Review: Ellie McDoodle:Most Valuable Player by Ruth McNally Barshaw

Author: Ruth McNally Barshaw

Age group: 7-12 years old

Publisher: Bloomsbury Australia

Pages: 192

Amazon – TBD - Bloomsbury

Release date: 1^st September 2014

Synopsis. (Goodreads)

Poor Ellie. When her friend, Mo, suggests they try out for soccer together, Ellie doesn’t know her own father has just been named the coach! To make matters worse, Ellie can’t seem to get her head (or her feet) around the game. She’d much rather be solving word problems and doing other brain-bending quizzes in the Journey of the Mind club. But when both teams have their tournament on the same day, will Ellie choose soccer or school? This lively story, told in words and doodles, will have kids cheering on the sidelines for Ellie!

Review: 4 out of 5 stars

My nine year old son recently read Ellie McDoodle:Have Pen Will Travel so he was quite excited when we received a copy of Ellie McDoodle:Most Valuable Player, especially since soccer is one of his favourite team sports.

I didn’t think my son would show interest in this series initially because it is about a girl and they are still a pretty gross species to my nine year-old and he is still of the mindset that boys stick with boys things and girls with girls so I was pleasantly surprised by his keen interest. He was especially excited about the take-home project, how to play finger football and shocked by the silence is golden day where there is no speaking.

At the beginning of the book, Ellie’s best friend Mo gets Ellie to try out for the soccer team, she isn’t the sporty type but she does it for her friend; we liked the friendship aspect and how Ellie was willing to try something out of her comfort zone.

Ellie McDoodle:Most Valuable Player is a great book about teamwork and learning to understand that you can’t always be the best at everything. The characters are well written and Ellie’s diary entries with doodle drawings were well done as were the fun to do lists.

I highly recommend the books for girls and boys alike, my seven year-old will be reading this book next.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to read and review Ellie McDoodle:Most Valuable Player. 

 

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Review: Dragon Jelly by Claire Freedman illustrated by Sue Hendra

Author: Claire Freedman

Illustrated by Sue Hendra

Age group: 0-5

Publisher: Bloomsbury Australia

Pages: 32

Amazon – TBD

Release date: 1^st October 2014

Synopsis. (Goodreads)

TA-DAH! It's DRAGON JELLY time,
A sizzling scrumptious treat.
It's red. It's wobbly. Best of all,
It's SCARY HOT to eat . . . !

Max is having a MONSTER party. They play all sorts of yucky games then cool down in a fruitbat drool paddling pool! Then it's tea-time, with termite tarts, ear-wig rolls and eyeball birthday cake. But the REAL treat is the red-hot dragon jelly!

Dragon Jelly is monstrously gloopy, gunky fun from the bestselling Claire Freedman and Sue Hendra. - See more at: Bloomsbury

Review: 5 out of 5 stars

The cover of Dragon Jelly is vibrant and exciting; Miss 7 loved the glittery swirls and was quite eager to get started on this book and was so engrossed that she didn’t want it to end.

Dragon Jelly is about Max and his monster party with games, entertainment, scary treats and more, it was a lot of fun looking at the wonderfully detailed illustrations and to see what a great time the monsters were having.

The illustrations by Sue Hendra are amazing and the friendship you can see the monsters sharing was really delightful, the party was a lot of fun, even the scary hot dragon jelly!

Miss 7 was able to read the text easily & we thoroughly enjoyed Claire Freedman’s engaging and creative storytelling.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Australia for providing us with a copy of Dragon Jelly to read and review.

  

About the author: Claire Freedman is the bestselling author of the Aliens Love Underpants series for Simon & Schuster, which has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. Spider Sandwiches is Claire's first picture book for Bloomsbury. Claire lives in Essex.
www.clairefreedman.co.uk