Look: A Tummy Time Book

by Gavin Bishop

A wordless concertina board book of big, bright faces to place around the baby on the floor at tummy time―family faces on one side and toys on the other―by award-winning author/illustrator Gavin Bishop. This safe and sturdy fold-out book is a perfect gift, with compelling illustrations of the things babies love. Friendly faces from the whole family combine with familiar toys and objects, drawn in bold lines with a striking minimalist color palette. Tummy time helps to strengthen a baby's back, neck, and shoulders. The strong, simple images stimulate developing eyesight, allowing babies to see things up close and from a different point of view. The images are perfect for introducing first words and concepts as baby grows, with 12 family faces―including the dog―and 12 objects that babies love to hold and explore―soft toys, ball, keys, an enticing pair of spectacles and more. Praise for A Tummy Time Book
"Young children will be captivated by the faces and objects illustrated in bold colors."― School Library Journal "A unique and stylish board book for the very young."―Youth Services Book Review

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

24 pages, Board Book

Published August 1, 2023

About the author

Gavin Bishop is a highly acclaimed children’s book author and illustrator. Born in Invercargill, he spent his childhood in the remote railway settlement of Kingston on the shores of Lake Wakatipu. Studying under Russell Clark and Rudi Gopas, Gavin graduated from the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts with an honours degree in painting. He taught art at Linwood High School (now Linwood College) and at Christ’s College in Christchurch.

He won the Margaret Mahy Medal in 2000, and has also won numerous other fellowships and national book awards. His book The House that Jack Built won the Book of the Year and Best Picture Book at the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards 2000. Weaving Earth and Sky won the non-fiction section and the Book of the Year Award of the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards 2003, and was shortlisted for the LIANZA Elsie Lock Medal in 2003. He has won the LIANZA Russell Clark Medal for Illustration four times. Among his successful partnerships has been that with writer Joy Cowley, with whom he won the Best in Junior Fiction and Book of the Year at the 2008 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards for Snake and Lizard.

The Storylines Gavin Bishop Award for Picture Book Illustration was established in 2009 to encourage emergent illustrators and to acknowledge Gavin’s contribution to the writing and illustrating of children’s picture books. In 2013 he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and President of Honour of the NZ Society of Authors, and he was the recipient of the 2013 Arts Foundation Mallinson Rendel Illustrator’s Award. Gavin’s artwork has featured in exhibitions internationally, including Japan and Czechoslovakia. He has written and designed two ballets for the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company: Terrible Tom and Te Maia and the Sea Devil. In 2003, during the Ursula Bethell Residency, he wrote and illustrated Giant Jimmy Jones, the world’s first three-dimensional animated picture book for HITLab at the University of Canterbury.

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than 22 different faces, shapes, and toys (all elements with which youngsters are likely to be familiar) provide the contents of this interactive accordion-shaped board book. Intended to be shared with very little ones, the book is ideal for lap reading or sharing up close with a youngster, providing a useful tool for object recognition and various extension activities related to each image. The artwork is clear, easy to distinguish, and has plenty of child-appeal without overwhelming youngsters with too much extraneous detail.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's cute but I really wish that they were photographs rather than illustrations.