Bedtimes have got a bit hectic here at The Madhouse lately. Pierre has been dry during the day time for absolutely ages now, even for long naps, but never wanted to dispense with the night-time nappy, although he's moved on to pull-ups and gets up in the night to wee in his potty ! Well, a trip to see his cousin who is almost a year younger than him has inspired him to be a "big boy" so he has been asking to go to bed in pants ever since Christmas. That means the bedtime routine (which was a nice calm story then a kiss and lights out) is now a quick sit on the potty while I read one book, decide it might be a poo not a wee so run down to the toilet, come back and finish the first story, get in bed and read a second story, get back out of bed for a final wee "just in case", try my luck for one more story because Mum might not notice ... !
Well, with all this extra bedtime-reading that's been going on, I was pleased to receive the lovely picture book Churchill's Tale of Tails to review. It tells the quirky story of Churchill the pig who is perturbed to lose his tail and goes on a quest to find a new one, before eventually finding his own original tail that was lost in a bush and picked up by a bird who wore it on his head. (Yes, I know, that did all sound a bit strange when I read it back!) Churchill realises that while he's been busy hunting down his tail, he's been neglecting his friends so he has a big party to celebrate his friendships old and new.
It's a fun tale and the illustrations added to further giggles, particularly when Churchill gets his tail stuck under the toilet seat and when he looks in the toilet to see if it's in there ! Pierre and Juliette followed the story with great interest but asked the inevitable (and unanswerable) question, how could his tail just fall off? As you know, we're a French-English bilingual family and tail is "queue" in French which is also a slightly rude word for a willy, so I'm really hoping this isn't going to fuel some big Oedipus complex or something !!
For now though, there haven't been any such musings from the Mini-Testers - just lots of giggling and excited pointing at the pictures as he tries on the different tails to see which ones look best ! It's a lovely reminder of the importance of friendships too, which is always a good life-lesson to reaffirm.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £5.99
Paperback: 32 pages
Publisher: Jonathan Cape (PB) (27 Dec 2012)
ISBN-10: 1780080093
ISBN-13: 978-1780080093
Product Dimensions: 26 x 23 x 0.8 cm
Disclosure : We received a review copy of the book.
Other reviews you may be interested in :
This sounds like a fun book, I'm sure my little man would love it too. After we won Findus book from your giveaway, I bought two more from the series, Eddie absolutely loves them. I mean to blog about them, they are superb
ReplyDeleteAww glad you enjoyed them - I love getting books to review that I'm sure I'd have missed otherwise, some are absolute classics :)
DeleteOliver would love this book debbie jackson
ReplyDeletedjackson1958 at hotmail dot com
Dexter got this book from his aunty for Christmas. His bookshelf is overflowing now and I completely forgot about this one. Going to dig it out now and give him a little treat x
ReplyDeleteThere are so many books for children available on the market - it is not easy to pick a good one.
ReplyDeleteI have loads of book for my 19 month old already and now i will have to add one more. Thanks! :)
ReplyDeletetarradwyer@rocketmail.com