Boynton's Greatest Hits: Volume 1/Blue Hat, Green Hat; A to Z; Moo, Baa, La La La!; Doggies (Boynton Board Books)

Price: $14.94 (as of 2014-01-13 - Details)

Artist Sandra Boynton has been charming adults for decades with her whimsical, animal-centric greeting cards and her droll sense of humor. When Boynton transferred her weirdly wonderful critters to board books for babies, she made publishing history. These short, hilarious books are perfectly suited to toddler tastes, with their small size, few words, cheerful colors, funny jokes, and silly animals. Blue Hat, Green Hat is all about getting dressed, and stars a very silly turkey who just doesn't get it. (Feet in the hat, pants on the head, etc.) His continuing refrain is "Oops." Moo, Baa, LA LA LA! investigates the sounds animals make, including pigs who sing. Doggies is "a counting and barking book" about the many sounds dogs can make, and A to Z frolics through the alphabet with amusing animal antics from an aardvark admiring to a zebra zigzagging.

Boynton's Greatest Hits: Volume 1/Blue Hat, Green Hat; A to Z; Moo, Baa, La La La!; Doggies (Boynton Board Books) Feature

Boynton's Greatest Hits: Volume II (The Going to Bed Book, Horns to Toes, Opposites, But Not the Hippopotamus)

Price: $14.43 (as of 2013-12-22 - Details)

The thinking's not fuzzy in these board books, but the animals certainly are. Sandra Boynton's familiar furry creatures introduce simple concepts in this bright collection of four books, replete with clever line drawings. In Horns and Toes and In Between, three horned monsters teach the parts of the body in rhyme: "...and we have a fuzzy TUMMY that we all like to pat / and a little BELLY BUTTON in the middle of that." The Going to Bed Book gets a Noah's Ark of animals organized for bed: "They hang their towels on the wall / and find pajamas, big and small." Opposites is just that: cute animals "high and low / fast and slow / heavy and light / day and night." In the rhyming reader But Not the Hippopotamus, a hippo finds himself on the outs as "a cat and two rats are trying on hats. / But not the hippopotamus. / A moose and a goose together have juice. / But not the hippopotamus." Rest assured the hippo finds love at the end.

Boynton's Greatest Hits: Volume II (The Going to Bed Book, Horns to Toes, Opposites, But Not the Hippopotamus) Feature