Hurry home, hedgehog! A bilingual book of sounds

Yang continues her series of English/Mandarin Chinese board books with the story of a hedgehog racing to get home before a storm. Her simplified gouache paintings picture the spiky brown hedgehog crawling over green fields covered with spiraling grasses, windblown cattails, and fallen autumn leaves, the storm providing ample opportunities for onomatopoeia: "Crack! Baroom! The sky sounds angry." Chinese characters appear alongside the English narration, and a pinyin translation at book's end allows readers to see how sound effects translate-some, like the "ping pang ping pang" of rain "fall[ing] hard like soybeans," sound nearly identical in both languages. Simultaneously available: Squirrel Round and Round: A Bilingual Book of Seasons. Ages 2-5. Agent: Deborah Warren, East/West Literary Agency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A little hedgehog hurries home in an effort to avoid a coming storm in this bilingual board book.A baby hedgehog is out rooting around for "good things to eat." Suddenly, storm clouds appear on the horizon, an owl hoots a warning, and soon the little critter is on the way home to Mama. The bottom half of each double-page spread is filled with beautiful, inky illustrations. The top half is further divided in two: the right side dedicated to English text and the left devoted to corresponding Mandarin Chinese (with the occasional exclamation point or question mark). Little ones will thrill at the hedgehog's ever-so-slightly perilous journey home, and older ones will enjoy figuring how the English words translate and vice versa. The hedgehog's flight introduces the vocabulary of the natural worldclouds, wind, pine conesas well as onomatopoeia and a fresh cultural reference: "Rain falls hard like soybeans." Stylized animals and flora have good, distinct outlines and are filled with bright but still-natural colors. The final pages of the book supply a helpful glossary of tones and the story reproduced in both characters and pinyin. A companion board book entitled Squirrel Round and Round publishes simultaneously.A sweet story with lovely illustrations to boot, developmentally pitch-perfect for older babies and toddlers. (Board book. 1-3) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.