Customer Reviews

Beach Babies Wear Shades (An Urban Babies Wear Black Book)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...but the text just didn't do it for me or the kids ("Beach babies wear shades"; "Beach babies wave bye-bye"). It almost would have been better without any words at all.

The earlier Urban Babies Wear Black (An Urban Babies Wear Black Book) was popular at least with a certain demographic, but Beach Babies seems like a weak effort to capitalize on follow-up sales.

P.S. Is it possible to show Dads in a worse light? In the two panels showing fathers, they are either 1) reading the newspaper instead of playing with their baby, or 2) can't get back to the car fast enough while baby is still saying goodbye to the beach. Very bad examples of us Dads who actually get involved.

P.P.S. Women with poor self-esteem may not want to read this book. All the women portrayed appear to be six feet tall and weigh approximately ninety pounds. (And that's *after* giving birth! LOL)

I love Urban Babies Wear Black and Winter Babies Wear Layers, but I was a little disappointed by this book. The text and the play on words seem a little forced. I'm hoping they will come out with another book about summer babies.

Nice book for the beach. It is better than some in this series, but Winter Babies Wear Layers is still my favorite. Better than Country Babies. Not too many words to distract baby and easy to read over and over and over again.

This is such an adorable book - my daughter loves when I read it to her. The illustrations are so appealing and the text, although quite simple, is catchy and clever. If you have a beach baby like I do, get this book for her/his library!

This is another cute book in the Urban Babies Wear Black Series. It's so adorable. I took it to the beach with us and got some cute shots of my little girl on the beach with the book. It's a great size for little hands and a quick read with cute and fun words and illustrations. I love it!

Beach Babies Wear Shades is a simple, basic children's board book designed as a quick read to kid's who want some visual stimulation. This book is aimed at the two to five age group and it's a book that is short on words and big on pictures.

Beach Babies Wear Shades contains a total of eighteen pages with illustrations on one side of each pair of pages and a short, brief sentence on the other. This isn't much of a book based on words. Like many other board books aimed at the young toddler crowd, Beach Babies Wear Shades assumes that little children would rather enjoy drawings than listen to words. For the most part, this is true, and I'm pretty sure this is the main reason why Beach Babies Wear Shades has so few words. Adding everything together results in a grand total of approximately 41 words in the entire book. Each individual sentence makes a statement of action, like Beach Babies Nap Under the Sun, followed by an illustration of a baby engaged in that specific action.

The one redeeming quality of this book is its illustrations. Each one offers a rainbow of colors and each one is careful to depict a different type of child (different swim wear, different ethnic group, etc.) to make sure that no child feels left out. The drawings are not necessarily stunning works of art, but they do succeed in one important way: They stimulate a child's imagination. Kids who enjoy the beach will look at these illustrations and imagine they are right there, sitting in the warm sand, enjoying the sunshine, and gazing out over the water.

As far as the words go, they are too simplistic and lacking in creativity to add much to the book. There is no rhyming or rhythm and for this reason, most toddlers won't even hear them. Not only that, but the words are lacking in creativity. The only hint of creativity shows up on a set of pages that depicts a child riding the back of a swimming dog with the caption: Beach Babies Dog Paddle. That is about the extent of the creativity. Otherwise, the words could have been written by anyone- even someone with no creative ability who has never written a children's book before.

Overall, Beach Babies Wear Shades is an acceptable book to pass the time away. The words are lackluster, but the illustrations are good enough to grab the attention of most young children- especially those who enjoy the beach. My little girls find the book okay, but nothing special. However, the liberal use of multiple colors and the imagination- inducing scenes will get kids' minds moving; keeping them preoccupied while parents go about their day.

The books are small, only a couple pages. They're cute, but ... The biggest problem I have are the illustrations. They are adorable, no doubt, but the baby characters are somewhat distorted, and for a young child they almost don't even realize they are supposed to be babies. The cartoons look nothing like babies, especially to a toddler. My 17 month old has very little interest in the books. We bought Beach babies and Urban babies.