I Spy Dad

Janeen Brian (author)

Chantal Stewart (illustrator)

New Frontier Publishing, Australia: 2009

ISBN: 9781921042171

Genre: picture book

Issues: differences, family

Shortlisted for the Speech Pathology Award.

'I spy with my little eye dads all starting with d. But can I find the one who's mine? I wonder where he'll be.'

A little girl is searching for her father and in the process finds 'a mowing dad, a rowing dad' and a 'snip-snap sewing dad' amongst many others. What is hers up to today?

Janette Brian has an excellent ear for rhythm and rhyme so the text flows easily; children will love the echoing sounds. Apart from the sheer fun of reading it aloud, caregivers can easily use the text to develop young children's awareness of sound families, leading to word recognition. Older toddlers will soon be chanting along from memory, an excellent step towards reading independently.

Chantal Stewart's delightful watercolour pencil illustrations are full of movement, energy and colour, with humorous overtones that underline the cheerful, positive nature of the story.

Great fun to read aloud or alone, I Spy Dad also has huge potential as a teaching tool. ESL teachers can use it to model verb use; it can be used in music activities to do with beat and rhythm; it could be dramatized for a class performance. Most importantly it can be used as a model for children to write their own I Spy stories, encouraging creative language use and vocabulary extension.

Highly recommended.