Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Jane Cabrera (review)

The familiar lyrics of the titular tune expand with original verses as they follow a cat and dog paddling a wooden rowboat down a winding river. Each spread features a stanza with an animal theme and accompanying sound effect; e.g., “Row, row, row your boat./ Splish! and Splash! and Splatter!/ If you see the monkeys swing,/ Don’t forget to chatter./ OO, OO, AH, AH!” The gimmick generally works, with plenty of jaunty rhyming and storytime participation built into the verses and a jovial cast of animal characters to carry the tune along. Cabrera’s signature acrylic paintings—thick, broad strokes applied heavily to textured paper—are jam-packed from edge to edge without a trace of white space; the backdrop highlights the vibrant flora of a jungle setting over the course of a day while the aqua-hued river meanders through each scene. Though the animals’ expressions incline toward the cartoonishly cutesy, there is plenty of usability here and a whole lot of kid appeal, particularly with the combination of sound effects and large-scaled, boldly hued illustrations that work well on a storytime carpet. The endpapers, which show the boat’s entire route from start to finish, are particularly handy for encouraging young listeners to make predictions, and the more musically inclined will appreciate the notation at the end of the tale.