Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this brightly colored picture book, Snider uses childlike illustrations and graphic typography over ample white space to complement a pigtailed child's first-person retrospective of her word-learning journey. As the fuchsia-dress-wearing Ava progresses from baby talk ("waaa oooh eee gaga yaaa") to short words ("Ba! Ma! Da?") and onomatopoeia ("drip drop"), Snider dives into the language-acquisition process, which his protagonist describes as "ideas that break free and take flight." Showcasing language's multifaceted utility, Snider employs a lively rhyme scheme throughout, and concludes by conveying how Ava uses her love of words as her vocabulary acquisition moves from getting words to writing them. Digitally colored illustrations are unassuming but dynamic, with occasional paneled pages emphasizing Ava's vocabulary expansion. While the developmental overview may interest adults more than children, the simple story may nevertheless prove inspiring to budding writers. Ages 4--8. (Oct.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1--A child explores her love of words in this very simple ode to language development. In short rhyming stanzas, a child with paper white skin and brown curly hair declares, "I love words" and that "Words are ideas that break free and take flight." She shows her linguistic progress from a baby babbling in onomatopoeia, to a child of four or five writing a story for a read-aloud to her stuffed animals. The rhymes are short and neat, enhanced perfectly by the illustrations, with a great deal of humor. One spread shows the child calling four very different objects/animals "guck," and on another she offers a bone to both a dog and a baby, saying "woof." While the cartoonlike illustrations, similar to those of Judy Horacek's, float mostly in white space, Snider varies the composition and uses the words themselves to add colorful dynamics. The shade of sky blue is a motif throughout, and though the child grows, her red outfit and hair bow remain a constant. While the illustrative and writing styles are best suited to enjoy with toddlers and preschoolers, the idea of exploring language development may be lost on them. VERDICT A celebration of a child's love of words, this should have a place on the shelves of many collections.--Clara Hendricks, Cambridge P.L., MA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young child develops a love for vocabulary. Ava tells readers, right away, "I love words." With bright chalk the white, pigtailed writer scrawls basic words like "yes," "happy," "cat," and "rain" in green, blue, yellow, and pink. The narrator takes readers through the process of language acquisition, first as an infant who "started with no words," expressing baby talk like "oooh eee gaga yaaa" while absorbing real words ("book / uh-oh / dog / no"), finally saying "ba!" while pointing to a ball. As the story proceeds, Ava gains more and more language, learning to talk "to friends in marvelous ways," culminating in writerly ambitions; the last page shows the pink-dressed, cowboy-booted child holding taped-together pages entitled "Ava's Book," reading aloud to an assortment of toys and stuffed animals. The prose rhymes loosely, bouncing ahead in a rhythm that is a pleasure to read aloud. Unfortunately, while the miracle of language may be astonishing to an adult watching it, it is perhaps less than enthralling for a child going through it. With the exception of "marvelous," all the words used are short and simple, appropriate for young children but obscuring the larger goal of reveling in a love of language. Ava, who is paper-white, is a pleasant-enough narrator, but there's little here to hook child readers beyond, perhaps, pure identification. Probably more for adults than for the children in their lives. (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
