Ready for Spaghetti

These poems, in an inviting picture book format, are for the youngest children. They follow a child’s day from waking in the morning through play by themselves and with friends to bath time and bedtime. The children are curious and exuberant, wondering at the mystery of the mirror, what tale a snail might tell, or where a balloon might go and why when you have left it tethered to a stone with instructions to stay. They relish the experiences that come their way: rain, an itch or a sneeze. And they ponder on the nature of the universe, including the thoughts and feelings of soft toys and what it would be like if the sun came out at night. This is all about discovery, play, enjoying life and, above all, enjoying language. The poems riff on sound, repetition and rhymes. A tummy rumble sets off a chain of associated umbling and ummy words: “Timmy, tummy, tumbly tumbles, now my tummy rumbly rumbles.” The joy and fun is captured perfectly by Polly Dunbar’s illustrations, where the children’s moods range from thoughtful to madcap, and they often look out at the reader as if to invite us to the party, which Michael Rosen already has, in a thoughtful and encouraging forward. Mainly it’s the children’s world. The adults appear only once, towards the end when the children stand on their shoulders to look at the stars, gently reminding us, and the child readers sharing the book with their own adult, that the child’s world, like language, is shared and inherited, but open to endless discovery and new expression.