Penny Reads

Ladybird Tuesday – Helping at Home

January 6, 2020 by penny Leave a Comment

I feel like I say this rather a lot – but Ladybird Tuesday is back. Again. Let’s call it a new year and a new start eh and not talk about all the other false starts here on Penny Reads? I’m jumping straight in though with what is probably one of my favourite Ladybird books of all time – Helping at Home.

Now, most of my Ladybird books are picked up in charity shops or at car boot sales, but sometimes there’s one that I’m so keen to get my hands on that I’ll actually go searching for it on that well known internet auction site – and that’s exactly what happened with Helping at Home.

Originally published in the Learning to Read series (series 563) Helping at Home has a special vintage magic to it simply because it provides such a lovely insight into family life in the early 1960s.

Being completely fascinated in the 1950s in particular (and Helping at Home just being published in 1961) I found myself staring for ages at all the illustrations in this book, trying to take in all the minute detail of their homes. For anyone who has started watching the latest series of Call the Midwife, you’ll know that it is now up to the mid 1960s (Churchill’s funeral in the first episode of the new series was 1965) so it’s fascinating to compare what you see in the illustrations with how they have dressed the sets for the programme.

In Helping at Home, the accompanying text explains all the things that the children are helping their parents to do around the house and garden. As with the Ladybird Keyword Reading Scheme books the text tries to feature repeated words and also works in conjunction with the pictures to help children work out what all the words are.

What I think I’m somewhat in awe of is just how much these children do around the house to help their parents. Maybe I just need to try harder with my elder two, or make housework into more of a game or fun activity for them. At the moment housework and jobs like these featured end up being things I have to do when I either get a moment’s peace, or once they’ve gone to bed!

As with so many Ladybird books from this period, the male-female role split is very clear. All the jobs at home like making the bed, dusting, cooking, washing up are done my mummy, whilst outside jobs like mending the fence and digging potatoes become daddy’s role. Even shoe cleaning is led by Daddy, pipe in mouth. A role which I can always remember being my father’s when I was a child, yet something that I did for my kids just this evening before their return to school tomorrow. It’s definitely the case that things would be much more mixed up if this book were to be written today!

This era of Ladybird books really had to be my favourite and Helping at Home is a perfect example of “Ladybird Land” at its finest. I know so much has moved on since then, especially in terms of equality, but there’s still part of me that I would love to be able to go and live in Ladybird Land, even if only for a day or two. Please tell me I’m not the only one!

Ladybird Tuesday is a regular feature here on Penny Reads where I delve into my Ladybird book collection and choose a title to share with my readers. The weekly series originally started on my old blog, Being Mrs C, and I’m now in the process of moving all those posts over to Penny Reads and also adding titles that I have acquired since then. A list is currently being compiled here of all the titles I have in my collection.

Review: The Magical Underwater Activity Book – Mia Underwood

December 18, 2019 by penny Leave a Comment

Review: We were sent a copy of The Magical Underwater Activity Book for the purposes of this review. See full disclosure statement at the end of this article.

My ability to find time to actually read books seems to have taken a bit of a hit in the run up to Christmas. As usual at this time of year, there is so much to do that I’m not quite sure what to turn my attention to next. Trying to keep my head above water in the festive rush means that there are times when I need to occupy the kids, and rather than just using technology to help I’ve found that deploying an activity book at the right moment can be the solution.

The Magical Underwater Activity Book is probably one of the most beautifully illustrated activity books I’ve seen. As I said when we reviewed Mia Underwood’s first book (The Secret Woodland Activity Book), her Scandi-Style of artwork is just gorgeous.

This time around she is taking children on a magical underwater adventure where they get to meet a variety of real life and fictitious aquatic characters.

The book provides children with a huge range of activities. Everything from pictures to colour in to learning more code. From learning about map grid references to a template to make a deep-sea submarine. There’s also an opportunity for them to really get creative by using a “roll a story” grid to come up with characters and a plot for their own underwater story.

What I also really liked about this particular book is that it doesn’t just focus on the good side of things. There is a nice dose of realism by taking about the environmental impact of humans on marine ecosystems, and in particular the effect of plastic rubbish and micro-plastics. By making children understand this whilst they learn about marine life will surely help them to be conscious consumers of plastic and to think carefully about how they dispose of it.

It’s so refreshing to see an activity book that is not only fun and educational, but also one that carries such an important environmental message too.

The Magical Underwater Activity Book was published by Button Books in November 2019. RRP £9.99 and for ages 4 – 8 years. It is available to buy online *here.

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of The Magical Underwater Activity Book for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links marked with a * symbol. If you buy something having clicked through from this link I receive a small commission (often not even enough to buy a cup of coffee), but it costs you no more. Thank you.

Review: Roman Adventure Activity Book – Illustrated by Jen Alliston

November 29, 2019 by penny Leave a Comment

Review: We were sent a copy of the Roman Adventure Activity Book for the purposes of this review. See full disclosure statement at the end of this article.

I know I’ve said it several times before here on Penny Reads, but I’m still a huge fan of kids’ activity books. Especially ones that fit in with things that they have been learning at school. That way you manage to combine fun and entertainment with a spot of learning – and the kids often don’t even realise.

My eldest two go to school I’m St Albans, a city full of Roman history, so sending us a copy of the Roman Adventure Activity Book to review is rather perfect as it’s something that all children here seem to cover at school in quite a lot of detail. The city has its own Roman Museum in the Verulamium Museum and there are various other bits of Roman history dotted around the city too. Even when I take them home from school we travel along Watling Street north – another nod towards the area’s Roman roots.

The Roman Adventure Activity Book is absolutely packed with different activities for children to complete. There’s really something to suit all children’s interests with everything from pages to colour through to explanations of Roman numerals and some basic sums using them. There are mazes, word searches, dot to dots and also instructions for some craft activities like making your own laurel wreath and making a mosaic using tissue paper. All of them tie-in in some way with the topic of Romans and Roman life.

On a practical note, this book has been printed so that the pages have a lovely matt feel to them. This means that you can use coloured pencils, wax crayons or felt tip pens in it easily. There are also four pages of stickers and some of the activities in the book tell you to choose the correct stickers to answer something, or ask you to use stickers to complete a picture.

The book is described as suitable for ages 4 – 8, but I would caveat that slightly and say that children who can read independently will gain most from it. Younger children can obviously work through it with a grown up to help them. A couple of the activities in it do tell children to get a grown up to help them. Whilst a few of the activities may be a bit simple for her, my nine year old still enjoyed sitting down and completing some of it on her own.

The Roman Adventure Activity Book was published by Button Books in November 2019. ISBN: 978-1-78708-042-3 Priced at £6.99 It is available to buy online here*.

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of the Roman Adventure Activity Book for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links marked with a * symbol. If you buy something having clicked through from this link I receive a small commission (often not even enough to buy a cup of coffee), but it costs you no more. Thank you.

Be Your Best Self – Life Skills for Unstoppable Kids

October 12, 2019 by penny Leave a Comment

Be Your Best Self is a message that is being shouted loudly and proudly by both children and adults everywhere. But how exactly do you do it? How do you be your best self on a day to day basis. That’s exactly what Danielle Brown and Nathan Kai aim to do with their book – Be Your Best Self.

Danielle Brown is a double Paralympic Gold medallist and five time archery world champion. Nathan Kai is (or was at the time of writing) a seven year old member of MENSA, a public motivational speaker and an elite athlete, as well as having a CV longer than most people three times his age. Together that have written this book to help children find an answer to the question “How can I be my best self?”

The day my review copy of Be Your Best Self arrived it was left on the kitchen table along with a bunch of other paperwork that had arrived in the post that morning. When she came in from school that day, nine year Little Miss C instantly spotted it and picked it up saying “ooooh this looks interesting”. I’ve not been able to get the book off her since!

From the small bit of the book that I was allowed to read before she took it off to her room I could see that it set out a really nice, easy to follow framework for how children should dream big and then find the steps they need to take to turn those dreams into a reality.

LMC is firmly set on a dream of being an author, but just a day after reading this book she launched into a conversation with me about how she can turn that dream into a reality and how she has written in her notebook the steps she needs to take to make it happen. How reading as much as she can now and studying hard in English lessons at school is her first step.

She also spoke about how the book’s sections on staying focussed and managing distractions had already helped her to concentrate in some of her school lessons, and how in one case her teacher even awarded her a house point for ignoring some boys who were trying to distract her during an English class. If that’s not the book in action then I really don’t know what is!

She also spoke about how useful it was to read the bits in the book written by Nathan. To hear things said by someone closer to her own age than an adult is.

I think one thing that really helped LMC relate so well to the book was the way that it spoke in a language that she was already very familiar with from school, about fixed mindsets and growth mindsets. She tells me that they have whole school assemblies on the power of growth mindsets and it’s almost as if the book has just validated for her so much of what her teachers have been telling her at school.

The fact that she’s so absorbed in the book and has taken it with her to her Dad’s house for the weekend so that she can “read it and learn from it before school on Monday” speaks volumes. Thank you Danielle and Nathan for helping my daughter be her best self!

Be Your Best Self is available to buy online here. RRP £12.99 Published by Button Books in October 2019. ISBN 9781787080386

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Be Your Best Self for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.

Ladybird Tuesday – Learn to write book

October 8, 2019 by penny Leave a Comment

It can be hard to know which Ladybird book to choose from my collection to write about each week. There are some titles though that I’m so excited to tell you about. Last week’s addition to the collection is one such book – the Ladybird Learn to write book.

Ladybird Learn to write workbook series S812 Ladybird Tuesday

I was somewhat lucky to find this title as I’m trying to cut down on the amount I spend in charity shops and so have restricted myself to just looking for the familiar size and shape of Ladybird books and try to ignore everything else. Amazingly thought this was at the front of a stack in a local branch of Oxfam and the Ladybird logo on the cover caught my attention. Measuring 9 1/4″ x 7″ it’s a very different size to normal Ladybird books.

As well as the regular familiar Ladybird books there have been several other titles that they published over the years. In the 1980s they branched out into a series of workbooks to accompany all the Keyword reading scheme books and other educational titles that they published. I’d heard of these before by finding Learn to write was my first experience at seeing one in the flesh.

Published as part of series S812 Learn to write was I believe the first title in this series. The copyright date inside my copy is 1981, but I believe the book first appeared in a Ladybird catalogue in 1984 and that tallies with the date written on the front cover or my copy.

The style of the book is very obviously a workbook for children to work though as they develop their pen skills and writing ability. There’s plenty on letter formation in there that I recognise from the Ladybird Handwriting book, although drawing in the dragon’s teeth is a bit more modern in style.

When you look at some of the other titles in the same series though they appear more activity book like.

Learn to write
I can write
Crossword Book 1
Crossword Book 2
Puzzles Book 1
Puzzles Book 2
Sport Billy Activity Book
Major Tom’s Space Activity Book
Learn to Count
General Knowledge Quiz Book
Sports Quiz Book

What is quite wonderful about the copy of Learn to write that I picked up is that it’s not been used at all. There’s a name and the year 1984 written very neatly on the front cover, but inside all the pages are clean as it was when first printed. Quite how it has managed to remain intact for 35 years with no child deciding to have a go with a pen or wax crayon is some sort of a miracle.

From what I can gather from the pages of an old Ladybird catalogue that a collecting friend shared with me the same format and size was also used for four playbooks in series S703 and a series of colouring books in series S779. These apparently took pictures from other Ladybird titles and used them as inspiration for children colour in the same pictures. How I’d love to get hold of some of them.

I’m not totally clear if all the titles listed in the catalogue were actually published or not though as some don’t match with those on the back cover of Learn to write. I can see though that this opens up yet another whole area of Ladybird history for me to delve into. I always used to assume that what Ladybird got up to in the 1980s wasn’t as interesting or exciting as what went before. How wrong I was!

Pom Pom Pom – Henry Le. Over 50 mini Pompoms to make

September 27, 2019 by penny Leave a Comment

I’m going to say this upfront. Pom Pom Pom is quite possibly one of the cutest books I’ve ever seen. Regardless of whether I was sent it to review or not. It’s absolutely adorable.

Cover of teh book Pom Pom Pom by Henry Le

Now I’ve done Pompom workshops before. I’ve turned them into garlands and wreaths. Even worn them as earrings. But even still, I have NEVER seen anything quite like what Henry Le has down in Pom Pom Pom.

Henry is a Vietnamese artist and what he has done with Pompoms is out of this world. For a start – hope you’re sitting down for this bit – they’re not all spherical!

After that shock I’d better explain a bit more.

An owl pompom from the book Pom Pom Pom by Henry Le

What Henry has designed is a way of showing you how to build up layers of different colours when you wind a pompom which means that you can actually make the colours of your yarn to turn your pompom into anything from an animal to a piece of food.

Henry uses Clover pompom makers which seem to be the secret to his designs. Now, if you’ve not used one of these makers before then they really do make pompom making so much simpler, and also provide much more reliable results too. Henry makes use of the 3.5cm and 4.5cm ones in this book, but there are loads of different sizes available.

A pig, pineapple and kiwi pompoms from the book Pom Pom Pom by Henry Le

For each design in the book he shows you how to wind your yarn on these makers to get the desired pattern.

It’s also worth noting that he spends a while in the book also talking about the yarn he uses. As someone that has used Stylecraft Special DK to make a million and one crochet blankets over the years, it is lovely to come across another use for the small bits I have left over in an assortment of colours.

Emoji pompoms from the book Pom Pom Pom by Henry Le

As for the patterns in the book. Well, the word wow pretty much sums them up. There’s everything in there from Pompom emojis to cute animals. Pompom sushi to pompom hotdogs. It really is quite incredibly and has to be seen to be believed.

The instructions are incredibly clear and the sections on how to read the diagrams and how to make a basic motif are so straightforward. The only thing from stopping me jumping right in is that I can’t find which box in teh garage has my pompom makers in it!

Pom Pom Pom was published by GMC Publications in September 2019 and has an RRP of £14.99. ISBN 9781784945169. You can buy it online here.

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Pom Pom Pom for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links. If you click on it and then buy the book, or anything else from Amazon, I will receive a small bit of money (maybe enough to buy a cup of tea if I’m lucky) and it will cost you no more than normal. Thank you if you do so.