The Kiwi Go Marching One by One product reviews

We love the Te Reo/English version of singalong books. We have the row row your boat one out of this series and we really enjoy it. So it was natural for us to want to have this in our collection too. Reading the book without the CD was a little hard as I couldn't get the tune correct even though I know the "Ants go marching song" The words I felt didn't flow and I was getting annoyed with it. Once I put the CD on it made so much more sense and I could get into it with the CD.

The pictures are really bright and really get into what the words are saying, even with the Te Reo part of the book you can follow along with the pictures, my 8 year old who isnt really interested in Te Reo came and sat down with us following along and saying what they were doing just by looking at the pictures.

I thought this was a very clever way of getting Te Reo into a song that didn't normally have it. The glossary at the back helps with learning what some of the words are even if you learnt 1-2 each time you listened to it. The bonus about the CD is there is a English version, Te Reo version and then instrumental version. This helps children read the book themselves without having an adult read it to them all the time and get tired of singing.

Its a little more than I would pay for a book, but for the right person I might fork it out.

The Kiwi go Marching One by One is a new twist of the classic song The Ants go marching. It doesn't have the counting but rather different adventures that the kiwi go on. There are some things in the book I had to explain to children like what a bivouac was and what it meant to top and tail. It is interesting to note that the kiwi in the pictures are all in separate hammocks rather than topping and tailing.

One of the things I appreciated about this book was the use of kiwi as a plural. As we know there is no 'S' the Maori language but so may people including authors think they should but an 'S' on the end of a Maori word. Perhaps it was the fact that the last half of the book was the Maori version of the song. I imagine it was very hard to translate into Maori while maintaining both the meaning and the tune.

The CD contains three tracks. The first is the English version of the story. I found as easy to follow along with the book but noticed that there were twice as many 'Booms' in the song than in the book. The second track is the Maori version of the song and the third is an instrumental track. We immediately recognized the voice of Jay Laga'aia as we have watched him on Play School and he had done other children's readalong books. He has a good clear voice and is a pleasure to listen to. The CD meant that the parent or teacher didn't have to reread the book constantly as the CD would give young children the independence. Miss Seven found the book was a bit babyish for her. I think the target audience are more three and four year olds.