Ava Anne Appleton #1: Accidental Adventurer product reviews

I walked in the door with this book and my Miss Six immediately grabbed it and curled up on the couch to read it. She read it in about an hour and as she finished the last page looked at me and said "can you buy me the next book?" I think that means a 10/10 from her in terms of being attention grabbing, engrossing and a storyline that she wants to follow.

My Miss Six writes the following
"My favourite part of the book is when Ava met a girl who lived in the forest. Ava found her way home on a girl called Zander's boat. The boat was named the Zephyr - that's another name for a gentle breeze. I like the girl's dog named Angus. The whole family's names started with an A. The went on a big holiday in a mobile home called The Adventurer. I would like to have an adventure like that too. I want to find out what happens to Ava on her holiday."

This book is a black and white illustrated chapter book in fairly large font which is perfect for the 6 years plus age group. I loved this story and like my Miss Six I am looking forward to following Ava's adventures on her year long holiday. I imagine there will be many books to come in what promises to be a very exciting little travel series. My Miss Five enjoyed having this story read to her and will no doubt be in receipt of this book when Miss Six has finished with it.

We recently were selected to receive this book from Scholastic. My eldest daughter is 6 and we have in the last 6 months started to move into chapter books almost exclusively. For her this book was a great pick. It took us about 4 nights to read.

In the book, Ava is the main character and she is very prim and proper. She likes everything in her life to be just so, and she is very studious at school as well. For me, she was quite like I was in Intermediate School. I found I related quite well to her. She had some similarities to my daughter too, especially the being a bit of a home body.

However, my daughter has a bit of wanderlust too. This book is about a girl stepping out of her comfort zone and learning new wonderful things about her world. It's a great theme and we were pretty well engaged with the story. I like that it's going to be a new series to follow.

As a mum to daughters, the fact that this book showed you two different ways to be a girl was awesome. I really liked the girl that Ava meets and what she is able to learn from her. The only thing I found hard was that the parents seemed very lax. I wouldn't let my daughter wander off by herself in a bush near a lake, whether she had the family dog with her or not. Apart from that, it was pretty neat and I'll happily look out for the next book.