minibombo | Red Reading Hub – Jillrbennett's Reviews of Children's Books

Shake the Tree!
Chiara Vignocchi, Paolo Chiarinotti and Silvia Borando
Walker Books

I’ve championed Minibombo books on this blog before and I make no apologies for doing so again. This one is my favourite so far.

It all begins when a hungry Mouse spots a nut high up in a tree and determines to eat it. She gives the tree a shake in both directions but it has no effect on the nut. She dislodges Fox though …

who declares his intentions concerning Mouse in no uncertain terms.

Up the tree scampers Mouse and Fox takes over as tree shaker; but he’s equally unsuccessful in dislodging mouse or the nut: something else drops down though and he too is ravenous. It’s Warthog and the shaking process begins again.

Oh my goodness! Fox, Mouse and the nut hold firm but down comes a very growly creature.
His frantic left and right shaking has the desired effect: down tumbles the entire contents of the tree, leaves and all.

Who or what will Bear going to claim as his prize? …

To emphasise the height of the tree, the book opens vertically, but readers have to keep turning to book to keep up with the narrative shifts from vertical to horizontal as the drama progresses, thus mirroring the tree shaking of the creatures.

A delicious piece of theatre superbly orchestrated by the book’s creators and equally superbly acted out by the animal characters whose narrow escapes will delight young listeners.
Equally, thanks to its repetition and brief patterned text, the book is spot on for those in the early stages of becoming readers to dramatize for themselves. Read it to them first though.

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Shapes Reshape!
Shapes at Play
Silvia Borando
Walker Books
If you’ve watched young children get creative when given lots of 2D shapes, then you’ll be aware of some of the possibilities and hours of fun messing around with shapes offers. Here Silvia Borando has taken that idea a stage further in two wonderfully imaginative new Minibombos.
In Shapes Reshape they do just that: the shapes being rectangles and squares (mostly the former) with just the odd few very small circles used as dots for eyes.
It begins with 60 rectangles arranged thus …

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which rearrange, no, ‘reshape’ themselves into ten BUZZY things …

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So brilliantly playful; but there’s a whole lot more to come – 99 shapes become 9 Jumpy, slurpers … so cool aren’t they?

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Introduce another colour and the possibilities increase: look at these sneaky slitherers

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fashioned from …

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I could easily go on showing each and every wonderful ‘reshaping’ but suffice it to say there are eight further rearrangements from serried rows to creatures large and small from sniggly snuffling hedgehogs and nip-your-nose crabs to ferocious hungry lions, snappy alligators and the final piece-de-resistance –

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which flees, having been frightened by something reshaped from these …

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Now what could that be, I wonder. Hint: count the number of small rectangles …
Shapes at Play begins with a ‘Let’s play!’ invitation from a red equilateral triangle, a yellow square and a blue circle. Then the participants and others like them do so, starting with the triangles, followed by the squares and then the circles, each of which is given a double spread to do their stuff. Then follows a bit of bouncing, bumping and toppling … but undaunted, that’s followed by hasty re-creation …

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after re-creation, (oh! and there’s a spot of multiplication along the way too) first of the architectural kind …

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and then, of the vehicular variety …

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and culminating in a terrific BLAST OFF, flight and a landing where our three friends are greeted by some new shapes …

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Once many, many years back as a fledgling teacher, I read a book by Glenda Bissex called GNYS at WRK. Here’s genius at play, courtesy of Silvia Borando.
This, or a slightly less sophisticated form of same, is what children in their early years at school would and perhaps should be doing, were they not being required all too often, to jump through various mathematical hoops to satisfy the tick-box mentality requirements of the curriculum that prevails.

Use your local bookshop