Persuasion: A BabyLit® Colors Primer by Jennifer Adams, Art by Alison Oliver (Austenprose PR Book Tour and Giveaway)

Do you like classics that are reformatted for children?  I was a great fan of Children’s Illustrated Classics growing up.  They gave me a taste for the stories that I later read in entirety as a teen and as an adult.

When my daughter was younger, we read and enjoyed Little Miss Austen Emma: An Emotions Primer and Little Miss Austen Pride & Prejudice:  A Counting Primer both by Jennifer Adams and illustrated by Alison Oliver.  I would give her a review of the general story and how it related to the book.  She really enjoyed it. My daughter is older now, but I thought it would be fun to review Persuasion: A BabyLit® Colors Primer by Jennifer Adams, Art by Alison Oliver

Persuasion: A BabyLit® Colors Primer has beautiful illustrations and is formatted as a board book.  The illustrations and colors focus on characters and objects from the original story.  The colors are more sophisticated as compared to other children’s books about color with sage, navy, ivory, mauve, chestnut, umber, gray, scarlet, and periwinkle as the colors in this board book.  I myself learned what color umber is with this book. If I was reading this one to my child, I would definitely be telling the story of Persuasion along with the pictures and colors.

Overall, the Persuasion: A BabyLit® Colors Primer is a fun book to learn about more unique colors for your future Austen loving child.  It is also a fun book for an Austen loving adult to read as well.

Book Source:  Review copy from @babylitjen @alisonoliverdesign @babylitbooks @austenprose as part of the Austenprose PR Book Tour. Thank-you!  Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

BOOK DESCRIPTION

The million-copy selling Classic BabyLit® series now has a new title to add to your toddler’s bookshelf.

BabyLit ® is a fashionable way to introduce your toddler to the world of classic literature. With clever, simple text by Jennifer Adams, paired with stylish design and illustrations by Allison Oliver, these books are a must for every savvy parent’s nursery library.

Persuasion: A Colors Primer exposes little ones to the world of Jane Austen through words and artwork that offer an awareness of the Regency era and the preferred color palette of the time period: beige, olive, navy, ivory, chestnut, lavender, umber, grey, scarlet, and periwinkle.

AUTHOR BIO

Jennifer Adams is the author of more than 60 books for children. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and Parents magazine. Jennifer has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she works weekends as a bookseller at The King's English Bookshop. Visit her website at jennifer-adams.com.

ILLUSTRATOR BIO

Alison Oliver is the author-illustrator of Moon and Sun, and the illustrator of 32 BabyLit board books. Alison lives in New York City, where she runs a creative studio called Sugar that focuses on design and illustration.

GIVEAWAY 

In celebration of the release of Persuasion: A BabyLit® Colors Primer, author Jennifer Adams, illustrator Alison Oliver, and their publisher BabyLit are generously offering a giveaway contest open to US residents.

Grand Prize Winner – 4 board books in the BabyLit series including Persuasion, Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, and Emma to one lucky winner.

To enter the giveaway, go to my Instagram Post at:

https://www.instagram.com/laurasreviews_1/p/DDPbNdQJ5lI/

Little Miss Austen Emma: An Emotions Primer by Jennifer Adams, Illustrated by Alison Oliver

Little Miss Austen Emma: An Emotions Primer is a beautifully illustrated board book that explains the emotions of the main characters of Emma by Jane Austen.  My four year old daughter Penelope was captivated by the bright pictures and as an Austen lover, I was entertained by the emotions assigned to each character.  

After we read the book through once, I read the book again with Penelope and explained why each character had that emotion and gave the back story.  Penelope thought the entire abbreviated tale of Emma was intriguing.  She is a future Austen fan in the making.  My 9 and 7 year old sons were impressed that I knew the backstory and thought I was a genius for randomly knowing it.  Little do they know I’ve been Austen obsessed for over twenty years.

I think everyone’s favorite page was “Mr. Elton is Angry.”  Penelope was quit distressed that he was angry because Emma had refused to marry him.  This led to an interesting train of thought for Penelope, “Did you ever refuse to marry someone Mommy?” 

My other favorite page was “Frank Churchill is Amused.”  That perfectly sums up Frank Churchill.

Overall, Little Miss Austen Emma:  An Emotions Primer is a great first book for your future Austen loving child, and it is also so entertaining for the Austen loving adult.  Penelope my four year old enjoyed the book a lot, and as she learns to read this year, this will probably be one of the first books she reads as well.

Book Source:  I received this book from the publisher Gibbs Smith for Review – Thanks!

Little Miss Austen Pride & Prejudice: A Counting Primer by Jennifer Adams, Illustrated by Alison Oliver

 I’ve seen reviews of this cute children’s counting book of Pride and Prejudice over the past two years and decided it was high time I checked it out for myself as part of the Pride and Prejudice Bicentenary Challenge.  I got a copy from our local library through inter-library loan and read it a couple nights ago to my two-year old daughter, Penelope.

Penelope and I both enjoyed the beautiful illustrations in the book.  Penelope likes to count and we had a fun time reading through the book and counting.  Her favorite page was the “6 Horses.”  She liked the colors and counted the page a couple of times.

The first half of the book is very Pride and Prejudice specific with such pages as “2 Rich Gentlemen” and “4 Marriage Proposals.”  The second half is more general, but regency related with the “6 Horses” and “9 Fancy Ball Gowns.”  The Pride and Prejudice references gave me a laugh, but did tend to befuddle Penelope a bit when it came to counting.  She liked the simple horse page, but was confused on the “1 English Village” page as it depicted a village with several houses.  To Penelope, there should have been one item.  She also got confused on the “10,000 pounds a year” page.  While I thought it was funny, she had a hard time counting as she wanted to count the red pound notes as well as the white.  Only the white equaled ten.

My seven-year old son Kile also listened to this book out of curiosity as well.  His favorite page was “4 marriage proposals.”  (Sorry for the flopped picture, I am having technical difficulties) He was flummoxed that someone would say no to a marriage proposal and really wanted to know why.  I tried to explain how Mr. Collins was unsuitable and Mr. Darcy was also not right at first, but he was befuddled.  Hopefully this does not lead to him not wanting to propose at a later stage in life!  If only there was a Pride and Prejudice for seven-year olds  . . .

Overall, Penelope said “This book is good,” which is a high praise from a girl who loves books.  I also enjoyed the book as well and will be checking out some other books in this “BabyLit” series. 

Book Source:  The Kewaunee Public Library