The Parrot Tico Tango by Anna Witte

Parrot Tico Tango is a naughty bird!  He has his own mango, but as he soars through the jungle, he steals fruit from other animals.  There is the sloth’s lemon, the monkey’s fig, the snake’s cherry, the frog’s grapes and more.  Eventually, it gets to be too much to carry and he crashes.  Now Tico Tango is left with nothing, not even his own mango.  But the others offered him a slice of mango in exchange for him dancing the tango.  And dance he did!

This is a colorful book that merrily teaches colors and fruits along the way.  The rhyme is jazzy and great fun to read aloud.  The text is written in a cumulative style, so each new fruit is added to the list that is repeated with each new addition.  This adds a lot of style and emphasizes the greed of Tico Tango.  While the book teaches colors, what it would work best for in a classroom is a discussion of adjectives.  Each new fruit is talked about in detailed adjectives that are used in different sentence structures.  It would make a very approachable and fun lesson.

Witte’s art is bright and bold, a winning combination of collage and paint.  The animals themselves are bright colored, especially Tico Tango who lights up each page in his own rainbow of colors.  The fruit also adds a lot of color and then it all pops against the green of jungle and the varying colors of the sky.

This is a simple book that will be enjoyed by toddlers learning their colors on one level and then by elementary students learning adjectives on another.  Appropriate for ages 2-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Barefoot Books.