What Little Miss Read – January 2016

I’m a week late with the round up of what Little Miss has been reading (or having me read to her) in January, so much so I managed to add another book to the list! I’m only including new books we’ve read as often she likes me to read ones I’ve read a million times before, or sometimes if she goes to bed late, she doesn’t get a story at all.

As I’ve mentioned before Little Miss loves books and she’s getting to the age where she likes to look through the pages and tell the story herself. I’m so glad literature is already a big part of her life and she always feels so lucky when a new book comes through the letter box.

So these are the new books we’ve read at bedtime and added to her ever growing library;

Chicken Dance by Tammi Sauer*
The premise of this book is farm animals putting on a talent show to win tickets to an Elvis Poultry concert. Elvis. Poultry. Elvis Priestley, get it? My love of brightly illustrated story books definitely extends to Chicken Dance, each page was incredibly bright and the animals had a comical look to them. Little Miss loved the story, she laughed out loud and it was just long enough before I would have started to get bored reading about chickens. Although she didn’t get the Elvis Poultry reference it didn’t affect the story at all for either of us, in fact the way the chickens act about Mr Poultry made me laugh as it reminded me of the stories of how my Nanny used to be about Elvis, so it gave us a nice talking point after the story had finished. It had a good structure, and the story had a nice plot line with conclusion so Little Miss felt satisfied with the ending (she’s getting to that age). A great book for girls and boys with a love of farm animals and stories.

The Great Big Sleep by Sean Julian*
A new release, The Great Big Sleep is the perfect bedtime story. I’d even put it up there with all the greats like “Can’t You Sleep Little Bear?” “Guess How Much I Love you?” and “Whatever Next?” A really lovely story and great for small children, especially on nights when they don’t feel particularly tired. The two main characters Bear and Squirrel reminded me so much for Little Miss and I, especially at night when I’m extra cranky and she’s still wide away at 8pm. I’m going to say, that reading this book had me really choked up, there is a bit where squirrel goes missing and bear is out looking for him and I honestly thought I was going to cry. Thankfully there is a happy ending but it just proves how much of a good read it is, if it has me close to tears. It’s a real heart warming story with beautiful illustrations to match. The best bedtime story we’ve read together in a while.

The Little Miss Collection by Roger Hargreaves
This was one of Little Miss’ Christmas presents from my cousin in Australia and her family and she love it. It has 12 stories in and when she received it I assumed it would be the original stories that I had as a kid but no, these were all fairytale related stories with the Little Miss’ and Mr Men which really appealed to her. There were mermaids, princesses, unicorns, fairies, as well as takes on classic fairytales like Cinderella and The Three Little Pigs. The stories were all perfect length for bedtime and I really like the format of the Little Miss stories, as does LM. It was fully illustrated, with bright colours and of course all the recognisable Little Miss’ as well as some newer ones thrown in. We only knew one story which was the Little Miss Christmas one as that was the book in LM’s Christmas Eve box on her first Christmas, the rest were new to us which really did add to the enjoyment! I never have anything bad to say about this serious of books and the Mr Men as well as the Little Miss’ have been a favourite of mine since I was small.

Hey Duggee: Cheer Up, Pup*
This is our second Hey Duggee book, I reviewed The Best Scarecrow Ever back in October and as we really enjoyed it, we were looking forward to reading Cheer Up, Pup when it arrived on it’s release date earlier this week. Like with the Cbeebies TV series of the same name, it’s brightly coloured and has all the familiar characters from the show. The story was enjoyable and works along the same lines as the show, giving your child the chance (like the Squirrel Club members) to earn a badge, this time it’s the Puppy Badge. We always really enjoy the Hey Duggee books because they flow well, although i’m not usually a fan of books based on shows. The other great part about Hey Duggee books are the fact they come with activity ideas to do with your child at the end of the story which is LM’s favourite part. I look forward to reading some more in the future.