My Dad and Me [Hardcover]

Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Author), Susan Mitchell (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2009 | Age Level: 4 and up

Follow fathers and their children on playful adventures.

When it's only my bàbà and me....
We pick shell from the sand,
And jump waves hand in hand.
We go sailing away
"IT'S SUMMER! HOORAY!"
When it's only my bàbà and me.

When it's only my bapa and me...
We celebrate every day,
And also each night...
My kiss says, "love you."
When it's only my bapa and me.

The tri-fold flaps in this book reveal fathers and children from around the world as they share special moments through every season. This book is perfect for Father's Day or any day of the year.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

First published as Only My Dad and Me (2003), this picture book has new illustrations and a modified text that slightly shifts the focus. Enhanced with appealing artwork and fold-out half pages, each double-page spread shows a man and his young son or daughter enjoying activities such as raking leaves, sledding, hiking, or camping. The rhyming verse on each spread offers a multicultural slant: the first father is called “dad,” the next “papi” (with the note papi means “dad” in Spanish), followed by aba (Hebrew), bábá (Mandarin), and bapa (Hindi). Since the settings and clothes look American, the families appear to be living here rather than in other countries. This picture book might be a good read-aloud choice for classrooms where children speak different languages at home. Also available is the companion book My Mom and Me (9781416958291), which has the same structure and uses the same languages. Preschool-Kindergarten. --Carolyn Phelan

About the Author

Alyssa Satin Capucilli is the award-winning creator and author of the Biscuit books from HarperCollins, which started out as I Can Read beginning readers and blossomed into a full book line with picture books, board books, and novelty formats. A dancer, as well as a writer, Alyssa lives with her family in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Susan Mitchell is originally from Scotland, where she studied drawing and painting at the Edinburgh College of Art. In 1993, she moved to Montreal, where now lives with her husband and son while working as a freelance commercial illustrator. (Susan has designedmore Christmas cards than Santa has whiskers.) She also illustrated Paula Deen's My First Cookbook.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 16 pages
• Publisher: Little Simon (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416958282
• ISBN-13: 978-1416958284
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #653,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alyssa Satin Capucilli is the author of the popular books about the little yellow puppy named Biscuit. She lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Mistakes in teaching only one word..., May 29, 2011

By 

bookaddict (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Dad and Me (Hardcover)

I saw these books (My Dad and Me, My Mom and Me) this weekend at a book fair. I was interested as my son and I are learning multiple languages, esp French (we are in Quebec) and Mandarin (he is adopted from China)... but noticed that both the "baba" in the Dad book and the "mama" in the Mom book in Mandarin are wrong. How can an author, editor and publisher all get such simple words, only one word per book in several languages, wrong? Yes it is baba in Mandarin, but it is the 4th, falling, tone on the 1st "a" and a neutral tone on the second, not the 2nd, rising tone on both "a"s in baba: "The rhyming verse on each spread offers a multicultural slant: the first father is called "dad," the next "papi" (with the note papi means "dad" in Spanish), followed by aba (Hebrew), bábá (Mandarin), and bapa (Hindi).

This is something so simple, so elementary, in every single "first Chinese words" book, textbook, dvd, cd for kids or adults. One can find it in seconds on google. I cannot imagine writing that and bothering to put the wrong accents (which make it a completely different word, with different meaning, like saying "the camel was in the desert" or "Don't desert me!"

bábá (Mandarin) isn't even a word in my chinese dictionary, though bá (Mandarin) itself can mean "pull out" "lift or raise" "capture" "trudge over mountains" "target" or "domineering/bossy"... it certainly never means dad or father.

It would be better to not bother putting out multilingual books if you can't get it right. This isn't a hard text, nor one word typo out of a whole dictionary. It is just "Dad" in a couple languages. Big fail. (and it is bad enough to get the dad book wrong, but the mom book as well?? Maybe they have "my dog and me" and write the dog word in mandarin wrong too?)

Why teach us incorrect words? Pay an author, an illustrator, an editor, a printer, to put out a book that has such blatant errors. I would never buy it or read it to my kid, as if the Mandarin is wrong, the chances are that the spanish, hebrew and hindi are also wrong, and I could be saying something horrid to someone in another language by using what this supposedly sweet kid's book is teaching us.