Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (Board Book)

If you have never read this book to a child, I would HIGHLY recommend it! It is an ABC book, but it is written so it rhymes from start to finish. The cadence you can easily achieve is fantastic! It's so much fun to read, and for ANYONE to enjoy. We bought this book for our grand children and these are for our great-grandchildren. The fun in these pages never diminishes. It is a classic!

My 3 month old is captivated! I'm not sure if she's making the connection to the letters, words, or the fact that I'm reading it, but she scans every page! The board book is sturdy and easy to handle, so I let my girl hold it and play with the pages as well.

Aren't youngsters learning to read today SO much younger than most people of my generation ever did? Still amazes me that our grandsons learned their letters with such lightning-fast speed (then again, so many of today's children's shows are educational, as opposed to the simply amusing cartoons we had.) Our 3 year old had already been quite proficient with his ABC's when we gave him this book on his birthday, but we'll get a "2-fer" out of it - a fun reinforcement for him that he'll begin to actually read with, and it'll be waiting in the wings for his 1 year old baby sister (not to mention the newest family addition we recently found out about, due to arrive next May!) Very simple story in that all of the (lower case) letters are racing to the top of a coconut tree, once they're all up there the tree becomes top-heavy and - "Chicka chicka... BOOM! BOOM!" - bends from the load, they all come tumbling out, incurring normal childhood-type ailments (skinned-knee, stubbed-toe, loose tooth, out of breath, tangled and knotted up, looped, stooped and "twisted alley-oop", etc.) The parents, aunts and uncles (capital letters) come to their aid as the tree trunk straightens back up. BUT... when the full moon comes out that night, "A" sneaks out of bed and - as children will do - double dares them all back up to the top of the tree! The book ends with a 2-page spread of all of the letters, upper and lower case next to each other - a terrific tool to help youngsters recognize both forms, and part of the fun are the rhymes and fun tongue-twister expressions interspersed throughout (i.e. Skit skat skoodle doot/Flip flop flee.) Super cute little book! You can probably imagine that - having babysat for three of my four grandchildren for 7 years prior to my daughter-in-law becoming a stay-at-home-mom - we have MANY board books included in the large children's library we've built for them over those years - typically, if they're board book versions of a previously released book, they're greatly ABRIDGED versions. I have to say that not only is this one of the highest quality-constructed board books we've purchased, but at 36 pages long (as compared to the hardcover's 40 pages), I think we've actually got most of the entire original book! (Obvious difference would be its size - this is @ 5-1/2" x 7" and a full 3/4" thick, while the hardcover's description lists it as 8.2 x .4 x 10.9.) And what a deal! We purchased this on Amazon for below its imprinted $7.99 US price, and are so pleased with what we received for our dollars - nice, thick pages, bright and eye-catching colors - even our 5-1/2 and 9-1/2 year old grandsons have gotten a kick out of reading this to the little ones!

This was my 6th copy! All 5 of my kids had their own copy. While FaceTime reading with my granddaughter who lives in Tennessee while I live in Colorado she was complaining that her little sister wrote in her favorite book and she opened it to the front to show me. I burst out laughing because it was actually my youngest son’s (now 17!) book from when he was a kid. He had scrawled Joseph on the front inside cover (nearly illegible as he was 4! and only a mom would recognize it!) and Sophia was irritated thinking her little sister was disrespecting her books. Turns out my daughter had raised my storage container looking for her Nancy Drew books, but came across Joseph’s box! I immediately bought Sophia her own!

Let's be clear- I personally do not love this book. I personally am so and totally beyond over this book. I personally don't understand why anyone's writing about the alphabet in a coconut tree. I personally am a bit concerned that all of these little ones are running free up a coconut tree with no supervision. I personally think "a" has a bit of an attitude. But my 2.5 year old LOVES it. Beyond loves it; we have TWO copies of this book. I have one in my room on her shelf and she has one she's loved to destruction in her bedroom. She can kinda "read" it- she can tell you the entire story even if it's not in front of her. And she loves that all of the letters are in the back. I'm fairly sure I can thank this book for the fact that she knows her upper case and lower case letters. Every bedtime ends with this story ( I don't even read it anymore- I have it memorized.) There are no fights when the lights go off because the sun goes down on the coconut tree.