Snail's Birthday Wish

by Fiona Rempt, Noelle Smit (Illustrator)

Overview

It’s Snail’s birthday! All his forest friends have gathered to celebrate: here come Beaver, Squirrel, Duck, Mole, Frog, and Ant, all carrying colorful balloons and brightly wrapped presents. Soon, everyone’s having a good time…except Snail. He just isn’t fast enough to keep up with everyone as they race, jump, climb, and swim. And when he opens his gifts, he’s even more confused. A chair? A pile of smooth wood? Snowshoes? Wheels?
Though Snail can’t imagine it, his fondest birthday wish is about to come true…
Fiona Rempt’s heartwarming story and Noëlle Smit’s vibrantly drawn animals combine to create a picture book kids will want to read again and again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781905417520
Publisher:	Boxer Books
Publication date:	10/01/2007
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.63(w) x 8.63(h) x (d)
Age Range:	4 - 6 Years

Editorial Reviews

PreS-Gr 1 All of Snail's friends join in celebrating his birthday by bringing an odd assortment of presents. While watching his buddies frolic in the pond, Snail laments that he is not fast enough to keep up with the raucous play. Cartoonlike illustrations emphasize action as Squirrel zips out his four inexplicable gifts and Frog offers another puzzling present as his contribution. Children will be kept guessing until the clever conclusion, when the friends fit all their gifts together to create just what their pal wanted. Birthday Wish is as large as a picture book, yet the text size is big and the sentence structure is simple enough for beginning readers. Although birthday gift stories abound, this title can stand beside Stephanie Calmenson's Birthday at the Panda Palace (HarperCollins, 2007) and David McPhail's Big Brown Bear's Birthday Surprise (Harcourt, 2007) as a friendship tale to cherish.-Blair Christolon, Prince William Public Library System, Manassas, VA

School Library Journal

With saturated colors and figures in animated poses, Smit's illustrations seem to pop off the pages of this high-energy birthday tale. Rightly feeling left behind by the active games that his animal friends Frog, Squirrel, Duck and the rest play during his birthday party, slow Snail blows out his candles with a wish that he could be faster. When it's time to open presents, Snail's pleased but puzzled to receive a lightweight chair, a box of nails, a pile of lumber and like oddities-from which his friends then band together to construct the perfect gift. "It's a car! Whoopee!" shouts Snail, streaking off through the woods at top speed to join the fun. Like Valeri Gorbachev's Big Little Elephant (2005), this celebration offers insight into the kind of friendship that adapts to diversity rather than rejecting it. (Picture book. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews