Product Description

A madcap band of dancing, prancing monekys explain hands, fingers, and thumbsto beginning readers. Full color.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4071 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-20
• Released on: 1998-01-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Board book
• 24 pages

From the Inside Flap
Illus. in full color. A madcap band of dancing, prancing monkeys explain hands, fingers, and thumbs to beginning readers.  


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Fun Helping Your Child Learn to Read to a Syncopated Beat!
Researchers constantly find that reading to children is valuable in a variety of ways, not least of which are instilling a love of reading and improved reading skills. With better parent-child bonding from reading, your child will also be more emotionally secure and able to relate better to others. Intellectual performance will expand as well. Spending time together watching television fails as a substitute.

To help other parents apply this advice, as a parent of four I consulted an expert, our youngest child, and asked her to share with me her favorite books that were read to her as a young child. Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb was one of her picks.

What is most unusual about this early reader is that it adds a beat to make the material more memorable and fun. The story has monkeys using their hands to beat on various drums. All children will find themselves pounding on something to match the rhythm of the rhyme. "Rings on fingers. Rings on thumb. Drum drum, Drum drum, Drum drum drum." (By the way, for parents old enough to remember Ringo Starr, this does seem to be a satire on Ringo here.) That use of drumming adds a useful kinesthetic clue that will ingrain the material faster. Children start to learn to read by memorizing, and this book is unusually well designed to assist in that process.

But the main thing is that it is fun to read this book. You would have a smile on you face if you read it alone. The smile will broaden when you read with your child, in response to her or his pleasure in the book. That's a great gift for you, as well!

There are lots of jokes about musicians in here that you should enjoy. One of the beats is a play on the word "ditty" for a song. "Dum ditty, Dum ditty, Dum dum dum." Naturally, you can also read this as "Dumb song, Dumb song, Dumb dumb dumb." Your child will never know what you are laughing about.

After you have finished enjoying this very helpful and entertaining book, I suggest that you try your hand at writing and illustrating a similar one. One possible theme could be built around bees buzzing. This book alludes to humming, so you could work with that, as well.

Have many laughs, and be encouraged as a reading tutor!

NOT the book you know and love!
This is a nice enough board book, but be advised that it is NOT the full version of Dr. Seuss' book! They've left out several (charming!) pages of text and illustrations for the Board Book... What a disappointment to loyal fans, and how unfair to the newest generation of fans-to-be.

Our family's favorite book.
This is still our family's favorite book, after some 30 years. We had to search for it when grandson was born in 1999. Amazon's search under "monkey" actually turned it up, so we immediately sent it down to him in New Orleans. He prefers eating the book right now, but he's got the rhythm and loves the pictures. Every child would love this book. It grows on you, and excites your memory of reading. I recommend memorizing it (easy) and chanting it in the car, on a stroll, or on the pot. It's interactive in the best ways.