Raquel MacKay (text) and Armando Fonseca (illustrator), I Hear a Búho, Scribble, April 2024, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781761380495
I Hear a Búho is a picture book story of a mother and child listening to the sounds of the night and playing a game, with the child making animal calls and then revealing that it is her pretending to be the animal. Finally, they have a lovely surprise.
MacKay’s text follows a repeated pattern with short, punchy rhyming phrases. I love this type of repeated rhythmic story structure because I find that little ones engage well with the text’s predictability.
The text is also special for cleverly inserting Spanish words amongst the English, with images to match the Spanish word, making it an easy-to-understand bilingual story for English speakers. The last page has a useful English translation and Spanish pronunciation guide, for the text’s Spanish words.
Fonseca’s illustrations have interesting shapes and lines and textures with unusual mark making. I enjoyed the bold, bright, large images in striking colours, set against a background of a complimentary colour.
I recommend I Hear a Búho for 3-7 year olds, especially as a young child’s English / Spanish bilingual story.
Reviewed by Barbara Swartz
