Caroline: A Mystery by Cornelius Medvei

This book is a work of fiction but is portrayed as a memoir about a man, just deceased, and his somewhat odd affections for a donkey called Caroline.

He meets the donkey whilst on holiday, buys it and takes it home where he spends all his time with her, even taking her to his workplace and teaching her chess, which the donkey always seems to win.

The text is interspersed with photos, article cut-outs and so on that the deceased man collated/wrote which supplement the story (or to get in the way of the story perhaps?).

For me the writing style was very formal (e.g. the man is known only as Mr. Shaw or Shaw) as if the story is less a story and more an outlining of facts. So it was a little hard to read, plus there wasn't much of a story to tell either. So I can't really recommend it. Instead you could try Pyg by Russell Potter, which is another memoir about a remarkable animal, written in a sort-of old-fashioned style, not totally dissimilar to the style of this book but easier to read, and a better story.

(I got this book for free to review through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

The Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

This meets the usual high standards of Julia Donaldson's and Axel Scheffler's previous collaborations.

The Highway Rat is a dastardly fiend. He steals all the passing animals' food. However we all know crime doesn't pay and as you'd expect he gets his comeuppance. Just like in The Gruffalo a quick thinking rodent is able to turn the tables on him. So there is a definite moral to the story, plus there are the usual high-quality pictures and rhymes to go with it.

Hard to fault really.

(I got this book to review through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Book and CD by Disney

My daughter said this book and CD was lovely.

If you've seen the film then you know what to expect here. I let my nearly 6-year-old daughter listen to the CD whilst reading the book. The CD has two tracks which run 15-minutes in total. The first track is the reading of the story and has chimes ringing for when the page in the book needs to be turned. Track two of the CD is the classic Hi Ho song.

And the voices of the characters are like the ones in the film.

The book is well laid out with nice full page pictures running through with pages of text next to them with plenty of white around the text so that it isn't too much.

The CD itself fits into the front cover of the book with a plastic covering holding it in, and the book is hardcover too. This means it isn't as flimsy as some other books that come with CDs where the CD holder gets ripped out by little hands.

Most of all I think this book is ideal for girls who are familiar with the Snow White film and are learning to read, so that they can give their parents some quiet time as they go off somewhere to listen to the CD and read the book.

Might have to get the other ones in the series now.

(I got this book for free to review through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Ellie's Magic Wish by Alice King and Kate Daubney

This is a cute little book for girls. Ellie the elephant has a wish to be a fairy. And so she rhymes through the book about all the fairy things she'd do.

My nearly 2-year-old likes the sparkly magic wand that Ellie has in every picture. She likes to feel the glitter on it. 

And there are lots of little fairies around in the pictures which gives you something extra to do in trying to find them all.

The drawings are good and pink-orientated. All-in-all a cute book for little girls.

(I got this book for free through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

What in God's Name by Simon Rich

This is a good book that I read with a smile on my face throughout. 

It’s about heaven which is an office, where the CEO is God, and the employees are angels. The main focus of the book is on the miracles department where Craig works. He welcomes new girl-angel Eliza who used to work in the prayers department. She then sees God in his office and takes exception to her previous prayers work not having been read. God sees her point of view and decides it is time for him to retire so he sets a date for the end of the world. Craig seeks a reversal of this decision and is given a lifeline because God agrees not to destroy Earth if Craig can answer a prayer within 30 days. Unfortunately of the possible prayers he has been given to answer most are out of date so they are stuck with one set of prayers where a girl and boy both want to get together with each other, except they are the two most awkward and shy people possible.

So the two angels set about working their mini-miracles to try and make this happen, but there are a lot of things still outside their control, as there are rules involved in what they can and can’t do. They watch events unfold on their computer screens, and it is quite interesting the juxtaposition of these two angels watching and commenting on the lame attempts of the humans trying to get together when they too are in a similar situation.

Just a word of warning though. The book is very Americanised with references to American sports like the NFL and NASCAR; then talk of the East Coast and the South etc. and also the language. This is most apparent at the beginning but does become less in the later part of the story. All us English readers will just have to muddle through these parts, but the reward is worth it.

(I got this book for free through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

My Big Photo Activity Book by Pascale Estellon

I asked my nearly-6-year-old whether she liked this book or not. She said yeah, I asked why, she said because she loves drawing. 

The book is big in size, and glossy with the pages having photos on them together with little ideas at the bottom of what the picture can be turned into, e.g. sponges turned into animals or bubbles of text to be filled in.

What’s more she can be left unsupervised as she follows the instructions on each page. And I reckon it must contain at least 10-hours worth of fun for her. Then at the end she will have a big book of her art. Plus it saves her drawing on all the office paper we have.

My one complaint though is that it seems some of the pages haven’t been translated from French into English so she was asking me what they meant. I guess this is a mistake that will be rectified if printed again (or maybe it has been rectified in other copies). Pretty big mistake (maybe the translator went on a break at that time) but never mind.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Play Jokes with Cheeky Monkey

The gimmick here is that you can put your hand through the back of the book to make monkey's mouth move like a puppet. The rest of the book isn't anything special. The story about monkey playing tricks on the other jungle animals before they play a trick on him isn't much cop, plus it is short, and doesn't even rhyme like a lot of books aimed at this age group do. The pictures are your standard fare - nice and colourful, a bit like the style of Squiglet from Get Squiggling on CBeebies - but on one side you have a massive hole and on the other you have the monkey mouth poking through so most of the page is already taken.

But my daughter (who's coming up to 2) does like the monkey mouth, either when it is trying to eat her, or when she controls it so I can't just dismiss the book completely. But a fluffy puppet would be better for that job methinks.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Muddle and Win by John Dickinson

Muddle and Win:

Muddle is Muddlespot, an ex-wart, ex-cleaner sent up from the depths of Pandemonium to try and do what so many others have failed to do before: infiltrate Sally Jones mind and make her do a bad deed for the first time in her life. Win is Windleberry, the angel sent down from heaven to try and keep Sally Jones on the straight and narrow. But who will win the Battle of Sally Jones? Well telling you would spoil the ending.

This book is full of ideas. The obvious one is the lifetime good deeds counter where each good deed and bad deed is counted up. But spreading out from that are so many more. Like the angels wearing Ray-Bans and tuxedos such as on the cover (the Ray-Bans are because angels’ eyes shine too much) - not your typical angel then! And that inside our brains are little versions of ourselves, together with a devil and an angel there to try and influence our actions. 

The ideas even spill out into the way the text is presented. For example some characters have different fonts, and when fights occur the words are put into spiky bubbles Batman-style.

Yes the ending is slightly below the quality of the rest of the book, maybe because it gets confusing a little when you have to keep switching between the big and small Sally Joneses, and because of all the new ideas coming into the narrative. Even so the ending is satisfying. 

If you liked this you might like The Traitors by Tom Becker which is another book aimed at the same age group brimming with good ideas.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Animal Counting by Petr Horacek

This is a hardback, big-sized book that takes you through the numbers 1-10. The pop-up element of the book is not your typical type of pop-up. This is because the pop-up doesn't happen when you open the page. Rather the pop-up is hidden under a flap on each page. This is actually good because it makes the pop-ups less rip-able by little hands (although still rip-able), and instead little hands can open the flaps, which obviously gets them more involved than similar number books of the non-pop-up kind.

The double-page spreads contain a picture of some animals, with the number of them being consistent with the corresponding number (1-10). These are painted to make them realistic. Then under the flap at the side of this is the pop-up number which is the animal in cartoon version contorting himself into the shape of the number. The pages also have text, e.g. one spotty giraffe.

My daughter is just learning her numbers now and she likes to lift those flaps so she can touch those pop-up bits, so maybe a bit of supervision will be required if you want the book to remain intact, plus once she has learnt her numbers the book will lose its usefulness.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Fool by Frederick G. Dillen

Fool is about a fool, or a fluffmeister. He is Barnaby Griswold and he has spent his life fluffing through deals, and doing alright in that it seems. Except this book sees him on worse times as he has got in trouble for his deals (short selling), is divorced, has no money, and is suspended from trading so is basically not doing anything (he has never had a proper job in 46 years of life).

So that is the plot pretty much although as Nancy Pearl (an American librarian who reads a lot) explains in her intro this novel is not about the plot as such, rather the way the book is written. Barnaby seems to be very reflective on life as he fluffs along. He reflects on tigers, his life, what would his dead father approve of etc. and his thoughts meander all over the place

Apart from that it is an American novel with an American librarian providing an introduction as well as a reader's guide at the end too for any book club people out there. But it wasn't quite an American version of Boris Johnson at all.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Enchanted Palace (Secret Kingdom) by Rosie Banks

This is an ideal book for little girls. It has everything they love. It has magic, unicorns, friends, fairies, rainbows (that you can slide on), mermaids, shiny stars on the cover, pink-edged pages, free gifts (if you send off the tokens).

The story sees the three friends, Ellie, Summer and Jasmine, find a magic box which takes them to the Secret Kingdom with Trixie the fairy and King Merry. They are there to help King Merry defeat the evil Queen Malice.

So a story of good versus evil that had my nearly 6-year-old gripped as I read it for bedtime stories over a few nights. The text is nice and big so that she could probably attempt to read it herself (although a lot of words altogether) and there are nice pictures to add to the story, all of them in black and white though.

The story itself is short and only part 1 of six (although it is self-contained), so from that aspect it is a little disappointing. It is designed to lead you to purchase the other books in the series, what with the token collecting for free gifts, the spines and the magic word competition at the end, but young girls will love it because of all that is contained within.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

365 Stories for Girls by Disney

So what you have here, in case you didn’t guess from the title, is 365 stories for girls. The stories are laid out one to a page. Each page has a date on the top so that the first story is Jan 1 and the last is Dec 31. This is good because it helps with teaching your child the calendar which is what I am doing. Also for some dates, like New Year’s Day, the story is appropriate to that day.

The rest of the page layout is the story with a little picture in the middle. The stories are for girls so mainly feature the Disney Princesses, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan, but also loads of other Disney characters. There are pros and cons to it all:

Pros:

• Each story is short.
• You don’t have to read every story if you are unfamiliar with the characters.
• You have your bedtime stories sorted for a whole year (if you can get by with just reading a short, no more than 5 minute story each day without your child wanting more).

Cons:

• Each story is short.
• Some of the stories don’t really get going (because they are so short) or seem to end at a weird place.
• Only one picture per story, and Disney is surely all about the visual images than the words.

For us the best stories were the ones where the story was part of a film we have seen. This was the case for The Princess and the Frog and Tangled for example.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

A is for Angelica by Iain Broome

This is a very sad novel about loneliness. It is told through the eyes of Gordon Kingdom who is in his 50s and who clearly has some sort of autism. Everything he does is very methodical and he takes everything literally.

One day Angelica moves in across the road from him and he opens a file "A is for Angelica" because he keeps written files on what his neighbours across the road get up to. It is some sort of therapy for him to help with his coming to terms with the state his wife is in - she's had a stroke and can do hardly anything. Gordon is sure that he can help her get better all on his own but things get worse. At the same time his dog dies and his best friend dies. So very sad, but at least there is Angelica across the road, who he sort of gets obsessed with.

And within the main narratice the back-story is filled in, the Gordon Kingdom memories of the good times when his wife was well - the times that can never be again.

The book reminded me a little of The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder in the way that the lead character takes meticulous notes, although this book was more melancholy.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

The Stick Man Activity Book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

My daughter chose this book because she had the main Stick Man book at school.

When it came in the post I was surprised to see that it was thicker than I expected. This is due in part to an embossed section which is a bit more reinforced than the rest with some push out pieces (postcards, a memory game etc.) but nevertheless there is still plenty else to do too. My daughter who is 5, nearly 6 has been getting stuck in completing some dot-to-dot puzzles featuring characters from the main Stick Man book, she has done some wordsearches, and a maze. We haven’t even started with the stickers, recipes (e.g. for a spider cake), colouring, making of the Stick Man bunting, the stick man bed, the postcards, but will I expect at some point soon.

On the negative though I suppose that some of the stuff can only be done once, like the dot-to-dots, although some of the activities can also be done again and again – the recipes for example, and the reusable sticker scenes. 

My 5-year-old recommends it.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

Wanted: The Perfect Pet by Fiona Roberton

This is a beautifully illustrated and beautifully written little book. There are three chapters: the first is where we meet the boy called Henry; the second is where we meet the duck, and the third is where they meet each other.

It’s funny. It has some great lines in it – “Woof” said the duck. The drawings are also funny. Seeing the duck’s house stuck high on a hill is funny the way it is drawn. And all the pictures use clean lines just like on the cover, and are all in colour although a limited pallet is used. Hence the pictures are not too complicated for what they are which adds to their beauty.

There are even extras to this book too. So you can read the story straight through, or you can read all the additional stuff, like the bits next to the advert in the newspaper that is relevant to the story, or all the plaques beneath all the pictures that are on the wall in one picture.

As a package it is beautiful, although short at about 10-minutes in length.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

The Prankster by James Polster

Prankster is about a prankster, Trager, from another planet who comes to Earth to play tricks on the humans. Like planting Triceratops bones for them to ponder over, or getting them to build pyramids, all very funny for the guys back home who watch the TV show that he fronts. But this time the prank is on him as he is dropped off in Earth in the wrong place, Santa Fe, and he can only return by getting to San Francisco quick-time before the opportunity closes. And he can't take a plane as it wouldn’t agree with him.

So that is the novel. The actual setting up of the other world where Trager comes from at the beginning of the book is a bit cumbersome I felt and hard to get into, but as soon as he found himself on Earth that’s when the novel picked up for me what with the cross-country race against time, whilst also being pursued by a persistent policeman. 

So overall I liked it with its interesting idea about how a lot of Earth’s past was manipulated for a alien prank show although the beginning didn’t grip me immediately.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)