We've come to love George the giraffe here at The Madhouse, having followed his adventures in two previous picture books, The Black and White Club and A Gold Star For George - click through to read my reviews of those titles - so we couldn't wait to see what he'd get up to in this latest book, George and the New Craze.
We instantly recognised all of George's friends from the Heavenly Hippos Wildlife Park in Kimberley Scott's enchanting illustrations and spent ages pointing out the details and naming the animals. The drawings are full of action and really bring the texts to life.
In this story, the new craze alluded to in the title is collecting people cards - this made Pierre laugh because he said usually it's people collecting animal cards so it's the world back to front !
As with all the best picture books, the story also gives little readers some great life lessons about sharing, working together as a team and combining forces.
While the animals haven't got enough cards individually to do anything exciting with, when they put them all together, they come up with a spectacular collection. I introduced a new expression to Pierre - "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" - which he'd never heard before but perfectly understood in the context of the story, as was proved when we made cookies later the same day and he told me that was another example of the saying, because the results of our baking efforts were worth more than the individual ingredients !
It's a fun story with appealing characters and some brilliant reinforcement of positive values such as teamwork and solidarity.
star rating : 5/5
RRP : £6.99
Disclosure : We received the book in order to write an honest review.
Love books that teach values in a friendly fun way
ReplyDeleteSounds great
Nice pictures in the book. I like the expression - 'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.'
ReplyDeleteI think it was Aristotle who came up with that one ! :)
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