How Many Legs? | Red Reading Hub – Jillrbennett's Reviews of Children's Books

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Quick Quack Quentin
Kes Gr y and Jim Field
Hodder Children’s Books
Did you spot the deliberate mistake in the author’s name? It – or rather a missing A – is really key to the whole sorry situation in this hilarious book from the Field/Gray dream team that all begins when a duck, a duck whose ‘Quack’ has become a mere ‘Qu ck!’, consults a doctor about the distressing condition. But although quick with his diagnosis “… your QUACK has lost it’s a.” said doctor is unable to prescribe anything. So off goes Quentin to the FARM to see if any of the animals can help. They try their best: DOG offers his O, HEN her E, PIG his I and BULL a U

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but none of these sound appropriately duck-like.
Quentin’s next stop is the ZOO – a couple of OOs perhaps? On second thoughts maybe not, but perhaps there might be an animal with a spare A therein.
All the animals are sympathetic but part with an A – not likely! The APES don’t want to be PES.
The SNAKES don’t want to be SNKES nor the CAMELS CMELS. The PARROTS have no intention of becoming PRROTS and those PANDAS don’t want to be PNDAS or even PANDS.

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Poor Quentin, seems he’s stuck with that QUCK or is he? What’s this strange looking creature saying he has a spare A …

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A quacking read aloud, a fun introduction to vowels and a brilliant way of showing children they need to be flexible in their approach to letters and sounds. In my book it doesn’t quite beat Oi Frog! but it comes pretty darn close: those animal expressions are something else.

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How Many Legs!
Kes Gray and Jim Field
Hodder Children’s Books
What begins as a simple question from the boy narrator of this picture book from the hugely talented Field and Gray “How many legs would there be if in this room there was only me?” gradually turns into a chaotic and riotous romp of a party as one after another animal crashes onto the scene at every turn of the page.

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Did I say another animal? Make that more than one on occasion …

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And just when you think it can’t get more crazy, this happens …

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With the addition of a slug, a snail, a maggot and a centipede just to name a few of the gate-crashers keeping up a leg count is pretty tricky.

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In fact I wouldn’t recommend trying it on a first reading – just enjoy the fun and leave computation till afterwards; and anyway the host reveals the answer to the leg question as he deals with the after- party chaos on the final page.
With wonderfully wacky guests splendidly attired, and scenes full of delightfully exuberant eccentricities, this book now out in paperback, is a cracker.

Use your local bookshop

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Where’s Bear?
Emily Gravett
Macmillan Children’s Books
Bear and Hare are back in their third amusing adventure, or game actually. The adorable duo engage in a game of Hide and Seek with Bear hiding first. Unsurprisingly to readers his chosen hiding places – in front of a lamp, or a pile of books, and behind a fish tank (albeit a large one) – are a dismal failure and the roles are reversed. Bear is now the finder: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 … but where, oh where is Hare? Here perhaps?

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But now Hare cannot find Bear and oh dear, he’s getting in a bit of a tizzy

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until finally …

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Nobody can turn a small episode into high drama with quite the consummate skill of Emily Gravett.
I do hope the publishers decide to offer it other formats: it’s perfect for beginning readers but the board book edition may well put them off.

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How Many Legs?
Katja Spitzer
Flying Eye Books
Off beat illustrations of all manner of items from ice-creams to bugs and ‘mischievous monkeys’ to ‘stylish shoes’ to count, are presented in the small pages of this quirky little counting and number book. It’s divided into two distinct parts: the first introduces numerals and counting to 10 (the number being displayed on both sides of the spread);

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the second provides practice in getting one to one correspondence between the number names spoken and the items being counted without the visual number symbols.

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There’s plenty of potential for talking with the very young ones as well as the mathematical opportunities offered here in this mini volume, which is one of a new series from this artist and Flying Eye. I love the bold retro images and the feel of the whole thing.

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SNAP! SNAP!
Cocoretto
Child’s Play
There are five animals hiding beneath the flaps of this ‘Guess the Animal’ board book, each introduced by a noisy clue and the repeated question What’s that noise?’

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the answer being revealed by lifting the flap on the opposite page.

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Those from just a few months can enjoy the sounds and bold, bright images, slightly older toddlers will delight in the playful scenarios and the chance to be noisy along with the various animals large and small each spread provides; and those just beginning to match the spoken word to the print on the page might try doing just that. The experience will be hugely more enjoyable than that provided by the first books of a dreary reading scheme and in addition there’s the opportunity to begin to develop prediction skills.
In similar vein is

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CHOO! CHOO!
The format is the same but herein the animals are the drivers or operators of wonderfully noisy vehicles. There’s a train, a tractor, a digger, a motorbike and a fire engine. Playful, cacophonous fun aplenty.

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