Common Sense Media Review
Each month has a poem with the soup theme.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 4+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Read
What's the Story?
This is a nice early work by children's book all-star Maurice Sendak. Every month in the year has a poem with the soup theme. The simple illustrations add warmth and character to the poems.
Is It Any Good?
Sendak delivers a charming little book of poems and creatively maintains the chicken-soup-with-rice theme all the way through. Each poem is well crafted, and the artwork gives the book a warm feeling, much like chicken soup itself. There is a child's sensibility at work in the notions of a whale spouting chicken soup and of floating down the soupy Nile.
After a few readings, the words "chicken soup with rice" become like good-luck pieces that can be deployed on many occasions: Anything that's genuinely worthwhile, anything that sees you through -- that's chicken soup with rice. When a feverish 4-year-old asks for chicken soup with rice, a parent knows he or she is in the presence of something elemental.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the soup theme in these poems. Which poems were your favorite, and where did the soup figure in those poems? Do you have a favorite kind of soup?
Book Details
- Author :
- Illustrator : Maurice Sendak
- Genre : Poetry
- Book type : Non-Fiction
- Publisher : HarperCollins Children's Books
- Publication date : December 31, 1969
- Publisher's recommended age(s) : 4 - 7
- Number of pages : 30
- Last updated : July 12, 2017
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