Daisy Gets Dressed - Hardcover

Clare Beaton has been charming audiences for years with her hand-crafted children's picture books. Clare graduated from Hornsey College of Art with first class honours and then spent eight years working at the BBC Television Centre, illustrating for various children's programmes including Playschool, Jackanory and Playdays. Her studio is a treasure trove of felt, sequins, buttons, antique fabrics and other material that she uses in her artwork. She has published many titles with Barefoot Books, including How Big is A Pig? (2000), Playtime Rhymes for Little People (2002), Mother Goose Remembers (2001), How Loud is A Lion? (2002), There's A Billy Goat in the Garden (2003), Mrs Moon: Lullabies for Bedtime (2003), Secret Seahorse (2004) and Who Are You, Baby Kangaroo? (2004).

PreS-K. On every spread of this unconventional seek-and-find book, children must locate a patterned piece of clothing to complete little girl Daisy's outfit. The sought-after item appears somewhere among similarly patterned objects, all identified at the bottom of the page. An undershirt with zig-zag stripes can be found near a stegosaurus whose jagged spines suggest a zig-zag line; a flowery cardigan sweater shares space with rose-print curtains. A necklace of successively increasing beads provides one more element for children to discover on every spread. The book's purpose seems rather nebulous, with too many skill areas addressed in tandem, and the unexpected places in which some of the patterns appear may leave some children struggling to make the conceptual leap between patterns printed on fabric and organic patterns visible in nature. What distinguishes this from other I Spy ventures is Beaton's prowess with scissors, needle, and thread. Children will delight in the novelty of familiar objects reproduced in "vintage antique fabrics" and embellished with sequins, beads, and embroidery. Jennifer Mattson
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