I don’t think I know how many people have read certain books. I think I read bestseller types mainly. Not on purpose, but because that’s how I come to hear of them. I don’t read something just because it’s a bestseller though, but because I like the sound of the synopsis.
For today’s picture book I’ve chosen a book that I’d like everyone to read because I think it’s wonderful.
Dangerous: Tim Warnes (Little Tiger Press, 2014)
Mole loves to label things. He’s happily labelling everything he finds (including a pile of poo – my five year old loved this, and it was a word she could work out herself too!) until one day he finds a strange lumpy bumpy thing and, not knowing what it is, he sticks lots of labels onto it.
Lumpy, bumpy, strange, unusual, huge, peculiar, green… But what if, actually, this new thing is DANGEROUS? Mole sticks on another label. The lumpy bumpy thing wakes up and starts to eat Mole’s labels, which upsets Mole and he wants nothing to do with the strange creature. But the lumpy bumpy thing wants to play and gets sad when it’s rejected. Perhaps there’s another label Mole can use?
Danger Girl (5) absolutely loves stories. Our bed is currently covered in the half dozen or so books that she dragged onto it early this morning, I read her at least three books every night or she can’t sleep (we compromise on which books – three longer ones, or more shorter ones) and she constantly flicks through books over and over, telling her own stories. She has always loved stories and books.
But where Mighty Girl (7) was writing her name and recognising words at three, Danger Girl has found learning to read and write a longer process and is coming to the end of reception year far ‘behind’ where her sister was at the same stage. This doesn’t bother me in the slightest, she will read when she is ready (and perhaps her recent eye test and prescription for glasses has had something to do with her being slower to pick things up too!)
Danger Girl balks at reading sentences in books, but left to her own devices, she carefully works out the words on labels. I have some labels on their toy storage that she’s worked out, I plan to add more. Reading Dangerous together means that she can attempt some of the words on the labels without being put off by whole sentences, so she’s practising and I’m sure one day soon all those individual words will add up to sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books, and she won’t stop reading.
That’s not the only reason I love Dangerous. The art is adorable, the story is heartwarming, and the whole book is full of so much humour that it’s hard not to giggle (especially at some of the expressions of creatures with labels stuck on!) Dangerous is a great start to thinking of describing words (Mighty Girl knows that these are adjectives, I never got the hang of the proper names for things…) and increasing vocabulary. Dangerous is one of my top picks of picture books for 2014.
Disclosure: Dangerous received for review from Little Tiger Press.
No!: Tracey Corderoy & Tim Warnes (Little Tiger Press, 2013)
Olive and the Bad Mood: Tor Freeman (Brubaker, Ford & Friends, 2013)