SaskBooks Review: How’s Peanut?
By Brenda Redman,
Illustrated by Wendy Nordell
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing
Review by Michelle Shaw
Trying to explain complex concepts to children can be tricky. Explaining things in simple terms that they can understand and relate to can help to make the process a lot easier. In this fun children’s book author Brenda Redman has done just that.
When Brenda’s daughter told her she was pregnant, she was ecstatic. The baby was nicknamed “Peanut”, and Brenda excitedly received regular updates from her daughter about how the baby was growing.
After “Peanut” was born, Brenda was inspired to write a children’s story which her children encouraged her to publish. And so, How’s Peanut? was born.
The book tells the story of a grandmother-to-be regularly getting updates from her daughter about how the pregnancy is progressing. The baby grows from the size of a peanut, to the size of a plum, to an avocado and slowly progresses to the size of a watermelon. Each stage is also described in terms of development. For example, “The baby is now 24 weeks old and is the size of a cob of corn. The baby can also hear my voice when I sing to them.”
The text on the left side of each page relates the story, with, often, a life-size picture of the fruit as well. On the right is a full-page illustration of the stages of an actual baby slowly growing. There’s also lots of white space which I always find is visually calming.
How’s Peanut? puts a complex scenario into terms children can understand. There’s a lot of word and phrase repetition which sets up a familiar rhythm and is great for helping children to engage with the story and make it easy to read and remember.
The book is beautifully illustrated by Wendi Nordell. I loved her ‘action’ shots of the granny-to-be and her pregnant daughter roasting wieners and marshmallows, running on the treadmill and fishing. The passing months are also subtly depicted as the characters’ clothing changes from toques, scarves and boots to swim suits and shorts and finally hoodies.
I think How’s Peanut? is a great way to help children discover how babies develop in simple concrete terms they can understand.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
