Book Review of Deb the Zeb! Her Birthday Surprise
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The Children’s Book Review
Deb the Zeb! Her Birthday Surprise
Written and illustrated by Jasmine Louisa Bungate
Ages 0+ | 36 Pages
Publisher: J L Bungate Creations (2023) | ISBN-13: 9780646875231
What to Expect: Friendship, birthdays, and animals
Deb the Zeb! Her Birthday Surprise is a fun and straightforward story with accessible rhyming text in an easy-to-read font, perfect for beginner readers.
It’s Deb the Zebra’s birthday, and all her friends are determined to get her the perfect birthday gift. But what should they get her? The lion thinks a comb for her mane would be best. The elephant suggests chocolate, the cheetah suggests tickets to the disco, and the alligator and giraffe each suggest something Deb can wear. In fact, all of the animals have different ideas. With so many ideas from so many friends, it’s difficult to know which one to choose. Which one will be best for a Zebra like Deb? The answer becomes clear when the animals work together!
Based on the author-illustrator’s real-life work painting a Zebra, the story is filled with colorful, textured illustrations of many different savannah and jungle animals, helping readers associate animals with the words that name them. At the same time, the story gently teaches important messages about working together, diversity, and considering the needs of others. An activity at the end encourages readers to reflect on their reading, helping to build strong literacy skills.
Deb the Zeb is a delightful animal story perfect for beginner readers.
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About the Author
Jasmine Louisa Bungate has always been fond of creating art, using many different types of mediums, since she was a young girl. Friends and family would always gift her with art supplies, and over time she accumulated lots of different things to create art with, including charcoal pencils, oil and water paints, and even calligraphy pens!
In her late teens, she was granted a scholarship at a multimedia college in NZ, and the world of digital art and design opened her eyes to what could be achieved with the likes of Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, and Dreamweaver. She was mostly attracted to the amazing power of Photoshop, and even though she did not pursue a career in this field, has never been without Photoshop on her personal computer since. She marvels at how incredible it is while creating the characters for her books, and while developing a way to illustrate throughout the earlier stages of her book-creating journey, she is now grateful that she can draw a quick concept down, scan it, and then see the character develop right before her eyes using such incredible tools.
Her characters sometimes take on a look that is different from what she visualized to begin with, but that just makes it even more enjoyable and magical for her. As for writing, she has always loved poetry, having written many poems in her younger years. She enjoys creating silly rhymes for kids’ books, letting her imagination run wild! (She is most inspired by Dr Suess and his quirky, non-sensical rhyming style!)
She feels blessed to have some time to create kid’s books at this stage of her life (alongside running a small, home-based business), and while she is not sure if she will create books for the rest of her days just yet, she definitely wants to have a good go at it and see where the journey takes her!
For more information, visit jlbungatecreations.com.
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