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Summary
Summary
Ideally suited to the board-book format, Here Are My Hands invites very young children to respond spontaneously and creatively as they learn the parts of the body. The rhyming text and bold illustrations do more than name the eyes, ears, nose, and toes. By featuring children of many different backgrounds, the book quietly celebrates the commonality of people around the world.
Author Notes
Children's writer Bill Martin, Jr. was born and raised in Hiawatha, Kansas. Ironically, the future early childhood educator had difficulty reading until he taught himself, before graduating with a teaching certificate from Emporia State University.
After graduation, he taught high school drama and journalism in Kansas. He served in the Army Air Force as a newspaper editor during World War II. He wrote his first book, The Little Squeegy Bug, for his brother, Bernard, an artist, to illustrate while recuperating from war wounds. It was published in 1945 and the brothers would go on to collaborate on 10 more books by 1955.
He earned a master's degree and doctorate in early childhood education from Northwestern University and became principal of an elementary school in Evanston, Ill., where he developed innovative reading programs. In 1962 Martin moved to New York City to become editor of the school division of Holt, Rhinehart and Winston where he developed the literature-based reading programs Sounds of Language and The Instant Readers.
Martin returned to full-time writing in 1972 and ended up writing over three hundred children's books during his career. His titles include; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear?, The Ghost-Eye Tree, Barn Dance, and Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom. He died on August 11, 2004 at the age of 88.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
PreS A delightfully simple book of rhymes about parts of the body: ``Here is my head /for thinking and knowing. /Here is my nose /for smelling and blowing.'' The book includes hands, feet, head, nose, eyes, ears, knees, neck, cheeks, teeth, arm, and finally the ``skin /that bundles me in.'' A colorful double-page picture of a child showing the part of the body featured accompanies each rhyme. These are expressive and simple, and include children of various races and both sexes. Even though the featured part is sometimes lost in the gutter of the book, this is an enjoyable offering that should find its way into toddler story hours, nursery schools, and many children's hands. Nancy A. Gifford, Schenectady County Public Lib . , N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
winning collaboration, which portrays assorted body parts and their uses. Ages 2-6. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A dozen suitably assorted five- or six-year-olds point out different parts of the body, each accompanied by half of a rhymed couplet: ""Here are my feet for stopping and going. Here is my head, for thinking and knowing."" A simple idea, at first glance, but carefully developed to suggest the dramas of childhood--the knees for falling (and skinning), the neck for turning (a game but apprehensive haircut recipient), the cheeks for kissing and blushing (a delicious Valentine of an Oriental face), the ears for washing--and, in the illustration, listening to a shell with deftly captured wonder. Rand's ebullient, exuberantly drawn kids fill the pages, almost life-size. On jacket and title page they're all lined up in a Chorus Line-like array--a perfectly organized arrangement that celebrates their humanity and individuality. With bright colors, simple but evocative illustrations and a clear, succinct text, this is just right for the youngest when they are learning to describe themselves. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 2-4. Sprawling across the pages, children representing a variety of ethnic backgrounds are chalked in strong strokes of subdued color. Hanging upside down, with her head filling the entire double-page spread, a young girl points to the body part that's for ``thinking and knowing,'' while a boy crouching within the illustration's confines tearfully shows a bandaged knee ``for falling down.'' A concluding sudsy spread features a bathing child whose skin ``bundles me in'' to punchily conclude the rhyme that skips through this slim volume cheerily identifying key parts of the human body. EM. Body, Human Fiction / Stories in rhyme [CIP] 86-25842
