Children's Book Review
By Amy Bangerter

aaaaaf any of you young thirty-something parents out there are like me, you probably still suffer from the delusion that one day your small children will become people whom the world at large will deem extraordinary. And even though the chances of parenting a Tom Hanks, a Tommy Lasorda, or a Thomas Edison are realistically slim to none, we struggle valiantly to Baby Einstein-ify our children in the hopes that not only will our three-year-olds be able to sit through an entire reading of "Make Way for Ducklings," they will be the ones doing the reading. However, with his introduction to Nick Sharratt's fine children books, my own three-year-old continues to remind me that reading is supposed to be fun, and that perhaps encouraging a child to be playful and even silly is just as important, if not more so, as nourishing his nascent ability to perform successful chemical equations.
aaaaaSharratt's book A Cheese and Tomato Spider has produced countless chuckles from my son and been the start of numerous and memorable tickle sessions. The pages in the book are cleverly cut in half; the top half of each page, along with amusing illustrations, consists of an adjective such as "exploding" or "haunted," and written on the bottom half of each page is the corresponding noun such as "volcano," or "house." The silliness begins when a child turns either the top or the bottom of each page and combines different adjectives with different nouns to produce phenomenon such as exploding pizzas and haunted policemen. My son loves to hear and see the different combinations he can create, and while he is subconsciously learning a lot about how language works, he is also having the time of his life.
aaaaaI first purchased Sharratt's Rocket Countdown! for my son to keep him occupied on a series of long airplane rides, but couldn't wait until the trip to pull it out. While teaching children about counting forward and backward and encouraging their interest in space exploration, or at least in the blasting off in a rocket part, each page of the book contains a different motor skill your child can practice. Two of my own favorites were taking the helmet on and off the astronaut's head (deceptively entertaining!), and opening the space map which consists of pictures of stars and planets, not unintelligible or meaningless names of highways. In short, it was my kind of map. It was also fun to turn the computer on and off, inventory the astronaut ice cream, and help the astronaut wave goodbye, an important but often overlooked step in the blasting-off process.
aaaaaSharratt's book I Went to the Zoopermarket was also a hit with the entire family. This versatile flap-book takes you down the aisles of the market in search of some very interesting groceries. Instead of buying plain ol' vanilla, your child can buy roarsberry ice cream, but look out for the lion-shaped sherbet lurking beneath the flap. Also, be on the lookout for prickled onions, kangaroobarb, and chocodiles. My child spends a good deal of his errand-running time riding up and down the aisles of our local grocery store; this book shows him how to turn ordinary things into extraordinary things using his imagination. Perhaps the real magic of Sharratt's books lies in their ability to help our children realize that imagining themselves as extraordinary people makes them extraordinary people . . . by anyone's standards.

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Recommended Books by Nick Sharratt:

	A Cheese and Tomato Spider
	Rocket Countdown!
	I Went to the Zoopermarket
	Don't Put Your Finger in the Jelly, Nelly!
	Eat Your Peas!
	Ketchup on your Cornflakes?
	Ouch, I need a Plaster!
	Shark in the Park!