Simply Read releases Tiny Tails series
Montreal’s award-winning artist Geneviève Côté has a distinctive style, and has applied it to numerous children’s books in both French and English — books that range from simple picture books for the very young, to more sophisticated volumes.
Most recently, she gave us Spark, by Kallie George (Simply Read Books, 36 pages, $12.95), an early-reader chapter book designed for ages five to eight.
It’s the story of a young dragon who is a quick learner, except when it comes to controlling his ability to breathe fire. No matter how hard he tries, and how many teaching aids his mother and father enlist, young Spark tends to scorch stuff. Marshmallows catch fire when he breathes on them, plates glow and crack when he tries to help dry the dishes, and dreaming about producing little flames has Spark accidentally filling his bedroom with smoke. It all seems hopeless.
But then his birthday rolls around, and Mama and Papa host a party for him in the woods. “Spark was very careful. / He didn’t sneeze fire. / He didn’t cough fire. / He didn’t even laugh fire.” And when his friends urged him to light the candles on the cake, he closed his eyes, breathed in and “breathed out VERY gently,” successfully lighting the candles without melting the icing.
Spark was so proud of his achievement that even after everyone sang Happy Birthday, he refused to blow out the candles.
The book, divided into five “chapters,” ends with a double-page spread in which Spark carries the blazing cake home, his friends and parents bringing up the rear in a triumphant parade out of the woods.
Publisher’s information on the dust jacket indicates this is the first volume in a Tiny Tails series, with the second book — Flare, also by George and Côté — scheduled for publication in August. It’ll tell the story of a young golden phoenix who learns that it’s okay to express his emotions.
This is not the only easy-toread chapter-book series the Vancouver-based publisher has released. Murilla Gorilla and the Lost Parasol (42 pages, $11.95) appeared at the same time as Spark, but is the second volume in a series about a monkey in the African rainforest who, in a somewhat bumbling fashion, manages to solve minor mysteries. Written by Jennifer Lloyd of Blainville and illustrated by Calgary’s Jacqui Lee, it is the sequel to Murilla Gorilla, Jungle Detective, published last May.
Like Spark, Murilla Gorilla and the Lost Parasol is aimed at ages 5 to 8, but the text is longer (seven chapters instead of five) and the storyline a bit more complicated than the opening volume of Tiny Tails.
Murilla Gorilla and the Hammock Problem, the third volume in this series, is scheduled for publication in May.