‘It Looked Like Spilt Milk’ is a
classic picture book from 1947 which is part our new concept books collection
“FUNdamentals.”
Why are we featuring a 70 year old
book? In part because it’s so timeless that it could have been designed and
published this year. All pages have a calming background color that’s slightly
darker than navy blue. There is white text on the left pages in the form
“Sometimes it looked like a Tree. But it wasn’t a Tree.” On the right page, a
matching silhouette in white. At the end, it’s revealed that these are all
cloud shapes. (What isn’t revealed is that Charles Green Shaw was well known in
his lifetime as an American writer and abstract painter. I recommend doing an
Internet image search just to see how familiar his pioneering work feels
today.)
When I use this book in storytime,
kids are quick to give other suggestions for what a shape might be. It also
pairs nicely with a simple craft: Fold sheets of blue paper in half, then show
kids how to sprinkle some drips of white paint around their page and fold it in
half to make inkblot designs. After the first round of guesses, I like to turn
their pages around so they see new shapes in their “clouds.”
We have quite a few copies of this
book in different formats: hardcover picture book, softcover picture book,
board book, and even one audiobook-on-CD meant to be used along with a paper
version.
[If
you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Not
a Box, by Antoinette Portis, or Little
Cloud, by Eric Carle.]
[
publisher’s official It Looked Like Spilt Milk web page ] | [ Wikipedia page for
Charles
Green Shaw ]
Have you read this one? What
did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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