books

The Anagranimals and The Wishing Tree

By in Book Reviews 88 Comments Tags: , , ,

The boys and I always love having the chance to review new books,and I’m really glad we had the chance to read and share with you all about the new Anagranimals book – The Anagranimals and The Wishing Tree. If you would like the chance to win a copy for your own family, then have a look at the end of the post I have two signed first edition copies for readers to win.

anagranimalcoverThis is a great new book featuring brand new characters the Anagranimals. They are a gang of six wild animals – George the Giraffe, Pedro the Pig, Heidi the Hippo, Rocky the Rhino, Ebenezer the Elephant and Lancelot the Lion – who live in Pogo Bogo. This book tells the story of how these every day animals transformed into the Anagranimals after their encounter with the wishing tree. After this they get the ability to swap body parts and become a mix and match of different creatures, allowing them to take the best qualities from all the animals they admire. Rocky the Rhino loves flying with his new wings and Pedro thought it was great to bounce on his new Kangeroo feet!

anagranimals
Lovely bright engaging pictures

The book is recommended for ages 5-9 due to having a more in depth and dense text than many other picture books, but Mr Z (5) and Mr T (3) both enjoyed this story. At first look at the cover, Mr Z wasn’t quite sure about it but after reading the story he really loved it. I think he was initially  bit confused by the look of the animals, so was a bit wary but once we started reading and the explanation was given in the story he was fine with that!

It is very well written and gripping, with lots of details. Once Mr Z understood the concept of the Wishing Tree allowing them to swap he was really enjoying laughing at the different parts on each animal and noticing who had swapped with who.

boy reading anagranimals book
Mr Z concentrating on the book!

You can see here one of the pages, it does have a lot of text compared to a lot of other picture books,which allows more room for the story to develop and there are 32 pages. It is still definitely short enough to read for a bed time story.

anagranimals pages
One of the pages – Click to enlarge

The end of the book ends with a bit of suspense about what is going to happen in the next part of their journey, to go to find and help the weeping willow tree – so now we are all waiting for the next installment to come out!

There will also hopefully be Anagranimals toys coming out such as a range of interchangeable cuddly toys, which sounds really cool! I am hoping to see a lot more of the Anagranimals series around in future, as it’s a really fun and different concept here and it has been really well done in the book. I will definitely be keeping my eye out for them.

The website www.anagranimals.com is still under construction but hopefully will have loads more info soon.

Now for the giveaway! For your chance to win one of two signed first edition copies of this great new book, enter via the Rafflecopter widget below.

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Review – Little Tiger Press “Count 123”

By in Book Reviews, Education 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

We have recently joined the Little Tiger Press parents panel and received a couple of books to look at and review. All 3 boys really enjoy books and reading so they were eager to get started straight away! The first book I am going to talk about is the My First Touch and Trace: Count 123.

Count 123 is a lovely book with hard pages and flaps to lift up on every page but the aspect that really makes it stand out is the tracing. All of the numbers are slightly indented, creating a groove for the child’s finger and have arrows to show which direction to trace. It also has small indented circles on the last pages for the child to touch and feel while counting, first to ten and then to twenty.

It’s a simple concept – but very very good! The idea of finger tracing reminded me of sand paper letters which are used in the Montessori method, and is beneficial for children’s pre-writing skills. I felt that the tracing added a really nice extra tactile element to the learning, particularly for my 3 year old who is on the autistic spectrum and has very delayed speech. He’s not able to clearly pronounce any of the numbers but does have an interest in them and we are starting to teach him the concept of counting and numbers, so what I really liked was that with the tracing he is able to actively participate in the book rather than just passively being read to. He seemed to get a lot out of it and I will be revisiting it regularly with him.

Lifting the flaps and looking at the pictures also engaged him and kept his attention. All the pictures are very nice and bright, and modern.

I like that it goes up to 20 rather than just 10 as some books do, as that made it more suitable for my 4 year old too. Although it is probably more aimed at preschool children and my 4 year old is in reception and able to count and write these numbers already he just absolutely loves numbers so the moment he saw this he was all over it and really did enjoy it. The tracing is supposed to help improve motor skills, which would help to neaten handwriting so it may still help him.

I would really recommend the book, we were quite impressed with it.

Look out for our review of Look Out, Ladybird! also from Little Tiger press, which will be coming soon on the blog as that is the 2nd book we received.