The Way We Say Hello - Andrea Denish - ★★★★

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AUTHOR: Andrea Denish

ILLUSTRATOR: Bluebean
GENRE: Children's Picture Book
RATING: 4 stars.

A book about greetings from around the world, told from the perspective of a little girl who is getting ready to welcome a new sibling.

The content includes “Hellos” from a variety of countries and cultures, and wherever applicable, what the word implies. It also includes special hellos such as secret handshakes, sign language, and non-verbal greetings.

The book is written in simple rhyme that works well for the content. The vocabulary is right if you keep in mind that there will be words from different languages included.

I enjoyed the variety of words included. I also liked how this idea of saying ‘Hello’ was linked to the little girl wondering how her new sibling will greet her. There’s a special section at the end that provides some elaboration on a few of the greetings referred to in the book. This was really interesting to read.

What I felt could have been done better was to have some consistency in the detailing. In some cases, the name of the country is mentioned (Japan, Tibet), sometimes it is places (Texas, Guatapé, ‘Big Island’) Sometimes the culture gets a mention (Maori), and sometimes, there’s no mention of anything except the Hello-word itself (Bonjour, Namaste.) I would have liked for the locational references to be provided under each international greeting so that we know which culture/region they were from.

The illustrations are gorgeous, colourful and nicely indicative of the culture.

Overall, a sweet book though I am not really sure whom to recommend it to.

My thanks to Starry Forest Books and Edelweiss+ for the DRC of “The Way We Say Hello”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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