Baby Book Review – Tilly and the Rhinoceros

Children’s Story Book / Holiday Gift Idea 1 – Tilly and the Rhinoceros – Sheila White Samton

Children's storybook about Friendship

You can never really be sure which books your child will like.

Take my daughter, for example.  Among the dozen or so books we pick out from the library every few days,  she ends up picking out the strangest of them as her favorite.

Case in point : her current favorite. A book about a rhinoceros who loves to ask riddles and a goose that loves caring for others.

I had no idea she would like this book so much when we chose it at the library last week. ( I should have known – M picked it out herself!)

So, as always, we began putting all the books on her shelf, when we got home. And guess which book she picked out to read first?

I didn’t know what the book was about.   We tried to guess from the cover. And then we started reading.

As it turns out, it is one of the most delightful stories we have read.

Tilly the goose goes around bandaging the wounded and reading to the sick and making fluffy feather pillows and blankets to sell at the market. On one particular day, Gregor the rhinoceros lies stretched across the path, not allowing any of the traders to go to the market to sell their wares. There’s fox with his freshly baked cakes and sheep with her beautiful bouquets and all the other animals who simply want to go and sell their goods. But, Gregor has other plans.  He has decided that he will let the traders pass only if one of them answers his ridiculous riddle correctly.

Story about friendship

In desperation, the meek creatures offer their answers which provide the nasty looking Gregor with some hearty, belly laughs.

Days pass by and as the animals try to figure out a way to answer Rhino’s riddle and get to the market, there is one particular member of the community that has other worries on her mind. All Tilly the goose can think about is whether Rhino is cold and how she might make him comfortable, if he might need a new blanket or  a hat. With every trip Tilly makes to meet Gregor, the two get closer. It’s perhaps Gregor’s first experience with being treated with kindness and cared for so lovingly by a friend. To Tilly, it doesn’t matter that her products aren’t getting sold or that there’s no room to store them in her home. All that she cares about is that Gregor, her new pal, is warm and safe. And to Gregor, the whole experience is well…an eye opener.  He has never had someone be his friend. Even better, someone who gets his Hippopotamus jokes!

As this beautiful tale of friendship develops, something quite magical happens. And the riddle is solved, by none other than Tilly, who wasn’t even trying to answer it.

But, more important, Gregor has changed.  He has begun to care. He knows how it feels not to be nasty. And what it means to be a friend.  And together, Tilly the goose and Gregor the rhinoceros make the most helpful pair the neighborhood has ever seen.

I don’t know why M likes this book. We’ve read so many books about animals and friendship and being helpful and kind. But, what in particular, caught her attention and imagination in this book? I have no idea. Maybe it’s the riddle, around which the story develops. ( Which, by the way is her favorite thing to do these days – I warn friends and family who plan to stop by to be prepared to answer the question at our doorstep!) Maybe it’s the illustration or the names of the characters or just all of it combined.  The point is – there are days when I pick out a book assuming that it would make a great read for her and she’d rather watch the clouds than read the book.  And then there are books like this that capture a place in her heart in an instant, even before we’ve finished reading it the first time.

And that’s one of the things that makes reading with your kids so thrilling. Like every other aspect of parenting, there’s always a surprise in store. Something for you to discover together. Always an opportunity to learn about and from your baby. The one you think you’re going to teach a thing or two.

Have you ever been surprised when your baby took a fancy to the unlikeliest of books? I would love to hear about that!

Also,

Related activities to try with your child:

- Identify all the animals in the book.  Come up with names for them.
- Identify ‘boys’ and ‘girls’-
- Identify what each animal is selling
- Pretend play – you and your baby can be rhino and goose, while other family members take on the other roles. (This is M’s favorite)
- Come up with other silly riddles
- Come up with helpful things to do for others