Published by Igloo Books Ltd (2009)
Illustrated by Sarah Pitt
ISBN : 978-1848177475
Price - from 1p (used) on Amazon UK

~The Green Tractor~

The Green Tractor is a 10 page board book aimed at children over the age of 2. The official blurb from the back of the book :

"Green Tractor is busy on the farm. He collects apples for the market, plants seeds in the field and pulls a log out the way. After a busy day, he goes home down the lane. Chug-chug!".
This book features a sound device which is operated by internal batteries. There is a fairly large, green speaker which can be pressed in and plays sound effects when prompted.


~Our Thoughts~

As far as I can remember, my son received this tractor book as part of a present for his 2nd birthday. He is now 3 and a half and it is still part of his growing book collection though rarely bothered with.

This book is well presented. The pages are thick but are starting to show creases. The pages have rounded corners and the book is fairly heavy and bulky despite only having 10 pages. The Green Tractor is a bright book and and looks good. There are a lot of yellow and orange colours used which help to attract a toddler to pick the book up and start flicking through it.

This is a very simple book and one which I was able to read with my son in a short time frame. It isn't one for bed in my opinion and is more suited to reading during the day when your child wants a short story as it discusses day time activities on the farm. There is minimal writing on each page (2 lines maximum) so this isn't an complex story and is definently an easy read.

The wording is simple and the story is very basic. Each page mainly focusses on illustrations and they do look very realistic. My son could relate to all off the images used as the story contained birds, trees, flowers and even small animals such as dogs and cats. The story follows the Green Tractor and talks about what he gets up to one day. He is very busy and has a lot to do.

"Green Tractor is busy harvesting. The animals can hear him"

Basically the tractor carries out jobs just like a real tractor would (but without the farmer being mentioned). The animals play a big role in this book which adds extra time onto reading as I play games with my son when we read this one. There is usually more than one animal or apple (or even a flower) on each page so we count them up and learn something as we read a simple story.

At the end of each page, Mummy has to say "Chugg-chugg" which my son learned to say himself in a timely manner. At this point, the idea is to press the green sound button. This is so irritating and I don't think my son is overly keen on the noise either as it really goes bug anyone nearby. The noise consists of a rather loud tractor engine noise repeated 3 times. Even after owning this book for a year and a half, the noise hasn't reduced to a more acceptable level and is very easily activated if anything hits off it. So annoying!

~Conclusion~

I wouldn't pay the rrp of £5.99 for this book as there isn't much to it at all. It is pretty to look at and child friendly in terms of story and pictures but apart from that, it doesn't have much going for it. It no longer holds Boos attention as he would much rather read about the tractor in Bob the Builder.
An ok book if you can pick it up super cheap otherwise go for something a bit more challenging as after age 3, my son lost interest in the book.

Thanks for reading x