Awards

Reviews

Adding perfectly to the exotic rainforest theme, Jeanette Canyon’s beautiful polymer clay illustrations will be the first feature to draw the reader’s attention to this entertaining counting book. Skillfully using the traditional tune “Over in the Meadow,” Berkes describes the activities of rainforest babies from a wide variety of animals, swinging the readers along like the marmosets she begins with, and inviting them to sing like the five baby parrots by including the music in the back. If the fun rhythm and pictures were not enough, other back matter, including information about each animal mentioned, the rainforest in general, a finding game, and recommendations to encourage child participation both from the author and the artist, make this picture book an excellent teaching tool on many levels.

— Children’s Literature (June 2007)

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A rhyming story of counting jungle animal babies and their mothers. Beautiful pictures and wonderful repetition that even the youngest students can follow along with. Once again as in the authors previous book, “Over in the Ocean,” number 10 is the father taking care of the children. A story you will be asked to read again and again.

— Indiana Library Federation – Read Alouds Too Good to Miss 2008-2009

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Another variation on the familiar song, this one enumerates some of the unusual fauna of the rain forest. It not only spot-lights some of the animals-marmosets, parrots, honey bears, leaf cutter ants, etc.-but also offers pertinent information on the habitat. Berkes describes the different layers of the rainforest and its importance to our global ecology, and suggests movement activities for children to act out the rhyme. The unusual and colorful illustrations are made with polymer clay and then photographed, giving them a three-dimensional look. Each spread has the text and a number on the left against a dark-green leaf background, and shows one animal family with the correct number of babies as well as several other sets of indigenous flora or fauna to count. A long double page shows all the levels of the rain forest in cross section, and children are challenged to count the animals previously encountered and now hang-ing on the vines and hiding underneath the trees, etc. This is a handsome book on an important subject, and it can serve as recreational reading as well as an introduction to a basic unit on the rain forest.

School Library Journal – Judith Constantinides (May 2007)