REVIEW: Goodnight Ark by Laura Sassi, illustrated by Jane Chapman

Next up on my Z Blog Squad Recommended Reading list is Goodnight Ark, by Laura Sassi, illustrated by Jane Chapman.

Ok, the only way I can describe this book is ADORABLE!  It's geared toward younger children, but with paper pages, I wouldn't leave your toddler alone with it.  Unless you've got a super well-behaved toddler.  In which case, please call me so your kid can give lessons to my kid.

But I digress.

Everything about this book just screams adorable-ness.  The story is a classic - Noah's Ark.  But author Laura Sassi puts a super-cute bedtime spin on it.  The storm scares the animals and they can't sleep.  So what do they do?  Crawl in bed with Noah, of course!  Two by two they all pile in until .... well you'll just have to read it and see what happens.  

And no, I have no idea where MRS. Noah is during this whole story.  But I don't think that detracts from it at all.  Maybe Noah snores, so she had her own bed.  Maybe she was seasick.  MAYBE she was up late blogging.  Who knows.

The illustrations in this book are cute as well.  Jane Chapman makes all the animals look realistic, yet cuddly at the same time.  Check it out...

Don't you just want to snuggle those tigers?!  The snakes even look friendly!  But they're not overly cartoon-y.  It's a pretty nice balance, I think.

We love this book.  It's rapidly becoming a bedtime favorite.  Every time an animal comes in to crawl in bed with Noah, we like to give Ellie a chance to try and name the animal.  She's good with Elephant (Ef-fent) and Tiger, but we're still working on those Quail.  I really like that she can learn about a Bible story (from a different perspective, which I always enjoy) and also have an opportunity to practice things like animal names and sounds.  Multi-tasking, I think they call that.

Ok, final verdict: I love this book and I really recommend it - especially if you have a little one who likes to read stories before bed.  We did remove the dust jacket from this hardback copy, just to make it easier to handle, but we do that with all dust jackets, so it's not a negative to me.

Disclaimer: Zondervan provided me with a free copy of this book for reviewing purposes, but all opinions are 100% mine.