Who is in YOUR underpants? (Aliens Love Underpants - Claire Freedman)

Member Name: QueenElf

Product:	Aliens Love Underpants - Claire Freedman
Date:	24/04/08 (496 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Glossy, funny, wonderful illustrations.

Disadvantages: None, though it could be longer.

I've recently been visiting my daughter, son-in-law and my lovely grandson Jack to celebrate his third birthday and to spend some time with my family. I live in South Wales and they live in London, so each visit means that I probably pay much more attention to Jack than if he lived near me. This is an important point I am making as I see how much he has changed since the last time I saw him and also I am more conscious of his reaction to various things. This year he is finally old enough to grasp the concept of presents and how they relate to him. He is still unsure about ripping open the paper though...he is a bit of a tidiness fanatic.

I bought him some presents that I knew he would like and left the new toys and books to other family members. Obviously this is for my own satisfaction. I want the hugs I get by buying him something he is familiar with. Children are so different and Jack does prefer familiar things and places. He's a very clever child for his age, but he doesn't adapt well to change, so anything new is introduced gradually. He had loads of toys and books but one caught my attention because Jack started to approach it slowly, eventually asking me to read it to him near bedtime. The book was, of course, Aliens love Underpants and I wondered if the word was a bit too new for him. He's still getting to grips with potty training and underpants are not something he is familiar with.

I needn't have worried. This bright cheerful book cannot fail to impress children (and their mums, dads and Nanny's). The story is fairly basic but it's the characters, the colours and the rhymes that ensure this will become a fast favourite with most children.
The cover of the hardback book shows several fun alien figures wearing all sorts of underpants and knickers (though generally these come under the same heading as underpants). They are set against a dark sky on a rounded shape that suggests a planet. The first page starts simply with a rhyme that explains why aliens don't have underpants:-
"Aliens love underpants, in every shape and size,
but there's no underpants in space, so here's the big surprise...."
Cut to a picture of sad-looking aliens mournfully without underpants looking longingly down at Earth.
As each page turns it becomes clear that these are no invading aliens, instead they are here on Earth to beg, borrow or steal various kinds of underpants. There's a full funny rhyme to each page, explaining what the aliens are up to.

Some wear them on their heads, some on their bodies, even some on hands and feet. As you turn the page another scenario shows hilarious pictures of aliens swinging on washing lines, jumping into dad's stripy underpants, granddad's long johns and nanny's big bloomers. These aliens are not going away until they each have underpants of their very own.
The rhymes underline the action in the pictures and are easy to learn.
What I did find was that Jack had no idea what underpants were, so one hectic session rummaging through clean laundry and his nanny's suitcase soon had us both giggling while Jack learnt a rather important lesson. He might be wearing character learning pants at the moment, but now he knows that other people wear different underpants. We didn't make a big thing of it, but I'm pretty sure that he'll soon be moving on to real pants instead of nappies.

I don't know whether that was a theme behind the book since it's aimed at about 4 years plus, but I can't help thinking what a fun way it was to show children the variations of underwear.
There again, children love humour and the idea of aliens swinging on the line in mummy's frilly knickers is guaranteed to have them rolling about laughing. Over three days I read the book to Jack about five times and each time we had to go and hunt for various types of underpants. In fact I'm still looking for my favourite pink and white spotted knickers. Now I wonder where they went to?
The final pages of the book are a caution to watch out next time you go to put your underpants on. Those aliens could be hiding inside them!

This is a lovely book for children (and we adults loved it as well). The rhymes introduce new words while still in the range of a child that learns quickly, though children under three could find some words need explaining. It's bright and appealing enough to interest even those children that don't normally read books and by repetition learns the shape and sounds of words. I also got Jack counting the aliens by size and colour. He's especially good at counting, managing up to twenty with few mistakes. I wanted to see if he could do this with colours, shapes and patterns. After a few false starts he amazed me by getting 90% correct. Learning is so important from an early age and anything that makes this fun gets my vote every time.

The book is produced by Simon & Schuster Books, with words by Claire Freedman and illustrations by Ben Cort. It's available on Amazon in hardback at £8.24 new and £2.89 in paperback. Personally I think the hardback is worth paying a bit extra for as I am sure this will become a firm favourite for many years.
Highly Recommended, it gets the full five stars from me.

©Lisa Fuller April 2008.

Summary: A great big fun-packed book.