At first glance, I liked this book, but my 2.5 yr old son did not like it at all. When I asked him why, he pointed to a drawing of the crocodiles, and said "sharp teeth." A similar book that he prefered is "One Monkey Too Many." I found the rhymes somewhat forced. The message is one greedy monkey can outwit many crocodiles to help get what he wants -- not exactly a good role model for a young child. One page of crocodiles with chicken pox only reminded my son of the shot the doctor gave him to avoid the pox. In the end, the monkey does not deliver what he promised to the crocodiles -- how many crocodiles are there in the sea?

Counting Crockodiles is a great book. My 3 year old loves it. It is his favorite book. We read it EVERY night before bed. The pictures are colorful and the animals keep his attention. He likes that the words rhyme. He looks at it so much I am ready for another copy.

As a mother of a 3 year old daughter and an early childhood educator, this is probably my most favorite book available.

The story revolves around a monkey who spies a banana tree on an island across the way and tricks the crocodiles into making a bridge for him to go over and retrieve some bananas. Each page is very colorfully illustrated and is told in a very catchy poetic form. Through the story you count crocodiles from one to ten and back again. The book is short but puts a smile on your face all the way through.

This story is excellent for teaching values, sequence in stories and in counting, and is a great introduction to crocodiles. A huge fan of The Crocodile Hunter, my daughter finds this story entertaining, and is one of the only stories she asks me to read over and over. It's nice because this is one of the only stories I like reading over and over!

We found this at the library and my two year old loves it so much that I came online to order it. We've only had the library version for 4 days and my daughter can already finish many of the lines from the book. The rhymes are charming, even if they aren't always perfect (or maybe it's my pronunciation of the dinosaur names that isn't perfect). There is a wonderful rhythm and repetition to the book that young children love, and the complicated names keep the adults on their toes. Just the right length before naptime. There are fun words for the little ones to practice like 'ooze', and we've already identified Jupiter and Mars. We have a planetarium in our dinosaur museum and this book brings home elements we have seen there.

The imaginative story of Dinosaurs' bedtime rituals (neverbefore discovered), simultaneously introduces dinosaur names and theintricacies of poetry, backdropped by lullabies of soothing cadence.

Entertaining for pre-schoolers to college professors, "Good night, Dinosaurs" is a unique celebration of language and rhythm, matched with delightful illustrations by Victoria Chess.

This book has a wonderful complexity comprised of humorous couplets, alliteration and assonance, and changing patterns.

The colorfully detailed and textured pictures depict the fanciful and comical images that create a superior children's book--a pleasure for both the child and the adult.

I really enjoyed this book. It has the most extensive list of Celtic baby names that I have come across. The definitions help give you some background information on each name. The top baby name book I have com e across!!

I found the book very useful while helping my daughter choose a name for her son, The name she eventually chose was Rhys,a very ancient and royal name bore by Welsh Celtic Kings.

Excellent resource! Has the orginal spellings and pronunciations. We used it for both our kids.

I like Spanish Baby Names by J. Sierra for its wealth of Spanish, Basque, Catalan, Galician and Asturian first names (over 5,000 including diminutives). The fact that a selection of first names in the minority languages of Spain is included adds a great value to this book.

But there is one important thing I miss - frequency data. I don't think it's OK to list such exotic (old-fashioned?) Spanish names as Audomaro, Ausencio, Auxencio, Austreberto, Avertano, Averano, Avertino, Azario, Azariel, Azarias etc. (even Atahualpa, the name of a famous Inca ruler is listed!) without mentioning their frequency. I don't believe these (and other similar names) are much in use nowadays.

Fascinating introduction about the history of Spanish names. I especially liked the Basque names and all the nicknames and variations. I would recommend it for families that want traditional names or new twists on traditional names.

Spanish Baby Names is a marvelous, 107 page, A to Z listing of both boy and girl baby names, including both full names and diminutive versions thereof. Each name has a brief description of its origin and meaning in this excellent reference. Enhanced with a one-page bibliography, including a section of online saints' lives and saints' days websites, Spanish Baby Names is a superbly presented baby name idea book for Hispanic families.

While most classroom's have a pet, the kids in Room 22 have a pet for each letter of the alphabet. From Amanda Anaconda to a zorilla (what's a zorilla?) we get to meet all of the classroom pets via Judy Sierra's humorous verse. Barney Saltzberg's playful illustrations are a fitting match with the witty text. My personal favorite is 'E'. What's yours?

This book is so cute. The illustrations are so adorable. I bought this book for my friend's little sister's birthday and she loves it! The story is fun, too!

Miss Darling is an inspired teacher and when her students ask for a class pet, she turns the search into a class lesson, reciting a poem about an animal for each letter of the alphabet. Are they interested in Amanda Anaconda or Boring Beetle Bill...the Quiet Quohog or the Umbrella Bird...? Judy Sierra has written a funny, witty, very imaginative book of poems that will delight and amuse young children, as each letter of the alphabet is used to describe and give a little information about some familiar and many unfamiliar animals. Barney Saltzberg's colorful, expressive illustrations add just the right touch to each verse and children will enjoy looking for the hidden animals in each picture. This is a perfect book for youngsters aged 3-7 and a wonderful addition to all home libraries.

Who doesn't know the stories "The Gingerbread Man" or "The Lady Who Swallowed a Fly"? But, have you heard of "The Pancake" or "The Cat and the Parrot"? Sierra organizes eighteen folktales from around the world into a collection focused around six themes. This combination of mostly unfamiliar folktales from India, Jamaica, and Zaire (to name a few) and more familiar ones from the United States and England are easily accessible through a well organized contents page. Sierra commendably includes a detailed introduction and thematic background information in addition to extensive source notes which include tale origin information and detailed explanations for changes to the tales. In one instance Sierra explains her rationale behind the name changes she made in "The Pancake". In order to preserve the rhyme scheme present in the original version, she changed the characters' manes to "goody-poody", "many-panny", and "henny-penny". This attention to detail helps both young listeners and more capable readers adore and accept the unfamiliar fables in this collection. Vitale completes this book with exquisite illustrations of the tales through his use of repetitive, culturally-based boarders as well as text-based illustrations. For the tale of "Odon the Giant", Vitale depicts Odon as a huge beast with sharp teeth who is creating havoc for those people beneath him. Vitale combines both sharp and subdued colors to create an illusion of ancientness in his illustrations. The reader feels that they aren't opening just another book, but one passed down through the generations.

My 7 year-old daughter brought this book home from the school library. I stopped reading it about half way through because of some inappropriate material.

Why would you write a book for grade school children that contains poems about 'drinking gasoline' and 'brushing your teeth with turpentine'?

This book is not intended for 12 year olds, who MIGHT be able to determine that the author is only joking. Instead, it is written for the 1st grade crowd.

There are much better things for our kids to be reading. Avoid this book.

We ordered the book through school. My 1st grade son can home and anounced that he received his book order and he had one book that would give him bad dreams. I looked through the book and found it was not quite what we had in mind. We were looking for something that would use the same old nursery stories, but with a difference. We wanted somthing to spark creativity and imagination, a look at adapting stories. It wasn't that kind of book. I felt it was scary and inappropriate for a young child.
My son didn't want to keep it so we tried to donate it to the school library. The librarian looked at it and said he didn't like to censure books, but this book was just not something they really would like.
We threw the book in the garbage.

As the mother of a very imaginative young poet who also likes Emily Dickinson, we found this book to be delightful. Having read so very many rhyming book that were beginning to become blaze this was a refreshing change. She still sings the rhymes and so does her older sister. We would recommend this book to anyone with an imagination.

I am a middle school teacher and I bought the book because the ad said there were activities appropriate for middle school grades included. While the book was a unique collection of Cinderella stories I was not pleased with the activities. My 12 and 13 year old students would have thought these activities too young for them. They need a bit more challenge.

I found this text to be interesting, but it only provides a very shallow level of knowledge. It's not terribly deep reading, but it would be an easy introductory book to the study of fairytales. For anyone interested in a deeper look, check out Alan Dundes' Cinderella: A Casebook or Neil Philip's Cinderella Story. For a broader approach to fairytales, most books by Jack Zipes and Marina Warner are excellent.