My Friends (Our Special World) by Liz Lennon #bookreview

Book review: My 6-year-old daughter has read this to me. She is an early reader who this book is aimed at and she was able to read this well. As we were going along there were questions on most pages giving her the chance to talk about her friends. This is a good way of touching on subjects with her, in an unobtrusive way, that you otherwise might not do.

The blurb on the back says these books are "non-fiction books for young children which helps them find out about diversity in the world around them, The books feature questions to promote speaking and listening skills and are perfect for early years learning."

There is a contents page at the beginning so she started off with a section about painting pictures together. I liked that there was a section called "Falling out" about how friends might fall out with each other, a good lesson for the young ones. Apparently, my daughter's best friend will walk away when she gets annoyed with her.

Each page also has big, colour photographs of children playing. This is where the diversity aspect of the blurb comes in as the text doesn't really pick up on it but there are images of children in wheelchairs and from different ethnicities.

Overall then it hit the mark.

Available to buy on AMAZON HERE.

Teletubbies: The Tubby Custard Ride #bookreview

Book review: I got this for my 2-year-old (plus 7-months) boy to enjoy. He saw me take it out of the package and said straight away, “Please can I have it?” He then took to it immediately saying, “Daddy look, Noo-Noo”, “Daddy look, Teletubbies” and “Daddy, what’s this, what’s this, daddy, what’s this?” as he flicked through the pages.

The cover contains a slide section and needless to say it is these bits in the book that he finds most interesting, the slide bits and the picture wheels.

It is a hard board book so he can easily turn the pages on his own (although he won’t always wait for you to read the text first before doing so). It is reasonably durable too, although he has managed to rip it a little when he thought there was a page inside a page (the problem of having a slide section in between making the pages thicker tricking him into thinking there is a page in-between).

Each page is bright, glossy and colourful and features the Teletubbies on them. The story he won’t let me read because he wants to turn the page, or play with the feature, but with Teletubbies the story doesn’t matter too much.

But the book is certainly keeping him happy at the moment as he sits with it in his hand watching TV, occasionally turning to it instead.

It's available on Amazon to buy HERE.

Claude Going for Gold by Alex T. Smith #bookreview

Book review: First impressions of this book are really good. The cover has shiny gold on it, which goes well with the theme of the book and the title. It's a really well-designed cover and very visually appealing. The art style (apart from the glitzy gold) follows through the rest of the book too with the limited colour palette of red, grey, black and white (so no gold) being used. Claude is also set to have his own TV show on Disney Junior meaning his profile will get even bigger.

This story is of Claude and his friend Sir Bobblysock who go on an adventure together when Claude's owners, Mr and Mrs Shinyshoes, go out to work. So far so similar to the other Claude books. This time though the theme is sports as they take part in the STONKING BIG SPORTS DAY with the "most enormous glitzy gold cup you have ever seen". It's a really fast-paced storyline.

The humour comes through the characters names. For example, Mr Lovelybuns the baker, who has the best buns in town, and Ivanna Hurlit-Farr, the female shot putter, are characters. The humour also comes from Sir Bobblysock doing things you wouldn't expect a sock to be able to do.

One of the quotes at the end of the book from Primary Times says "Perfect for newly developing readers and great to share" and I agree with that.

Buy from Amazon UK HERE.

Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers by John Dougherty and David Tazzyman #bookreview

This is the fifth Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face book ("soon we won't be able to fit all these on the back cover" it says next to the bit where it showcases the previous books) and it is just as silly and funny as the others that I've read. My 10-year-old daughter and I really enjoyed it.

The book starts with the character introductions, characters that have featured in the previous books such as Malcolm the Cat and the shopping trolley. This helps get the reader into the story straight away with no knowledge of the other books being required to read this one. The only difference this time with the character profiles is that they have been graffitied by those "evilest and wickedest" badgers, for reasons that become clear as you read the story.

The story begins similarly to other stories, chapter one "in which some waking up happens" featuring a bird of course, and the badgers safely locked up in jail. Things change when the badgers get a book titled "Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers" with a sticker on it saying "DANGER! Do not open this book unless you have the training of a ninja librarian, or great calamity may befall." Of course, the badgers pay no heed to this warning and great calamity does befall Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face as the badgers write bits of the story and stick in pages from other stories too. 

This results in lots of characters from lots of different stories colliding and, of course, this leads to chaos (accompanied by "comedy saxophone music"). 

My daughter liked the way these stories were incorporated, famous stories such as Treasure Island and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as well as made up ones. She also liked the character Alfred Kendon-Furtado who won a competition to be in the book but seemingly had nothing to do except put up his hand after he'd been ignored for a while to remind people that he won a competition to be in the story.

Luckily Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face rescue the day of course, in yet another adventure full of action, fun and surreal-ness.

Available on Amazon UK: Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers

Night Shift by Debi Gliori #bookreview

Debi Gliori, the writer and illustrator of this book, normally creates books for children. This book, on the other hand, is aimed at an older age group as it covers depression.

The afterword explains that she has been "spending most of [her] adult life living through periods of depressive illness" and that her "hope is that this book will help explain what we are going through."

The rest of the book is a series of small black-and-white drawings with little bits of text which tell the story of a female character and her struggle with depression, the depression being represented by a dragon. Luckily it has a happy ending which I thought was nicely done both in the words and the final picture, the way the dragon has disappeared and become something else. 

The book takes a few minutes to read as it is short but the art is good. The black-and-white illustrations suit it given the subject matter. Perhaps the final picture could have been in full colour to emphasise the "shift" that occurs. Maybe this book will help others with depressive illnesses, or help introduce the topic to youngsters so they can better understand it, and if it does then that is a good thing.

Amazon UK link: Night Shift

Gory Gladiators, Savage Centurions and Caesar's Sticky End (Awfully Ancient) #bookreview

Book review: History was never cool when I went to school. Nowadays, though, thanks to Horrible Histories, it is the epitome of cool. This book has clearly been influenced by the Horrible History series of books - look at the alliteration in the title for one, Awfully Ancient, Gory Gladiators. But that is no bad thing. If it makes the subject more interesting by focusing on the "oodles of blood and gore and horribly nasty deaths" and it grabs the attention of the reading kids then maybe they will maintain that interest. 

This book focuses on the time of the Roman Empire. "What did they ever do for us?" I hear you ask. Well, this book tells you. It covers "Ceasar's sticky end" and many similar ends of other Roman emperors, it tells you what a vomitorium was, and it covers what a Roman's usual eating habits were during a time before fridges in a chapter called "Peacock Brains and Flamingo Tongues." There are some interesting facts here too. Like how the average slave "cost less than a horse or a cow". And how only emperors were allowed to wear purple, anyone else being killed.

The layout is appealing too. There are 32 full-colour pages of text with pictures following the same fun art style as seen on the cover. At the end, there are also some books and websites listed as suggested further reading, although all the books are by the same publisher. There are also some places listed to visit, all in Britain, which might be worth looking at.

On things that could improve this book, it is short at 32 pages so could have been longer (although to maintain interest for the age group and possibly reluctant readers you could say it is better to be shorter). 

All-in-all then this is a book that introduces the topic of the Romans and their empire in a fun way that may lead to a maintained interest in history.

GORY GLADIATORS, SAVAGE CENTURIONS AND CAESAR'S STICKY END (AWFULLY ANCIENT)

World War II (Explore!) by Jane Bingham #bookreview

Book review: World War II is such an important part of our history and as such is a mainstay of our schools' history education. This book, aimed at children, provides an introduction to the topic.

What we have are 32 full-colour pages of bite-size chunks of text giving the important information around World War II like why it started, who was involved, the major events and so on. There are plenty of pictures along the way too, like paintings done during the War, posters, photographs and more. The subject matter could upset some, e.g. the Holocaust and people dying, but children tend to be rather resilient and the text is in a  matter-of-fact manner so I wouldn’t worry too much about that.

There are a couple of suggested exercises along the way too. These are an exercise to write a letter from the point-of-view of a child experiencing the war using info from the book and other sources and to create a “cipher wheel” for creating secret coded messages. (I was tempted to write this review using a code generated by this wheel but decided against it at the last minute.)

At the end, there are also some books and websites listed as suggested further reading, although nearly all the books are by the same publisher. 

All-in-all then this is a book that introduces the topic of World War II which should be easy for children to read as the text is in bite-size chunks and there are plenty of pics to bring it to life. Further research can then be carried out afterwards if required.

Amazon UK link: World War II (Explore)