Both of my children (aged five and nearly three) are big book fans and will jump at the chance to read something new. Here’s the new books that we’ve read recently:
Pasta Kidz – book 1 Inventing Tubes
Author Bryony Supper is onto a winner here, who doesn’t like pasta?! She has created a whole series of illustrated books featuring a range of fun characters, who all have different shaped pasta for hair and use their own pasta language. The first book stars Sara Spaghetti and Marc Macaroni, who go on an adventure, using the inventing tubes to create a Pastaball. Things don’t go according to plan when Sara Spaghetti is impatient to create her own Pastaball.
The illustration and use of the made-up pasta language is very original, and marks this book apart from others. There is a great glossary at the back of the book to explain the words, and showing you the other pasta characters in forthcoming books. The books are suitable for ages 4-7, although younger ones will still enjoy them!
Rusty The Squeaky Robot
This book was really a revelation, as my initial thought was ‘it’s another robot book’. But actually, the illustrations are so appealing that you can’t help but get drawn into the world of Rusty and his robot friends – it reminded me of retro drawings of robots from the 50s, but with a really cool update.
The premise of the book is that Rusty the robot doesn’t like the squeak noise that he makes, so goes off on a quest and finds some friends along the way. The happy ending is that, if the robots make their sounds together, it makes a great sounding noise. This is a really lovely take on friendship and working together. It’s also a great prompt to talk about what other robots in ‘Robotone’ might look like or what sounds they might make.
Simon and The Big, Bad, Angry Beasts
This book has been an interesting experience for myself and my son, with him having a very different reaction straight after reading it and days later. I really like the concept of this book – the central character Simon makes increasingly large and scary beasts when he gets angry, starting with a ram and ending with a dragon. Simon’s friends don’t like the beasts, so leave him alone when they appear, resulting in him releasing his anger into butterflies.
When we read it though together, my five year old son understood what the book was trying to convey. I was hoping that this could be a good lesson in anger management, and I could use it as an example in future. However, he seems to have become quite attached to the dragon, and we have lost the overall message. I do think that this would be a great book for slighter older children though, or those that would see a dragon as a monster!