Johnny and some books

Photo taken in January

We own a little board book called Down By the Bay. The book looks like this. Apparently, there's some Raffi song by the same name, but I wouldn't know anything about that. No, nothing at all. Anyway, this book takes the words to the song and adds illustrations. Pretty simple concept. And the illustrator is a woman named Nadine Bernard Westcott.

Now, I am aware that NBW illustrates quite a few children's books, particularly books of this type--song lyrics or popular rhymes plus pictures. Last time I was at the library with the boys, I happened upon another of them. It's called The Lady with Alligator Purse. You can see the cover of the book here.

I saw the book, picked it up, and checked it out. But now we finally come to what this post is really about. Johnny, who is very familiar with Down by the Bay but hasn't read it in many weeks, looked at the cover of The Lady with the Alligator Purse for a few seconds--maybe two--and immediately said, "mom, you checked out another Down by the Bay book?"

In other words, people, my two-year-old son just recognized at a glance that this book has the same illustrator as another book he knows well. Ok, so he doesn't know what an illustrator is. He just knows that the two books' pictures are drawn in the same style. Not only did he recognize that, but he was able to verbalize it to me in a way that I understood perfectly.

I know, I know. He is almost three. So I shouldn't be too surprised.