About the Holiday
Do you have a knack for guessing right answers? Then today is your day! Conjured up by Jim Barber to celebrate hunches, surmises, estimates, and other forms of speculation, today is the perfect time to put your powers of deduction to work. Enjoy the day with games of chance, shell games, card tricks, guessing competitions, or friendly wagers. Just don’t guess on your taxes!
Guess Who, Haiku
Written by Deanna Caswell | Illustrated by Bob Shea
Down on the farm the animals are playing games and they invite readers to join in the fun! Combining poetry with a guessing game, this cute book introduces younger children to haiku. On each page an animal presents a riddle about another animal in the form of a haiku. When readers turn the page, they discover the answer to the riddle as well as another one to solve.
Image copyright Bob Shea, text copyright Deanna Caswell. Courtesy of Harry N. Abrams Books
As morning dawns the first haiku reveals: “new day on the farm / muffled mooing announces / a fresh pail of milk”. Then kids are asked, “Can you guess who from this haiku?” Flipping the page, kids see a smiling cow who in turn has a haiku for them: “flower visitors / busy buzzing in the field / black and yellow stripes”.
Other animals familiar to kids—a horse, bird, fish, mouse, cat, dog, and this guy: “from a lily pad / keen eyes spy a careless fly / a sticky tongue—SNAP!”— also puzzle over each other from page to page. The final haiku describes an animal like no other: “two hands hold a book / guessing animals’ puzzles / written in haiku”. Who can it be? Kids will giggle and beam when they discover that they too are in the book!
Image copyright Bob Shea, text copyright Deanna Caswell. Courtesy of Harry N. Abrams Books
Deanna Caswell’s Guess Who, Haiku is a fun way to get kids interacting with poetry and the very accessible haiku form. Her clever riddles contain lovely images and lyrical alliteration that make these poems as enjoyable to read as they are to hear.
Bob Shea’s animals are adorably illustrated on vibrant solid-colored backgrounds, and each haiku is accompanied by an image that helps kids guess the answer to the riddle. The text and illustrations work together to make Guess Who, Haiku a wonderful way to spend time with kids—who, after reading, may want to make up some poems of their own!
Ages 3 – 6
Harry N. Abrams, 2016 | ISBN 978-1419718892
Check out a gallery of work by Bob Shea on his website!
Take a Wild Guess Day Activity
Match Up the Animals! Game
Test your powers of memory—or your ability to guess correctly—with this Animal Pairs matching game!
Supplies
- Printable Match Up the Animals! Cards
- Colored pencils, markers, or crayons
- Scissors
Directions
- Print the Animal Pairs Cards, print two pages to have double cards. To make the game more difficult print 3 or more pages to find 3 or more groups of matching animals
- Color the cards
- Cut out the cards
- Lay the cards face down on a table in random order
- Turn over cards to look for matching pairs
- When you find a matching pair leave the cards face up
- Continue playing until you find all the matching animal pairs or groups
Picture Book Review
celebratepicturebooks.com 