Did someone say tongue twister?
Have you ever had creativity give birth while out on a walk with your kiddo? The Black Beetle Bug emerged from such an occurrence. Liam, my four year old son bent down and inspected a black beetle bug crawling inside the crack of a sidewalk. I said to him, “Look at the black beetle bug,” again I said, “Black beetle bug, black beetle bug,” which took my mind to the line from the 1980’s movie, “Beetlejuice” where beetlejuice is repeated three times to break a spell – this is where I’m dating myself as an older mom. Instead, I came up with a tongue twister children’s book called, The Black Beetle Bug, because it’s just that cute to repeat.
If your kids have trouble enunciating, The Black Beetle Bug is perfect to draw them in and entice them to speak some of the more challenging sounds they’ll come across. For example, The Black Beetle Bug opens with the tongue twister… The speedy spider spun his web. The hardest tongue twister is… The tall tame tiger touched the tree. There are eight tongue twisters with eight syllables in each tongue twister that rhyme as they go.
The illustrations are bright, unique and drawn with colored pencil that give the pictures a visible texture.
Our friend the black beetle bug on the front cover is, to be completely cliché, cute as a bug. You’ll love that face.
-Author Kim Kailuweit