Mummy, you're special to me by Laine Mitchell

Ill. by Kim Fleming. Scholastic, 2014. ISBN 9781742839813.
(Age: Pre school) Mothers, Family relationships. Each double page of this book about mothers and their offspring, is devoted to a four line stanza telling how one mother loves her charge. She may know numbers, telling the time, counting, or painting and writing a play, or taking the children on picnics. Whatever expertise she has is illustrated by Fleming in a soft watercolours as he illustrates each stanza with a different set of animals. Thus the sheep are on the page about counting, the one who writes and performs plays is about the octopus, and building sandcastles on the beach is devoted to turtles. Children reading this book will have another layer of meaning behind the pictures as they can see the underlying play on words. On each page too they can search for the giraffe, the first animal appearing in the book, and the one which follows the action of the book to the end. Underneath each stanza is the refrain of the title, allowing someone reading it aloud to encourage little voices to join in.
Fran Knight