Baby book review: What John Marco Saw by Annie Barrows, illustrated by Nancy Lemon

Baby librarian Tilly and her mum Jen review the delightful picture book What John Marco Saw by Annie Barrows, illustrated by Nancy Lemon.

Tilly reviews What John Marco Saw

I relate so much to this book. This book is about a boy, John Marco, who notices all these fascinating things, like fossils and cats and grasshoppers, and A TREE FALLING DOWN. And he tries to tell grown-ups about what he sees and none of them pay attention to him. This is basically my life. I saw a spider in the kitchen last week and I kept telling Mummy and Daddy about it and I pulled them over to it and pointed and SAID ‘Spider!’ and they just kept saying there was no spider. It took THREE DAYS for Mummy to see the spider. Honestly. Grown-ups are so bad at noticing things.

Jen reviews What John Marco Saw

Okay, in my defence, the spider Tilly kept pointing at was very, very small. And it wasn’t in the track of the door as I thought but kind of hovering next to the blinds. I saw it *eventually*. This book is a great tribute to small children and their powers of observation — they really are very good at noticing things in their world. And sometimes (often) grown-ups are really quite bad at properly listening to them and observing the world in the same way.  A good reminder for us to look up, and down, and pay attention when little voices ask us to.

Leave a Reply