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Summary
Summary
Anything can become a treasure if you have to hunt for it -- a toy rabbit, your pet cat, even a breakfast banana. For little Tilly, who loves treasure hunting, each day is full of wonderful discoveries, thanks to an inventive family who likes to play along. But bedtime brings the best hunt of all when Tilly turns the tables on Morn and Dad and makes them search for their own happily hidden treasure!
Allan Ahlberg's affectionate appreciation of family love and ritual finds the perfect match in Gillian Tyler's warm and delightfully detailed illustrations.
Author Notes
Allan Ahlberg was born in 1938 in South London, and grew up in the Black Country. He worked as a teacher, postman, grave digger, soldier and plumber's mate before he became a full-time writer.
He met his wife and creative partner, Janet at teacher training college. It was because Janet wanted to illustrate a book that Allan wrote his first book, the Brick Street boys. After that, together they wrote 37 books.
Janet died in 1994 and Ahlberg discontinued his writing career for a few years before picking it up again.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Ahlberg charms readers again as pigtailed Tilly and her family take turns hiding a banana, a toy rabbit, and even themselves for a series of successful searches. At bedtime, the youngster turns the tables on her parents and gets cuddled when she's the treasure that is found. Easy text with repetition will suit young listeners. Tyler's watercolor and pen-and-ink paintings quaintly convey a contemporary family with old-fashioned essence. A few of the pictures are of one scene but most contain several pieces of spot art, a number of which are quite small.-Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The team behind The Snail House present a pigtailed toddler named Tilly who loves treasure hunts, and whose parents are only too happy to oblige. "Each morning Tilly's mom hides Tilly's breakfast banana somewhere in the kitchen. And Tilly hunts for it, and hunts for it... and finds it," begins the perfectly paced narrative. Tyler sets the scene with a framed view of the kitchen, then traces Tilly's search with spot watercolors that dance around the text, as Tilly looks first in the cookie jar, then the refrigerator, and finally locates "My treasure!" in the laundry basket. The artist links one search with the next, as Tilly's dad holds her rabbit at the breakfast table, then after breakfast hides the rabbit in the garage. On the spread where she finds the toy rabbit, Tilly watches her cat disappear through the cat door, leading into the next snow-covered spread and a search for her feline. Tyler's watercolors convey a toddler both winsome and authentically single-minded in her determination (as when Tilly looks for a stuffed toy inside the opening of a hose nozzle), and the effervescent vignettes convey a keen sense of humor. At bedtime, when Mom and Dad carry out the climactic "search" for Tilly, they clearly enjoy feigning bewilderment (Dad looks for his daughter inside a pot, while Mom stands on a kitchen chair, surveying the area with binoculars). The wrap-up hits just the right note. Ages 3-6. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Preschool) For a toddler named Tilly, who "loves treasure hunting," an ordinary banana can be a joyous discovery. Luckily, her parents realize this and make her day into a continuous game of search-and-find. Someone is always looking for something in this delicately and attentively drawn household, and not just because the family exhibits the happy disorganization that comes from having a young child around. Ahlberg's unhurried text reflects the comfortable rhythm of Tilly's life. After locating her breakfast banana in the laundry basket ("'My treasure!' cries Tilly. And she eats it up"), she wanders into the garage to look for her stuffed rabbit, which Dad has hidden in his toolbox. Circling the page are small portraits of Tilly peering into the nozzle of a garden hose and checking under overturned flower pots. On her birthday, she tracks down the five chocolate coins Grandma has hidden about the house; on a snowy day, she undertakes the special challenge of finding her white cat in the white yard. Readers have the dual pleasure of hunting along with Tilly and basking in the warmth of her parents' love for her. The book ends with a glowing reiteration of the latter. When Tilly hides herself, Mom and Dad make a great show of searching the house from top to bottom until they find their "treasure" and "cuddle her up." (Preschool)In this second rebus book from Banks and Bogacki, icons take the place of one or two words in each sentence of the narrative and are defined in a picture-glossary at the bottom of the page. The text is scattered in segments across the illustrations on each spread and can be difficult to follow. That said, the story is sweet and funny, and the softly colored paintings are simply beautiful. A little turtle is afraid to cross the river for the tasty reeds on the other side because of the big hippopotamus in the middle. Her unsuccessful attempts to fly across like the birds, hop like the grasshoppers, and blow like the dandelions eventually land her smack on the back of the hippopotamus, who opens his big, wide mouth and...offers her his friendship. Young viewers will recognize early that the gently rounded, big-eyed (and blue) hippopotamus is as friendly as the smaller animals that the turtle meets. Children eager to participate in the story may join in to say the pictured words, as long as a rehearsed reader can lead them through the winding text with an accurate finger. But pairs who tire of the effort will be just as happy sharing the book in the traditional way. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Ahlberg and Tyler (Snail House, 2001) celebrate the playful games that deepen family ties; each morning brings a succession of treasure hunts, as Tilly's mother hides her breakfast banana in the kitchen, her father hides her sock rabbit in the garage-and where has the cat gone off? Even grandma gets into the game, hiding chocolate coins on Tilly's birthday. Tilly crows with pleasure each time she finds another "treasure," and turns the tables at bedtime, as her fond parents hunt high and low before "finding" her behind the curtains. Tyler's small domestic scenes are rendered in such pale colors and fine, sketchy detail that even though the hidden objects (and the chubby post-toddler) are always in plain sight, viewers too will have to hunt for them. A cozy companion for such similar explorations of family ritual as Ezra Jack Keats's Peter's Chair (1967) and Vera Williams's "More, More, More," Said the Baby (1990). (Picture book. 3-5)
Booklist Review
Ages 2-5. Toddler Tilly loves to hunt for treasure, and her family obliges by hiding things for her to find. Not the sort of things that pirates bury, of course, but everyday things that small children like Tilly love: things to eat--like a breakfast banana; things to cuddle--like a toy rabbit. The episodic story follows Tilly as she searches for--and finds--a variety of such «treasures» until it's bedtime, when she turns the tables on her doting parents by hiding herself, a living treasure waiting to be discovered and hugged. Ahlberg's reassuring story is enriched by Tyler's cheerfully cluttered watercolor pictures, many of them vignettes that are sprinkled, rebuslike, among the words of the text. This jolly English import makes a great bedtime read; it's bound to delight small children as well as their parents. Michael Cart.