Saturday, 20 November 2021

BOOK REVIEW: My Rhyming Adventure: Dinosaurs


TITLE: My Rhyming Adventure: Dinosaurs
AUTHOR: Drew Piercey
PUBLISHED BY: Drew Piercey

I was immediately drawn to this author’s debut children’s story book by the vivid colours and engaging illustrations on the front cover; I’m sure young children will also be instantly attracted to it for the same reason.

This is a fun story book and a useful learning resource which will engage youngsters whilst at the same time motivate them to enjoy it repeatedly and remember it as an enjoyable experience.

Each page features a different dinosaur and the author’s intention is that readers play the part of an adventurer discovering them by way of a rhyme.

This is the perfect book to read to a young child, or for older children to read for themselves; the story is short and simply told plus the words are suitable for young readers, i.e. there are no long words which young children may not understand (apart from the names of the dinosaurs). The illustrations are delightful and will certainly entertain young readers reading the story for themselves or parents reading the story to pre-schoolers. 

The book’s compact size makes it manageable for children with small hands to hold. Plus, it has easy-to-slide pages which make it easier for small hands eagerly wanting to turn over to the next part of the story to handle.  An added bonus are the wipe-clean front and back covers, ideal for parents reading the story to children with sticky fingers.

I loved the different colours for each page but one small niggle is that I found one page with white script on a yellow background difficult to read; the script wasn’t as clear as that on other pages; additionally on the final page which had a pink background, the white script was very blurry (maybe I was unfortunate in having the copy I have; I hope other copies are better).

Upon reading the book, one thought I had, is that an extra addition could be helpful; that is the inclusion of phonetic spelling next to the dinosaur names on each page. I’m sure it would be useful for youngsters who are unfamiliar with the dinosaur names when pronouncing them. But after saying that my six year old grandson is a fount of knowledge where dinosaurs are concerned; he knows all their names and has an enormous amount of information about them, similar to a lot of youngsters these days. Dinosaurs are very popular with young children currently and they can put the older generation to shame with the information they store up about them.

This book is a delight and one I’m sure will be popular with young readers. This story is ideal for children to learn about dinosaurs in a fun way whilst at the same time learn how to structure sentences in rhyme; it will also stimulate and increase the attention span of those reading it.

The delightful illustrations are by Beth Bluck.

Reviewer - Anne Pritchard


No comments:

Post a Comment