Devon the Dog's Farm Adventure product reviews

Devon the Dog's Farm Adventure is my favourite of Jonathon Short's two books. His first book Devon the Dog's Adventure was about lots of different animals. Farm Adventure features farm animals and talks about where food comes from. It is a sad reality of today's society that many children don't know where their food comes from. This book shows children that fruit and vegetables are grown rather than come from the store.

The children loved this book and I have been asked to re-read it several times. They also enjoy reading it to themselves and each other. It appealed to my two year old homebased carekids as well as my five year old daughter and all my other kids in between. I think a big part of the appeal was the cute cartoon animals with their great big eyes. One of my carekids is very scared of real dogs but she really loved Devon.

As I was taught at Teacher's College a good book is more than pictures and words on a page. It is also about the discussion you have. When I was reading this book to the children about a quarter of the time was spent reading the words. The rest of the time we were talking about the animals and produce. The book ends with "What would you like to buy?" This is where the children became really passionate about healthy food. As I was reading the story I was expecting the there to be something about meat and wondered how some of my kids would react to the fact we eat animals but this wasn't covered so it is vegetarian (but not vegan) friendly. The only animal products mentioned are milk, butter and honey. I was surprised that sheep were not in the book especially as this is a New Zealand book.

Thank you Devon Books and KIWIreviews for giving me this book to review which fitted in really well with our healthy eating theme this term.