiled and illustrated by the bestselling and beloved artist Marc Brown for the enjoyment of young and old.
From the clever Whoops! Johnny and funny Do Your Ears Hang Low? to the irrepressible Itsy-Bitsy Spider and rousing Wheels on the Bus, these are rhymes to say and sing aloud, each with pictorial instructions for the correlating finger movements.
An interactive experience at its very best, Playtime Rhymes will get little hands wiggling, jiggling, pointing, pounding, bending, stretching, and dancing as children animate the rhymes, pore over the vibrant pictures, and share the fun with family and friends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316321884
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	48
File size:	24 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	3 - 6 Years

About the Author

Marc Brown is the creator of the bestselling Arthur Adventure book series and creative producer of the number-one children's PBS television series, Arthur. He has also illustrated many other books for children, including If All the Animals Came Inside, Ten Tiny Toes, Wild About Books and Wild About You. Marc lives with his family in Martha's Vineyard.

Hometown:

Hingham, Massachusetts and Martha¿s Vineyard, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

November 25, 1946

Place of Birth:

Erie, Pennsylvania

Education:

M.F.A., Cleveland Institute of Art, 1969

Editorial Reviews

Long before psychologists roamed the earth tracking preschoolers' fine-motor development, these charming games gave youngsters opportunities to hone and display their nimbleness and dexterity, to engage in a tender form of cooperative play and to stretch their imaginations. Here is interactivity pure and simple, with no batteries required, and learning the games from this well-designed book is itself surprisingly easy.

The New York Times Book Review - Leonard S. Marcus

★ 08/19/2013
Brown shares 20 favorite “finger rhymes,” using tiny iconlike boxes to demonstrate the hand gestures and bodily movements that accompany each line of verse. For “The Wheels on the Bus,” a cartoon boy mimics the movement of the wheels by spinning his hands round and round (arrows indicate movement); in the main illustration, a trio of passengers board a bus piloted by a cheerful redheaded woman in sunglasses. Other songs include “I’m a Little Teapot” (which features an anthropomorphic floral teapot and five teacups dancing around like ballerinas), “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” and “Five Little Pigs.” Brown’s gouache and colored pencil artwork—which involves painting, scraping, and repainting gessoed wood panels—gives the book a vintage, weathered effect as it loosely guides readers through the seasons of the year and offers many hands-on opportunities for adult-child play. Ages 3–6. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

09/01/2013
K-Gr 1—Fans of Brown's Hand Rhymes (Penguin, 1985) will be thrilled to see this new collection, which uses a similar visual format to teach rhymes and their accompanying actions. The book offers 20 participatory rhymes, seven of which were included in Hand Rhymes. Each one is colorfully illustrated using gouache and colored pencils on gessoed wooden panels. Paint was scraped away and overpainted in places to create texture. Small boxed line drawings match up with each line of text, suggesting interactive motions. Some rhymes are just for fingers ("Whoops! Johnny," "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"), while others make use of the whole body ("I'm a Little Teapot," "The Wheels on the Bus"). The well-known rhymes span the seasons. With its clean design and classic feel, this welcome title will be useful for programming and for adults who want to take home some of the fun from storytime.—Julie Roach, Cambridge Public Library, MA

School Library Journal

2013-09-15
Twenty of Brown's favorite finger rhymes, complete with tiny pictograms to demonstrate motions and actions for each phrase. Compiled from Brown's previous collections (Finger Rhymes, 1980; Hand Rhymes, 1985, etc.), all of the rhymes are classics. The words themselves will take adult readers back to childhood, and candy-striped endpapers and cozy illustrations painted on wooden panels give the whole package a decidedly old-fashioned warmth. Familiar rhymes such as "I'm a Little Teapot" and "The Wheels on the Bus" are mixed in with the simple (literally, only using one hand) "Whoops! Johnny" and "Sleepy Fingers." As with all folklore, there are many versions of these rhymes. Some individual words or actions may be different than remembered, but nostalgia will carry readers through. The animated gestures next to each line are relatively easy to imitate and will send hands whirling, fingers fluttering, and arms stretched out wide. Brown created all new illustrations for this work, but alas, some are only slightly re-imagined from his previous collections. Parents, grandparents, teachers and librarians will surely appreciate having these favorites in one treasury, but an additional spark would have been welcome. Just right for family play, while honoring the tradition of passing these rhymes to future generations. (Picture book/poetry. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews