Rating: 
Summary: A favourite book
Review: After receiving it as a gift, this quickly became my one year old's favourite book. At almost three, he still loves it. I think his favourite parts are making the animal sounds and counting backwards (don't ask me why) while pointing to the numbers in the back of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I am a great fan of Graeme Base and have all of his books and have bought many more as presents for friends. The Watering Hole is a great story for kids to learn about animals - maybe strange animals that aren't in their country! Learn their sounds. I read it with my friends kids and we tried to imagine what the different animal sounds were in different lanaguages. You can always find a new way to enjoy the book. It also has an environmental theme, which many kids understand and like to talk about. A MUST buy!
Rating:
Summary: The most visually appealing book we own
Review: I bought two other books by this author (Sign of the Seahorse and the Worst Band in the Universe) for my two year olds library even though she is too young for them. I thought that I would have to wait until she was older to share this amazing author/artist with her. That is why I was particularly pleased to find this book. It is perfect for her. She just learned to count to ten and she enjoys counting all of the animals in this simple to follow story. The illustrations are breathtaking. In addition to teaching counting there is an environmental lesson learned as the animals drink all of the water up and the rain replaces it. I can't wait to pair this book with the see and say geography toy my daughter is getting for Christmas. I am going to show her the animals in the book and then demonstrate where they are found on the sea and say. I think it will make for an excellent geography lesson. This is a beautiful book, you will not be dissapointed!
Rating:
Summary: Just as fun as "Animalia"!
Review: I just discovered this book today and I was so excited about it. The intricate illustrations that fill the pages, the borders, and the dust jacket are wonderful. Base takes animals from all over the globe and places them at the same water hole, which disappears rapidly and then illustrates how the water will come back. A young child can actually feel the hole getting smaller because of a cut-out pond on every page that shrinks. The book is excellent for learning numbers as well. This book is destined to be a classic like "Animalia."
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book for kids about the environment
Review: I love this book. The illustrations are magnificent. My children and I have spent much time finding the animals hidden in the pictures. This book also provides a nice discussion point for the importance of water to sustain life. The reviewer that found this book simple is simply missing the mark! The text is simple but the illustrations provide so much information about significant changes to the environment. For example, in the early pages, there is an abundance of frogs. By the last pages, the frogs are gone. Three years ago my husband and I had a pond dug on our farm. We did this to create a better habitat for animals. Reading this book and discussing the changes around our pond over the last three years, have helped my daughter to understand the significance of water for all forms of life. I highly recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book for kids about the environment
Review: I love this book. The illustrations are magnificent. My children and I have spent much time finding the animals hidden in the pictures. This book also provides a nice discussion point for the importance of water to sustain life. The reviewer that found this book simple is simply missing the mark! The text is simple but the illustrations provide so much information about significant changes to the environment. For example, in the early pages, there is an abundance of frogs. By the last pages, the frogs are gone. Three years ago my husband and I had a pond dug on our farm. We did this to create a better habitat for animals. Reading this book and discussing the changes around our pond over the last three years, have helped my daughter to understand the significance of water for all forms of life. I highly recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: get the right one!
Review: I loved it! The art is spectacular and even adults will enjoy finding the hidden animals. Good for many age levels BUT I bought one for my grandaughter, but gave it to a good friend. When I went to buy another one, it had no hole in the pages! It is still a beautiful book but for younger readers, I would recomend the book with the actual hole in the pages.
Rating:
Summary: get the right one!
Review: I loved it! The art is spectacular and even adults will enjoy finding the hidden animals. Good for many age levels BUT I bought one for my grandaughter, but gave it to a good friend. When I went to buy another one, it had no hole in the pages! It is still a beautiful book but for younger readers, I would recomend the book with the actual hole in the pages.
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Summary: A Base work
Review: I'm gonna go out on a limb here and state for one and all that "The Water Hole" is Graeme Base's masterpiece. Certainly "Animalia" has it's followers, and there's the occasional "The Eleventh Hour" groupie, but by and large "The Water Hole" trumps them all. Here, author and illustrator Base has combined the gimmick book (a water hole is cut out of each page, growing smaller as each animal drinks from it), with the counting book (each page displays a larger number of animals), with the informative travelogue (each page appears somewhere new in the world with animals from that region), with the hidden surprise book (you can see tons of different animals hidden in each scene). It's as if Base sat down one day to draw the impossible and did so with a mere flick of the pen. The book is amazing. If you're unfamiliar with Graeme Base, allow me to sum him up. Here we have an illustrator able to draw animals that are undoubtedly not photo-realistic, but remarkably real looking. These creatures are both cartoony and lifelike. Colors imbue every scene to the point of wonder. Base also is adept at the tiny details that make up much of his work. Because a lot of the fun from this story comes from finding animals hidden within the trees, weeds, bamboo, etc. that surround the water hole, Base must be especially cunning to make them both obvious and yet a part of the landscape. And I haven't even mentioned the pictures that run along the frame of each water hole scene. For each two-page spread, the artist has provided black silhouettes around the border that display the animals you can find hidden in the pictures, as well as their names. Don't know what a gharial or a tapir is? You will. At the end of the book, Base provides each number and the part of the world it belongs to. These range from India and Africa to Europe and the Galapagos Islands. The book is, quite frankly, exhausting. I've summed it up, but there is always more to tell. I haven't mentioned the tree frogs that dot every scene or the sub-committee of ladybugs. You will simply have to read it yourself. The book deserves to be remembered as one of the most beautiful (and clever) counting books ever devised. My advice is to snap it up, post haste.
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Summary: A family favorite
Review: My son is just 18 months old. He recieved this book as a gift when he was born. He now loves it and we must read it every night. He doesn't care much about counting yet and I've yet to find all the animals in the pictures but he loves the bright pictures, the story, and most of the all the tigers. We love it so much I bought others by this author-all equally as good. My 12 year old nephew who is an excellent reader even enjoys some of this authors books. A must have for any young reader or older reader too!
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