Family Moment: The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Mary Finch and Roberta Arenson

A few years ago I wrote about sharing a favorite book with my niece Kensie at Three Billy Goats Gruff Toys and My Favorite Book Version. She still enjoys the story sometimes but her brother Clark has taken over biggest fan status. I wrote about my storytime adventures with him a little last week at Family Moment: The Three Little Rigs by David Gordon, but he also surprised me with this one--he actually surprised the entire family since his grandparents, Mom, and Uncle John were in the room, too, albeit mostly doing their own things.

This has been a standard in my book bag for years and particularly with Clark since about last summer when he was 2.5 years old. Again, we hadn't read it in several months and he has other versions in his home library, but not this one. He pulled out the book--The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Mary Finch (Author), Roberta Arenson (Illustrator)--and the Manhattan Toy finger puppets set that I have used for storytimes for about 15 years now. The text is perfect for reading aloud and the illustrations suit a larger audience sitting at your feet.

I especially love Finch's text for these lines which are quite fun to sing:

"I'm a troll, from a deep dark hole,
My belly's getting thinner,
I need to eat--and goat's a treat--
So I'll have you for my dinner."

Turns out, Clark does, too! I've read the book several times to him as I mentioned but not in a while. When we got to the Troll's "song" the first time in the book, suddenly Clark was reciting all of the words before I could.

Here's a page:

See, non threatening overall with playful colors although the troll is brown and mean, but not too mean.

In the finger puppet set, the middle goat is a sister, not a brother, which adds to the fun. And while the colors are muted in the page image above, the goat is actually a bright fuschia pink in the book edition I have. I don't know if that has changed in newer editions. So it's a fun version with a fun song that now Clark gets to sing without me when we share the book.