Review: Hiku the Penguin

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Hiku is the tale of a penguin who wakes up feeling grumpy one morning. Everything about the day was wrong (I know how he feels today) made worse by the news of an impending visit from his extended family (yep, I can sympathise with that one too!).

Taking himself off to be a grumpy-guts on his own, he soon realises that he's lonely and bored. Hiku's mind wanders off to memories of past visits from his family and he soon realises that actually, they always have fun together! Rushing back to his family, he hopes he gets there in time to enjoy some more fun and make more memories… whether he does or not, well you'll have to read the book!

I liked the clever illustrations with every double-page featuring dozens of penguins. This isn't just because I like penguins, but because Hiku is distinct with his heart-shaped tummy, so every new picture was like a 'Where's Wally' fest which The Boy adored pouring over.

This is a lovely story focusing on the fun that can be had with family, beautiful illustrations, and a great spring-board for a variety of other activities and discussion points with your little one.

Hiku is availabale as a paper back (£5.39), as an app on the AppStore (£1.99) or as a PDF electronic book (£1.79) which would be perfect for little ones to interact with, or in the classroom as a big book.

We were sent this book for review purposes by TopThat Publishing. MY opinions are, as always, honest & without bias.

A Sticky Situation

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We were recently sent the 'First Words' Sticker Activity Book by Top That! to review. I'll admit to opening it and thinking "Really? He's two!" However that opinion quickly changed when I opened it, examined the pages and showed it to The Boy; he was captivated!

My reservations centred around the fact that sticker books often have flimsy pages with a matt finish that mean once the sticker is put down (often in the wrong place the first time), that's it it's stuck there. You can't peel it back off to move it, and if you try the stickers are so thin, they rip and you have a distressed child.

That is not the case with this gorgeous activity book. The pages are thick and glossy which means that stickers can be peeled back off and realigned. The stickers are also a really good quality and easy to hold. The Boy has gone back a few times since he first did one of the pages and rearranged the stickers, well over a week later, with no problem.

'First Words' tells the story of David and Lizzie who live in a house with their mum and dad. The book introduces different aspects of David and Lizzie's homelife from the rooms in their house to their routines. You can dress them, give them their breakfast in the kitchen, follow them on a walk to the park or when they go shopping, when they play with their toys,go to the countryside, and then go to bed. The pages that illustrate each of these everyday occurences are beautifully drawn with bright colours and attractive designs. The additional bit that I like, and I think the first time that I've seen it, is that the colours around each of the stickers matches the section of the page where they are meant to go perfectly. Too often the stickers are surrounded by white which makes them stick out like a sore thumb.

This is part of a series of books from Top That! which is aimed at children three years old and over, other titles included are 'Colours', 'Counting' and 'Shapes', and all four support the Foundation Phase and National Curriculum learning objectives (as a primary school teacher I can see how these would support his learning). One of the features of the book is that the words being introduced are also printed in the book allowing the reader to over-write and practise his/her writing skills. Obviously this is the area where The Boy has not been able to fully enjoy the book, but it's not a problem because in the future he will be able to and it hasn't hampered his enjoyment of the book. There are other lovely activities like dot-dot, tick-lists, drawing areas and colourings.

The Sticker Activity Books normally retails for £4.99 but at the moment they are on offer for £4.49. I shall definitely be popping over and buying the other titles in the series (is it too early to think of Christmas presents?)

Another top-tip (stolen borrowed from Damian Johnson) is to remove the surrounding and unnecessary sticky; it makes it so much easier for their little fingers to get the stickers off.

We were provided with this book free of charge for the purpose of this review. My opinion is, as always, honest.

Two New Books

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One thing that I never thought that I would describe myself as is a 'Yummy Mummy'. However Top That Publishing have decided differently because they have selected us to join their elite bunch of book reviewers. Oo-er! That makes me rather chuffed. Not just the 'Yummy Mummy' bit, but because we adore books in this household. The wonder of turning over a fresh new page, inhaling the aroma and discovering new words is sacrosanct in this abode. If anyone in my vicinity even contemplates creasing a page the gasp is audible. Hubby winces if I crack the spine of a book; I'm serious, I can see him stiffen with disdain at me.

It's only natural that a love of books is handed down to The Boy, and so being sent copies of new books for review on a regular basis is like elixir to the gods for him. For our first selection we were sent the following two books:

'When I Dream of ABC' by Mr. Henry Fisher

This beautiful paperback book is visually stunning and excellent quality. When I Dream of ABC is a book about the alphabet, but not just any book. The illustrations and characters used to depict each letter are inhabitants in an enchanted dreamworld. From the dragons who 'are very polite, but are best avoided on account of having smelly breath' to the Queen who 'eats too much chocolate and have lots of shoes', this book is captivating and very funny. There is a page per letter, with a facing illustration in beautiful muted pastels. I am very impressed with this book, as both a primary school teacher and as someone who did Art as my minor during my teaching degree. The Boy likes to look through the pictures and has certain favourites, he likes the O is for Octopus page.

I'm not the only one who likes this book, it has been nominated for a People's Book Prize in the Children's category, which is pretty impressive! If you fancied popping over and voting using that linky then I'm sure that would be most appreciated.

'The Wide-Mouthed Frog' retold by Graham Oakley

The Boy has progressed recently from the normal board books, past lift the flap books to pop-up books. To be honest, there are an awful lot of badly made pop-up books out there. The Wide-Mouthed Frog is not one of them; it is excellent and he loves it! There are two pop-up books that he wants read again and again at bedtime each night, this is now the third! Don't be fooled by his reaction with the toucan; he's laughing really!

 

 

Listography – Top 5 Children's Books

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The Listography guru that is KateTakes5 has set a topical theme this week. With World Book Day and the library closures in the news, we are to identify our top five children's books.

The Boy adores books almost as much as his daddy and I do, so this shouldn't be difficult to create a list of five books. Actually it's more difficult to only list five! However, here we go:

  • 'Dear Zoo' by Rod Campbell.

This is a firm favourite for bed times in our house and The Boy likes to 'read' it along with us, finishing off the lines from each page. We have the version that has flaps hiding the animals underneath.

  • 'I Love You Through and Through' by Bernadette Rosetti-Shustack

As I explained in my post the other day, this is probably the favourite bedtime book at the moment. It's either 'zoo', 'through' or one of the next ones on the list that is requested. It is such a loving and caring book to send a child to bed with warm and loving thoughts. I can not recommend it enough!

  • 'My Mum/Dad' by Anthony Browne

I The Boy bought 'My Dad' for hubby daddy last year for Fathers' Day and they both adored it immensely. I felt ridiculously jealous, so hubby had to go and buy me the mummy version! It is a brilliant book of why children love their mums and dads, including the fact that daddy 'isn't afraid of anyone, not even the big, bad wolf' (but he's petrified of spiders though!). I am depicted as Marilyn Monroe and I can live with that! The illustrations are as funny and clever as the book.

  • 'The Jolly Postman' by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

There should be an Ahlberg classic in everyone's list; they are such brilliant books that children love and parents find amusing. This book is a little too old for The Boy at the moment, but he already has the full set of the Jolly Postman books from when I trained to be a nursery teacher. He will enjoy fishing out the letters, presents and games because I do! In all seriousness, the way that there are mini-books and games within the main book is brilliant. Beautiful illustrations as well.

  • 'Tom's Midnight Garden' by Philippa Pearce

My all-time favourite children's novel. I adore it and probably still read it once every year or so. I always read it to my class (older juniors) and show them the DVD to help their understanding of some of the more complicated concepts. I think it is a fantastic piece of writing with humour, tenderness and mystery in it. LOVE this book!

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'Something Beginning with Blue' by Nick Sharratt & Sally Symes

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The Boy loves books. I was slightly worried when he reached his first birthday; I thought that he would never progress from eating them onto actually 'reading' them. I will even admit to not leaving them out for free choice, because in this house books are sacred and it distressed me too much to see the spine being chewed!

However, in the past six months he has become obsessed with them! Some days are toy days and others are book days, when all he will want to do all day long is 'read' every book that he owns. It always amazes me how much children learn from books, even at this tender age; he's never seen a tiger but he knows what one looks like. We're working on colours and shapes at the moment, so when the lovely people at Walker Picture Books sent me this book to review it was more than appropriate.

'Something Beginning with Blue' is a delightful and beautifully illustrated book based on all the different colours of the rainbow. It takes the 'I spy' theme and transfers it to the colours of an object; e.g. 'I spy with my little eye, something beginning with… blue!'. It then lists a couple of things that it isn't and gives factual clues as to what it might be. On the opposite page to the text is a picture of a child with peep-holes for the eyes. When you look through, you can get a growing picture of what the item might be.

The Boy loves 'reading' this book. He examined the spy-holes and insisted on looking through them all, a great game of peek-a-boo! He pointed out the objects on the page, and has learnt some new colours from the book too; brown and green to name the present ones. And because he is slightly older now, he has a better awareness of how to handle the paper pages. It's not a book that I leave out for him to browse by himself at the moment, because he is a little clumsy with paper at the moment, and well quite frankly he likes to rip it if allowed. Therefore it's a special book that we look at together.

An excellent book for teaching children some of the secondary colours in a fun and different way. Good choice Walker  Picture Books!

The lovely people at Walker Picture Books sent me this book to read with The Boy. I was not given any other reward and my reviews are, as always, honest.

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