Same Same by Marthe Jocelyn, illustrated by Tom Slaughter  (2009)

This deceptively simple book is excellent for vocabulary and world knowledge.  It’s also a natural for dialogic reading.  Each spread shows three items that are similar in some way.  The only text is “round things” (for apple, earth, and tambourine) or “things that make music” (for tambourine, guitar, and bird).  Like “tambourine” in this example, one item from the previous page is always repeated in the next group.  So besides naming the things in the pictures, and maybe talking about what they are, how they’re used, etc., you also see how items can fit in different groups.  A natural expansion is to name “other round things,” “other things that fly.”  Or maybe expand further by naming “things that are round and fly” and any other combinations.  Suggest this to parents as a fun way to build vocabulary and let them know that it also gives children practice in the early numeracy skill of “classification."

- Steven Engelfried