Each Peach Pear Plum

Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Picture Book for children ages 2-6

5 out of 5 Stars

Readers will play the game ‘I spy’ while paging through this infusion of the most popular nursery rhymes into an all new nursery rhyme.

Each Peach Pear Plum is a fun story to read for people of all ages, but especially for very young children as they enjoy hearing the rhyming words of the text as well as searching for their favorite nursery rhyme characters in the illustrations. The reason why this book is so great is because of the interaction between the text and the playful cartoon like illustrations. The title page of this book captures the reader interest right away by stating, “In this book With your little eye Take a look And play ‘I spy’”. From the get go the reader is interacting with the story. This is important for young children to do as it gets them interested in books. Based on the experiences gained from playing a game within Each Peach Pear Plum children will be more interested in reading other books in the future, in hopes to get the same enjoyment from them, although it will be in a different way.

I would use Each Peach Pear Plum during any poetry unit. First of all, it describes many different familiar nursery rhymes all in one. Second, the whole book put together could be considered a poem itself. Because of these two observations, this book could be used as an introduction to a poetry unit or as an example of rhyming used in poetry. Also, teachers could use this as a frame of reference for an activity where they write a poem and then create a short picture book based on their poem. Lastly, this book is important to use with young students, as it shows them a different kind of book. Because this book asks the readers to play the game of “I spy” in it, the children will discover a new kind of aesthetic value in reading books, which will lead them to want to see what other books in the world have to offer, and this is an important thing that we want all teachers to do.

Scholastic and Bright Hub have their own fun ideas on how to incorporate this book into classrooms as well!