Off We Go

by Jane Yolen, Laurel Molk

The jaunty picture book that practically begs to be read aloud is now available in a sturdy board book! Once by one, baby critters leave home with their mamas and take off for grandmother's house. The nicely noisy text mixes sound and movement as snakes slither-slee, rabbits hip-hop, moles dig-deep, and so on. Young children will happily follow along with the sounds and motions of the story, and this new format is just right for small hands.

Genres: Picture Books, Animals, Childrens, Storytime, Family, Teaching

8 pages, Board Book

Published January 1, 2002

About the author

Jane Yolen was a novelist, poet, fantasist, journalist, songwriter, storyteller, folklorist, and children’s book author who wrote more than three hundred books. Her accolades include the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, the Kerlan Award, two Christopher Awards, and six honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Born and raised in New York City, the mother of three and the grandmother of six, Yolen lived in Massachusetts and St. Andrews, Scotland.

Reviews

[Milli]

Theres nothing better than going to Grandma's house!!

[Carolynne]

Bouncy rhymed text describes the journey of a variety of little animals ( mole, mouse, duck) as they all decide to visit their grandmas. Lots of onomatopoeia, alliteration, and rhyme make the text predictable and easy to read. The sunny illustrations are good examples of watercolors (not always easy to find in a time when many artists choose mixed media).
Pleasant and comforting for young children.

[Russell]

Are we to expect that animals are retaining a generational connection across the years, past one generation? Particularly some of the most short-lived non-social animals featured in the book? Some of them don't even wait for their children to be spawned, escorting their children to the grandparent is just too far to believe.

[Aolund]

A nicely paced, repetitive book full of rhyme and alliteration perfect for storytime and strengthening phonological awareness. Sweet watercolor illustrations of the various woodland animals (mouse, frog, mole, snake, duck) that serve as the anchors for the rhyming text.

[Lee Ann]

A spin on the whole "over the hill and far away" nursery rhyme/song, complete with adorable artwork. 4/5 stars.

[Ann]

Beautiful watercolor illustrations and fun rhyming text about animals going to grandma's house. Cute for toddler storytime.

[Kat]

Cute but nothing overly interesting or special.

[Hannah Thomas]

This would be a great read aloud for little kids.

[Suzanne Lorraine Kunz Williams]

As a grandma I love this book. I'm hoping that all our grandchildren love coming to Grandma's house!

[Alyssa]

Lovely illustrations and sounds!

[Megan]

Different animals crawl, creep, fly and burrow to get to their Grandma's house.

[Reina Williams]

Rhythmic and prettily illustrated

[Sam]

SPOILER they are going to grandmas. Lol.

[Anna Lawrence]

Personal Reaction:
I liked this book because of the rhyming and the illustrations it had. The pages were very open with minimal text and detailed illustrations which are good for beginning-to-read books. I thought the color schemes used were very appropriate because it was based in the wild and there was a lot of blues and greens. I really liked how the illustrations brought the text to life because they really connected and the illustrator did a fantastic job making the illustrations lifelike and look like they were moving a doing the actions that the text read, for example, the snakes were slithering around on branches and the text read "Slither-slee, Slithery slee." It was a very simple book which is ideal for beginner readers.

Purposes/Use in the Classroom
Read aloud to make a curricular connection
-This book could be used in a classroom to teach about different kinds of animals and what movements they make and the environment in which they live.
-It can also be used to talk about making friends of all different shapes and sizes because at the end of the book all of the animals come together and are hopping, slithering, digging, and running around each other as they all go to their grandmother's house!

Independent reading
-This book would be read in about kindergarten because it is a beginner book
-Students can read this book to learn about different animals and what they do to move and get around. They can compare the animal's movements with their own movements, like walking.

For narrative
-This book could be used to teach students about the importance of illustrations in picture books. For this book, the illustrator used diagonal lines to demonstrate action and movement of all the animals going to their grandmother's house. They could use this book to compare to other books that use horizontal lines to demonstrate repose and peace, and other books that use vertical lines to demonstrate stability.

Other as Appropriate: onomatopoeia
-This book could also teach students about what an onomatopoeia is. It describes the snakes slithering, the frogs hopping (hop! hop!), and mice tip-toeing.
-A lesson could be created after this book and students could try to come up with other onomatopoeias

[Ciara Plackett]

Personal Reaction:
This is a simple story for beginning readers with a very simple plot about animals. I like it because it has a lot of alliteration, onomatopoeia, and rhyming that help make the story easy and fun to read. The illustrations are beautiful and full of color.

Purpose:
Read Aloud:
Good read aloud for PK-K aged children when talking about animals, animals sounds, alliteration, rhyming or onomatopoeia. It would be a fun book to read aloud because you there is room for a lot of excitement and voice variation. It would also be a good book to get children involved in making the sounds with you. This book is about animals and how the travel. For example, birds fly and frogs hop.

Independent Reading:
Good book to keep in a PK-K classroom. There are very few words per page and they are large. The pictures go hand in hand with the words so the kids could guess what the book is saying based on the illustrations. Words are easy to sound out.

Literary Elements:
This is a good book for teaching onomatopoeia, alliteration and rhyming. The book contains all of these things and it would be a good introduction to these elements.

[Nancy O'Toole]

Yolen, Jane. Off We Go! Little, Brown and Company: New York, 1999. Print.
In this story, several animals are traveling to their grandma's house in their own unique way. Partway during their trips, they all meet up and travel together. Off We Go! is a simple story beautifully illustrated with large water color paintings that go from one page to another. The animals, initially presented in pairs, are illustrated with a great feeling of moment. You can almost see the frogs leaping off the pages. The colors in the paintings do a great job of imitating those found in nature. The story itself is written rhyme, and in a catchy rhythm that will be sure to stick in kid's heads. The book uses fun, active words to describe the movement of the animals, such as “hippity hop,” and “scrachity scratch” that young children are sure to love.
Recommended for- Preschool
Notes- This story would make a great storytime based on animals. Children may want to imitate the movements of the animals

[Erin]

Off We Go! follows several familiar animals (including snakes and spiders) on a lively jaunt through their natural surroundings. Bouncy, rhyming verse is complimented by charming, soft watercolors of each animal as they make their way to Grandma’s house. The story introduces each animal one by one making reference to each one’s habitat and their sounds, such as the frog goes “hip-hop, hippity hop, through the slime and over the slop.” Finally, the book concludes with each respective sound followed by the next as all the animals join together on their journey. The watercolor illustrations are soft and charming, portraying the animals as life-like with an added sparkle of pure enjoyment in their eyes. An excellent pick for story times, children will especially enjoy the repetitive onomatopoeic verse and jubilant rhythm and rhyme.

[Kelli McKenna]

Off We Go written by Jane Yolen was an entertaining read. What I like most about it was the format of the story which included short paragraphs of just a few lines and at the end of some of the sentences the last word rhymed which gave the story a nice flow and made it an easy read. The artwork throughout the story was also beautiful and added to the read, with dazzling light water colors that blended nicely together and a variety of different animals on each page. I would read this story to a classroom of kindergarteners because it was an easy read with simple and short vocabulary words. The students would also really enjoy the rhyming throughout the story and the pictures included.

[Eileen Carter]

This is a sweet story that will delight beginning readers. The animals are delightful which will keep the attention of young readers. As a teacher there are is a lot of alliteration, onomatopoeia, and rhyming that help make the story easy and fun to read. The illustrations are so full of color and life.
As a teacher I believe that depending on the children's level of comfort with reading you could use it as a read aloud, or independent reading, but most certainly as a paired reading with a friend.

[Phoebe]

Tonight's bedtime story and still a hit with the 4-year-olds. (I originally borrowed it along with a small stack of others to bring on our camping trip last weekend.) They liked it and afterward enjoyed talking about visiting their grandmas' houses, just like the animals. Great as a library book or a gift for young'uns who visit grandma and think it's special. Helps if the kid likes animals too.

Format: Hardcover, Rodeo Library

[June]

Unfortunately, the picture book version of this book seem to have disappeared from my system. However, even in board book form this was very well received today. One by one various creatures go off to visit Grandma's. 9/5/12

Well received in Lap Time again. I think I had one grandma who really liked it. 9/4/13

Used again. 9/2/14

Used in Baby/Toddler, maybe a little long in that the program just changed from Little Tots to Baby/Toddler and most were babies.

[Drew Graham]

Baby creatures are all leaving their woodland homes and headed to their respective grandmothers.

We like Jane Yolen's How Do Dinosaurs work, so this was something different and fun from her. The wordplay is fun and the illustrations are really charming and lifelike but also just stylized enough. There was a lot going on but not so much that you can't take it all in, and it has a nice settled ending.

[Alnora]

This book was cute, but not my favorite. I felt like it wasn't exciting enough. It felt a little dull. However, it does have elements of repetition that are useful to children at young ages. It can be useful to teach about adult and baby animals. It'd be fun to have students write a similar book using other animals and having them learn the proper names for different baby animals.

[Barbara]

I love Jane Yolen's poetry here. The sing-song pattern of the verse makes a great choice for story times. I think you could clearly make up your own tune for the poetry or the kids might enjoy creating sound effects while you are reading. There are many ways you could present this book, including as a flannelboard.

[Liz Todd]

I think Grandmas would like this book! I wonder why Jane Yolen didn't use the title to market it toward Grandmas.

Cute, sing-songy. Perfect for preschool. I'd love to have a bunch of preschoolers act out the motions!

[Austin]

Kind of boring book about several different animals and how they get to grandma's house.

[Tina]

Theme: Animal homes/rhyming
Summary: A story about animals who leave their home and sing on their way to visit grandma's.

[Marilyn]

My absolute favorite grandmother book. Lovely illustrations and rhyming text.

[Samantha Penrose]

Mouse tip-toes, frog hip-hops, mole digs-deep, snake slither-slees, duck scritch-scratches, and spider creep-crawls (to Grandma's house).
I wanted to like this--I just didnt.

[Ta'Mera]

This book has a really fun play on words. I think that it would be a fun way to teach word ending and even making up their own words.