Ariel and Emily

April Kersey Picture #1
Ariel and Emily Written by: Adele Aron Greenspun and Joanie Schwarz
This endearing picture book follows two best friends on a play date sure to make any parent or youngster smile. You are first introduced to our best friends about 1 ½ years old named Ariel and Emily whose bright faces light up the dim pages with huge smiles and funny expressions. It’s shared with us that they are best friends and roam, discover, and entertain each other as well as themselves. You see pictures of them playing instruments, building blocks, and sharing snacks. This book also points out cause and effect when Emily blows bubbles and Ariel pops them or Ariel builds blocks and Emily crashes them. The book is very playful and shows friendship at its best especially at the end when playing hide-and-seek they make it known that finding each other is the best part of the game!
The picture book has an amazing theme of friendship that is very clear and abundant on every page. The scrapbook look of the pictures is created by little girls being photographed and then being placed in front of a scenic background which changes from page to page. In the first page it’s the woods in the back ground, the next is a field, and it keeps changing. The pictures also have a scrapbook boarder that clearly makes them distinctive from the page before. The pictures are also accompanied with short sentences on every page to state what the children are doing in the pictures. An example is the sentence “They share a squishy banana snack”, and the picture is the two friends laughing as they share a banana. I would defiantly recommend using this book with toddlers to show a great example of friendship and sharing. Some follow up questions you could ask the toddlers are “who’s you best friend” or “what do you like to do with your best friend”? I think the children would love to see pictures that they can relate to what with the children being young and doing activities that the readers (toddlers) do as well.