Welcome to the World by Julia Donaldson and Helen Oxenbury

 

This book consists of a series of lines that begin with "Welcome to the ..."

"Welcome to the world. Welcome to the light. Welcome to the day. Welcome to the night.

"Welcome to the cows. Welcome to the sheep. Welcome to the lullabies that send you off to sleep."

This book should be on your baby gift list. I plan to gift my copy to a little baby boy who will visit Australia next month. The grandparents will set up a nursery for his on month visit and his great Aunt would like to add some books to the shelves for the parents to read each day. 

Julia Donaldson says: I got the idea for this book when I was doing a signing after a show and someone asked me to write “Welcome to the World” inside a book. I have so many memories of my own children’s first year of life, and now that I have grandchildren I’m once more sharing the delight that infants take in the world around them, from familiar faces, necklaces and wooden spoons to rides in the supermarket and feeding the ducks. I’ve noticed that babies, and older children too, love seeing pictures of babies, and to my mind no one can draw babies better than Helen Oxenbury, whose warm-hearted and detailed illustrations so perfectly complement my text.

Julia Donaldson makes the art of writing picture books seem so effortless but I am certain this is far from the truth. Many picture book authors think they can emulate her rhyming style but if you read a book by Julia Donaldson and you read it aloud you will surely appreciate her tremendous skill with word placement and rhythm. 

Take a look at the wisdom expressed in this blog post about writing in verse.  Here are some key points:

• Writing rhyme requires skill
• Writing picture books requires skill
• You pick every word with consideration
• You keep all of the following in mind at every stage: plot, character, sense and logic, age appropriateness, commercial appeal, rhythm, timing, accent and pronunciation, syllables, stresses, emotional arcs, story beats, universality, originality, overall word count, word count per page, page turns, potential changes of scene in the illustrations

So by all means use Julia Donaldson as your role model but then realise that her skill is extraordinary and that she has been crafting truly special picture books for decades. She has written over 200 books. Likewise Helen Oxenbury has been creating her gentle and very recognisable illustrations for over 40 years. Read more about Helen Oxenbury's career here.  She is especially skilled with babies as we have seen previously in these books:

Helen Oxenbury and Julia Donaldson do have one other book created together: