The Secret Birthday Message by Eric
Carle
Delightfully Delexical Idiomatic Directionals
It is Tims birthday. Instead of a package, Tim gets a mysterious letter --
written in code! Tim -- and the reader -- are off, following the clues. And at
the end of the treasure hunt is a wonderful birthday surprise!
Personal Review: The Secret Birthday Message by Eric Carle
Tim gets a message in code that will lead him to his birthday present. The
code contains shapes, and the shapes correlate with cutout pictures of
such things as the moon, a star, rocks, and a cave entrance. The cutout
pictures half reveal, half conceal the pages behind it, as we fellow the
code, a set of directional instructions: Below the star, behind the rock,
down the stairs, up and through... After finding Tim's gift, first a pair of
eyes but revealed to be a puppy, we are asked if we can find our way
back. A map on the final page shows a spatial layout of all the previous
instructions. At first I thought of this book as a single gimmick stretched,
inflated into a full text, but it is actually more clever than that. It is a fun
book that kids can quickly memorize and get the hang of, with the same
fertile and detailed illustrations you are familiar with if you've seen any of
Carle's books. But it is also challenging children to think through a set of
instructions, think sequentially and directionally, then have to shift sets and
run the sequence backwards. Good stuff, thanks Carle.

And who doesn't love a cute puppy?
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