How much trouble could one little bubble cause? A lot more than little Mable bargained for when her bubble encompassed and carried away her baby brother! The fun and imagination of this story is emphasized through the font weaving and wobbling over the page (much like a bubble might move in the wind) and a heavy dose of alliteration and rhymes. Lines like, "But she bellowed, 'Gracious, Greville!' and she groveled on the gravel, when the baby in the bubble bibble-bobbled overheard" are so fun to read and hear aloud! The story also builds on itself, returning to characters from earlier, which is a good exercise in memory. The pictures are mixed media, using patterned paper, crayon, colored pencil, watercolor, tissue paper, and even scrabble pieces! Relatively simple backgrounds also help little ones remained focused on the characters and words.
Your child may want to repeat the silly and rhyming words after you, and there are many new words to add to their vocabulary, like 'quibble', 'cavil', 'folly', 'cavorting', and 'nefarious'. There are also silly made-up words, like 'flum-a diddle', 'goggled', and 'catchwork'. You can teach your little one colors, prints, and shapes. (The multi-colored and multi-patterned birds toward the end of the story are particularly fun to see.) It would be easy to make a game out of having your child help you identify objects on each page, like the baby, fence, watering can, boots, book, flower, and many other words your three year-old may recognize. A subtle lesson about teamwork can also be stressed to your little one, for it takes the whole town to save Mabel's baby brother when he is carried off in a bubble.
My three year-old friend Sam was quite excited by the rhyming of the words and all the alliteration. It really helped me be more animated while I read the story. Sam also loves dogs, and cracked me up by noting on one page that a dog was going to the bathroom in the lower right corner. I guess I have to give him credit for paying close attention to the details!
--Audra
