Zebra's Stripes - Gaby Goldsack

Whilst on holiday we were browsing round the shops in Llandudno one cold wet miserable day when we happened to come across Poundstretchers. Poundstretchers had a sale on and they had some childrens books reduced, just the thing to keep our Son entertained in the miserable holiday weather. One particular selection caught my eye - the selection consisted of 4 books which were all part of the Furry Tale series. Now we didn't want to be spending too much money on Jake and as the books were to be bought seperately at a cost of £1.90 each (reduced from £3) we decided to just buy him one. We handed Jake the books and let him choose himself - would it be Zebras Stripes? Lions Mane? Tigers Tale? or Elephants Trunk?..........................He chose Zebras Stripes and insisted on carrying it to the till himself so we could pay for it.

Zebras Stripes is a great little book consisting of only a few short pages. The short story is written as a poem and is really fun to read, even from an adults point of view. The front page of the book has a colourful picture of a Zebra which comes complete with a 'touch and feel' furry mane. It is this 'touch and feel' furry mane which initially attracted us to the books as Jake likes to read things which he can interact with and take part in.

On each of the pages are a number of different animals all brightly coloured which Jake loves pointing out and repeating the names of and copying the sounds of. On one of the pages the animals are playing hide and seek and it's upto the reader to try to spot where each animal is hiding.

I've got to admit there's not actually much to this book. It only has ten pages and not much wording, but it's the pictures and the interaction between adult and child which makes this appeal to kiddies. Basically it's up to the parent to elaborate on the book, point things out, teach the child the names and sounds of the animals etc...........But that's the kind of books I tend to buy for Jake. I don't like huge long stories, they can be darn tedious reading, but short stories like this allow for *me* as the parent to almost make up the story as I go along which i'm hoping Jake will pick up on and use his imagination himself.

As this is written in the form of a poem/rhyme it's a lot more jolly to read than his tedious Thomas The Tank Engine ones (which I used to love reading him but he's overdone them now) As an example as to how this book is written i'll give you the first two pages of this book - "Zebra has a host of friends of every shape and size. So if they all look different, it's really no suprise"................................Yes that was two pages worth, so you see it's a really short book which isn't too tasking to read.

As Jake loved this book so much we were really keen on buying him the rest of the collection but our holiday was at an end so we were unable to go back to the shop to buy the rest. So, a few days after getting home I trotted down to Doncasters own Poundstretcher to see if they also had the books. Imagine Jakes delight when he saw that they did!! Jakey is now the proud owner of the entire collection which he keeps beside his bed as he likes to have them read to him as bedtime stories.


Other information
**********************
These books are written by Gaby Goldsack and the wonderfully bright pictures are illustrated by Charlie-Anne Turner. To be honest i'd not seen or heard of any of these books before buying them but the money was well spent. I would recommend this book/series to be suitable for the 18 months to 4 years age bracket but like everything it really depends on each individual child.