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Children love machines! The Machines and Me series of four simple, well written stories has a bold, clean illustration style perfect for the target age group, by the award-winning author/ illustrator Catherine Foreman.
Selling Points:
• Award-winning author
• Vibrant illustrations in Catherine Foreman's distinctive style
• Will capture the attention of both boys and girls
• Collect the whole set!
Product reviews...
Well what can I say about this book, its a softcover with a nice bright yellow cover, it grabs your attention with one look. At bedtime my son was eyeing it up when I told him bedtime get two books. When I let him have the book to take to bed with him his eyes widen and he got excited he is almost 4 and loves trains.
I could hear that he wasnt in his bed but in his sisters bed who is 5 and I could hear her trying to read the book to him with the words she knew, this tells me the book is nice and simple for early readers and would be able to read it all with parent help and support with those words that are a little harder.
Reading this book to my son he enjoyed it, I liked that is was simple and went to the point of the page nothing more on the page, "round and round" was on one page with a simple picture of a train going around a circle on a track. Pictures like that are nice and help the child understand what the words mean which I am all for. Another thing I liked is half was though it did some counting in twos, 2, 4, 6 and 8. This gave my son the chance to count the trains and learn what the words two, four, six and eight looked like giving him first words to understand. A little after the counting the book had colours slipped in just 4 but it was good to see this. My son told me the colours of each train then we carried on reading the story.
This book is great for those learning to count or their colours, its also good for refreshing the brain on those skills. The book has proved its great as a first reader book, I like it for the bright colours, I'm a teacher to under 2's and I'm sure they would love me to read this to them as well. AWESOME
My two year old nephew is a train fanatic and I think the author must have been spent some time with other young train fanatics because it really hits the spot.The simple vibrant illustrations have an instant appeal to all preschoolers I have read this book to. My husband has been teaching our daughters about how to spot the difference between steam, diesel and electric trains so when they were reading the book they were exciting to point them out to me.
The book is written in a delightful rhyme which I found a bit tricky to get into the rhythm of in the first reading especially as some of the rhymes went over several pages. By the second reading this wasn't a problem and I was into the swing of the story. The children enjoyed the onomatopoeia and joined in making it a real fun book to read together. They often pick up the book and read it to themselves (in the special way two and three year olds do) and it consists mainly of Choo Choo! Chugga Chugga!
As a parent, homebased educarer and former New Entrant teacher I loved the educational aspects of the book. Firstly their were great descriptions of the trains but was still simple enough for a young child to understand and enjoy. There is also colours, counting and what is now known as skip counting (or what was called counting in twos when I was a child).
If I had judged the book by the cover I would have said this was a book for toddlers and my four and five year olds wouldn't be interested. Yet again the old saying is true. The older kids enjoyed the book just as much because they were able to recall more of the story and discuss the illustrations.
This is a truly delightful story on a theme that appeals to all young kids. I see there are also Planes, Tractors and Boats in the series which are sure to be popular books too.
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