Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be? product reviews

As an early childhood teacher I have a large children's book collection and I'm always looking for new exciting books to introduce them too. One of the favourite type of books with the kids I work with are music ones with CD's. When Oh dear, what can the matter be? came up for review I was very keen to review it, it sounded like the type of book the kids would love.

The second it arrived and I flipped through it I knew it was going to be an instant hit. The illustrations were bright and colourful with lots of hidden surprises to each page. The pictures are so well done and opened themselves up to a lot of discussion. The words were just as delightful as the animals throughout the book did lots of funny and unexpected things. I was also pleased to see there was lots of learning threaded throughout the book as you counted the animals down from 10-1.

Taking it to work to share with the kids from the second I pulled it out it was a hit. The pictures on the cover attracted a large group of children over to listen to it. I put on the Cd and we listened to and looked through the book. Once it was done we went through the book again looking closely at all the pictures, pointing out all the things we missed the first time, finding and counting all the different animals on the pages. Once we were finished I was asked to turn it on again, we ended up listening to the book four times before we headed off to do something else. Since I introduced the story it's requested daily I'm just pleased it's such an easy song to listen too over and over again. Using Jay Laga'aia as the voice of the story was a very wise choice.

If you are looking for a book that gives you a bit of a laugh then this is the book for you. This paperback book has a modern twist on a traditional song. It comes with a CD and lyrics sung by Jay Laga'aia. Having a CD really helps with the reading of this book as a few of the sentences are a bit tricky to fit into the traditional tuned.

On opening this book I was pleasantly surprised to see that the story had a lot of teaching points. Each verse counts down from 10 and introduces you to an array of animals. Using many adjectives and verbs there is plenty to talk about in amongst the laughs. Being an Australian book you also get a couple of words which were very new to my son. I like this because it is all teaching points.

The illustrations are very funny and playful. I love the way where on one page the animals cannot be seen, for example they are twirling or hiding, but on the following page they can be seen in the background. The illustrations are bright which also draws the kids in. I really enjoyed this book as did my two children. We got lots of laughs and there was definitely a lot of learning happening while reading/singing this story.