Busy Toes

by C.W. Bowie, Fred Willingham (Illustrator)

Tip-toe into the pages of this exquisitely illustrated book as we dig, squish, and splash our way to discover the many secrets and delights of our toes. A wonderful read-aloud book to be shared by the whole family

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens, Storytime

28 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2000

Reviews

[Reading_ Tamishly]

Totally my kind of weird book.

Love those photographic artstyle so much. It was like flipping through a photo album.

Love the diversity in the illustration.

Amazing!

[Neda]

I once saw a clip that a lady did everything with her toes as she had problems using her hands. At the beginning I thought it's a book for disabled people. But it is not so. It's just a creative collection of toes and their uses in different times and for different children in different ages.
Few words and lovely illustrations.

[Teresa]

This book allows children to think of the many ways our feet can be used aside from running and jumping. The illustrations in this book are phenomenal. Every curve, wrinkle, and vein in each pair of feet is drawn to the T. I gave this 4 stars for it's simplicity. It gives the reader a sense of fun and "I can do that" feeling.

This is good for a thematic unit on body parts. If you were to do different body part every day then this could be read on the "feet" day. Along with this book is C.W, Bowie's "Busy Fingers" It could be read on "hand" day. A good writing prompt to follow reading this book would be "What else can you do with your toes or your feet?" Because this book doesn't have an equivalent guided reading level it should mostly be used for reading time as a group or kept in the class library for leisure reading.

Grade:Pre K , Lexile: None , Guided Reading Level: Not Equivalent

[Mary]

Great book for self awareness and the things our body parts do for us. Fantastic illustrations. This is a good lap book for infants and toddlers. Small groups may enjoy taking off their shoes and looking at their toes.

[Kristin Fisher]

Cute, funny book about different things toes can done and be used for. This book has children of the Chinese, African American, and American cultures, making it a book that you could use to teach children about different cultures.

[Shannon]

I thought it was boring. Also, the illustrations showing kids' faces and the disjointed, floating feet were kind of creepy.

[J]

Lovely book that keeps toddlers' attention.

[Emma]

Reminds me of when I used to use my toes for everything.

[CharCharPinks]

Simple book that does so many things right, it should be on every kids shelf.

[Jamie]

This is a book about all of the wonderful things you can do with your toes. Babies and toddlers are usually fascinated with their toes at some point in their life. This book pays tribute to the incredible things babies and adults can do with their toes. You can rub doggy bellies with your toes, you can put miniature clothes on your toes, you can draw with your toes, and you can even make shadow puppets with your toes!
The illustrations are very realistic paintings. There are up close pictures of toes and pictures of toes from afar. Great detail has gone into painting the details of different skin features on feet.
The simple words in this book make it perfect to use as a poem in the middle of storytime. This would be best done without the book, and instead using your own toes to demonstrate the different things featured in the book. Young children will love the opportunity to play with their toes in storytime!

[Hana Sm.]

This is a picture book about little children–mostly minorities– playing with their toes. So yes, the book is all about toes but the title tells you that. The pictures are well drawn although there is a lot of brown used in the drawings. Here is a piece from the book..
"BIG TOES
little toes
Open toes
And closed toes
Waving toes
Tickling toes...

The entire book is like that (28 pages of script), showing children doing various poses & things with their toes.

I could use this book to teach a class the impact of DESCRIPTIVE words. I could hand them each a piece of paper & let them draw a particular thing. Then they would write words around the picture; the words would reflect several characteristics about that particular thing. For instance if a student drew a picture of a squirrel, they might write these words around the squirrel: Jerky Climb. Eats nuts. Furry.

[Lindsey]

Busy Toes by C.W. Bowie is a very simplistic book that tells us all of the things we can do with our toes; wiggle them, play with them, taste them, splash them, etc. Most of the children in the book are minorities. Yet the book is just about their toes. It doesn’t have any specific cultural agenda with the illustrations, but it shows the tots that every type of kid can do all kinds of things with their toes. They have the same body parts. Meaning this book is culturally neutral, but is exposing little kids to other kids that look like them, or different from them. The book is very simple in its theme, but the illustrations are very detailed. I think the illustrations would be what capture the attention of the little readers.

[Lindsay]

This is the Spanish version of Busy Toes. While it IS a bit weird to read a book that features toes and feet as the main players, this concept book shows the silly things you can do with toes, like putting little clothes on them and going fishing. I know it seems weird, but I used it for a class visit and a shoe- and feet-themed program for Spanish and bilingual story times, and the kids thought it was just too funny! I liked it because it focused on vocabulary and opposites in some parts, like big versus small toes and toes that are separate (as when you stretch them out) and toes that are together (touching).

[SARAH]

All kinds of toes: Big, little, open, closed, waving, tickling, doggy-tummy-rubbing, drawing, digging, hidden, testing, splashing, squishing,fishing, tippy, dancing, tasting, counting, pick-up, pushing, wearing teeny clothes (?), soapy, shadow, tired, tent, kissing, cuddling, loving, and goodnight. Some were a bit far-fetched. The book was a little long. Would have been cuter if they had just stuck to the reasonable toe-likenesses!

[Laneika Cason]

PB37. This was one of my son's favorite books when he was a tot and I enjoyed reading it to him. One may wonder what's the excitement of a book about toes...the pictures. The pictures of toes and kids playing with their toes are priceless.

[Tiff]

Beautiful simple picture book on babies toes. Toes are illustrated doing all sorts of fun activities. Great for story time for toddlers and babies. Texture of illustrations bring out the fun of different things toes can do. Diverse representations of children with multi-cultural backgrounds.

[Jessica]

Boston's current favorite

[Katie Fitzgerald]

Read at Baby/Toddler Lap Time on 4/6/12: http://storytimesecrets.blogspot.com/...

[Theresa]

Busy toes C.W. Bowie
preschool
parts of the body
movement
action
making connections

[Elizabeth]

Storytime kiddos loved these books today. (We did both of Bowie's books as part of our "Fingers to Toes" theme.)