Title: Silly Lilly
Author: Ariel Patten
Publisher: Xlibris
ISBN: 978-1-7960-9710-8
Genre: Illustrated Children’s Book
Pages: 24
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review
With more pictures than words, author Ariel Patten, along with her illustrator Rumar Yongco, have put together a quintessential illustrated children’s bedtime story, ideal for casting children off to sleep.
In Silly Lilly, we are taken into the life of Lilly, a young girl who likes to do silly things. She dances and twirls like a ballerina, unfortunately getting dizzy and falling into her mother’s flowers. “Silly Lilly,” quotes the author summarizing up those actions. Then she likes to ride her horse, being supervised by an adult, of course. She builds a play tower of blocks, but is saddened when it falls down, wishing to have put a crown on it. She bakes a cake, but realizes it is fake. “Silly Lilly” is said at the end of these awkward sequence of events, to make Lilly feel better and shrug off the misfortune.
In all these instances, readers are engulfed into artistically drawn illustrations, heightening the key points of the poetic storyline. The details of the illustrations are geared to the visual keys a child’s eye and mind will imprint, and the book’s text follows a rhyme and beat of a loving narration with a maternal written voice. The combination of the words and illustrations make Silly Lilly a memorable children’s book. Less is more, and the simplicity of this book heightens the comprehension for those younger toddlers to be read this story at bedtime.
As Lilly drifts off to sleep, her dreams take on the activities of the day; with dancing, a tower of rocks with a crown, horseback riding and of course the cake – strawberry to go along with Lilly’s red hair. It teaches children by example not to be dismayed by frustrating consequences of their playful behavior, and to simply shrug it off as being silly – as Lilly does. But in one’s dreams, everything comes out fine; dancers do not fall into flowerbeds, and cakes taste yummy.
Silly Lilly is sure to be a favorite among children when choosing a book for their mother to read to them at bedtime. Readers and those being read this story will all appreciate the antics of this cute and funny Lilly, as she does silly things throughout the day and then drifts off to an angelic dreamland.
