I was approached by someone at Kane Miller Books to review some of their children's books, and one of the selections I received was Yellow Umbrella
by Jae Soo Liu and Dong Il Sheen. This book previously won the New York Times
Best Illustrated Book Award for it's beautiful watercolor
illustrations. Kane Miller is a publisher that specializes in
translations of foreign-language children's books into English.
Yellow Umbrella is not so much a storybook as a picturebook
accompanied by music. Included in the back of the book is a CD that
you play along with the story. We have several books with a CD of the
author or some actor reading the story, and I have to confess that we
never listen to them. Since my son Alex is six, I'd rather read them myself
or have him try to read them. In this case, the CD is integral to the
book, since there are no words, and the music tells the story along
with the pictures.
I found this book to be enchanting and unexpectedly moving as I went
through the pages. The pictures are beautiful renderings of a rainy
day, shown from a bird's eye view of the top of an umbrella moving
through a neighborhood, through city streets, through a park and onto
the final destination. As the yellow umbrella moves, it is joined by
other umbrellas of different colors, but you don't see who is beneath
them until the very end.
The music plays the part of the rain and lets you know when it is
raining harder or softer as the umbrellas make their journey. It is
simple piano music, and I was surprised at how much emotion and mood
was set by the tune.
I looked at this book with Alex, and I think he wanted more action
or conflict in the "story" so we ended up making up our own story to go
along with the pictures. We talked about where the people might be
going, where they lived, and what they might do when they got to their
destination.
At the end of book, there is a song sung in Korean, with the words
in English translated at the back of the book so you can read along.
The singers are an adult male voice and a child. It's a very sweet
song about an umbrella, and possibly an opportunity to learn a little
Korean.
I think this book would appeal to kids of all ages, from infants
just learning to interact with books and music, to older kids who can
use their own imaginations to create a story or paint a picture or a
sing a song that they make up themselves. I think this book would
delight infants and parents alike and would be a great alternative to
the Baby Einstein videos. For toddlers and pre-schoolers, you can use
the book to teach colors and counting.
I was impressed by the high-quality, glossy pages of the book, and
thought that it would be one that would stand the test of time--both in
the timelessness of the story and presentation and in durability.
We've had quite a few books get taste-tested, thrown around, and ripped
to shreds, but I thought that this book was well-made and would be one
I'd want Alex to pass along to his own kids someday.
The value of reading with your child, at any age, is not so much
what they learn from the story, but the intimate interaction between
parent and child. It's the shared experience of words, pictures, and
in this case, music, that draws you in together. Some of my favorite
times with Alex have been snuggling on the couch reading stories
together, or seeing him read with his dad and grandparents. I hope
that those experiences will have a lasting impression on him and give
him the lifetime gift of the joy of art, music, and reading.
Cross-posted at Kimchi Mamas and The Silent I
The very nice people at Kane Miller Publishing sent me two books to review a while back, and I published a review of one of them, Yellow Umbrella
