Double Delight: Hatch and Match & Two Rabbits


Today's delightful double-whammy comes loaded with well-meaning flavour, colour and fun. These two picture book gems would make great Easter basket additions but are standalone, any time reads, as well. 

I'm normally wary of seek and find books that use rhyme as a vehicle for treasure hunting, but this inadvertent Easter-suitable title is pure delight. Bunnies are quickly dispensed with as we focus on a tree chockas with chooks, that's chickens to the uninitiated. And what colourful chooks they are, each sporting a unique colour scheme and pattern. 

Our sleeping hens are awakened by the dutiful rooster and immediately set out to locate their eggs. Where could they be? Well it's simple if you follow the match and hatch pattern prompts! Spry lyrical narrative and pages and pages filled with eye-popping rainbow colours transforms the reading experience into the best egg hunt, ever! All tied together with a satisfying reflection on differences and sames.

An absolutely brilliant, bit mind-blowy, ultra fun experience for young and old. Perfect for Easter reading or ANY day of the week generating heaps of find and seek, count and peek, pattern recognition moments. Highly recommended.

Title: Hatch and Match
Author /Illustrator: Ruth Paul
Publisher: Walker Books Australia, $25.99
Publication Date: 6 March 2024
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781760656980
For ages: 2+
Type: Picture Book

Buy the Book: Walker Books Australia



Two Rabbits: Even Best Friends Argue Sometimes ...
Sometimes, days are dark and cold and lonely forcing words to become harsh and sharp. Friends make mistakes, utter frustrations out loud, warp meaning. The further we move away from the uncomfortable, the more we allow anger to carry us from those we love, the worse the loneliness becomes.

This is what Little Grey Rabbit and Little Brown Rabbit discover one wild wet night when a silly argument develops into a storm of hurt feelings and regret. The result is that nothing feels as it should. Anger feelings distort inner peace in a way all of us are familiar with.

This beautifully crafted story with simple wistful illustrations and reflective narrative, is perfect for youngsters evolving the art of making and keeping friends but is equally alluring for younger readers thanks to predictive phraseology and gentle pacing that allows them to determine and assess the emotions behind the rabbits' actions and reactions.

A tale that truely encompassess friendship, mindfulness and tolerance in relationships through two very relatable (and beguiling) bunnies.

Title: Two Rabbits
Author: Larissa Ferenchuk
Illustrator: Pure Pittock
Publisher: EK Books, $24.99
Publication Date: March 2024
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781922539656
For ages: 4 - 8
Type: Picture Book

Buy the Book: EK Books, Boomerang Books

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Goldfish Boy

Image
Twelve-year-old Matthew Corbin is your regular pre-teen boy living in an unspectacular cul-de-sac deep in British suburbia. The major difference between him and the other inhabitants of Chestnut Close however is the state of his red-raw hands and tortured mind and the fact that he barely steps outside his terraced-home second story bedroom. Matthew is afflicted with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD and can barely function as a result. From his fishbowl vantage point, Matthew keeps track of his neighbours, dutifully recording their every movement, their comings and goings, and their habitual rituals in his notebooks. In this way we are introduced to the residents and their characteristic irks and quirks from the get go in a way that is both intriguing and comical. Matthew’s observations allude to his condition; he is both analytical and detailed in his approach. The orderliness of his notations suggest a mind used to repetition and accuracy, an intense desire to ‘get things r...
Read more

Review: Detention

Image
Tristan Bancks signed my copy of Detention with a note hoping it kept me turning pages . This book lived up to that promise and then some. Packed with page-turning tension and relentless drama, this is one middle grade novel that may cause a few kids to miss their dinner call. Yet despite the raw gritty urgency that suffuses nearly every page and the elevated sense of dread and desperation that keeps your heart in top gear, the pace is never too manic nor too hectic to enjoy the energising mix of edgy excitement and sincere emotion Bancks does so well. Dan is an inner suburban boy living on the outer perimeters of life. He’s classified as trailer park trash because of his permanent residence at the social-economically deprived Midgenba caravan park. It’s a title that comes with an ineradicable smear of hopeless. Deep down though, Dan’s a good kid, a caring kid. The type of kid who’ll risk his own face to save a vicious dying dog, which he does one day after finding Rosco tied ...
Read more

I've got a dream

Image
Almost a decade of moons ago, I made a serendipitous discovery that forever altered the spin of my world. Falling pregnant after so many years of waiting and yearning was nothing short of miraculous (for me) and a life event definitely worth waxing lyrical about. But did I? Sadly, not as much I as wanted to. There are those who find it hard to exist without sharing the contents of their dinner plates with the rest of  the world, then there are others who worry that a beautifully executed birthday cake photo shared on social media will somehow demean the starving populations of the world. I oscillate between the two but tend towards the latter, always fretting over how others will take good news in light of their own current situations and struggles, thus resorting to a severe downplaying of my own good fortune. The pregnancy of my first child should have been a joyous occasion - it was a joyous pregnancy after all - but I was acutely conscious at the time of another family me...
Read more