Duck in a truck is stuck! (Duck in the Truck - Jez Alborough)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	Duck in the Truck - Jez Alborough
Date:	20/08/08 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Helpful to kids learning to read

Disadvantages: Tricky rhyming and not as exciting a story

Duck in the Truck is a children's book written and illustrated by Jez Alborough. It is part of a series of books featuring the Duck written by the author and is a good book to read to kids or for those starting to read.

The story tells of Duck having a drive in his truck and getting stuck in the mud. He is helped by a frog in a bush, a sheep in a jeep and a goat in a boat who try to help him get out. In the end they succeed but hilariously get stuck themselves in the mud. The duck drives off merrily as his friends are stranded and covered in the mud thrown up by the wheel spin.

The story is cleverly written, and although I didn't find it flowed as well as other rhyming stories for kids, the combination of the words and illustrations is very good for interaction with the children. It is not one of my son's favourite books, but in terms of helping him to learn to read, the words are relatively simple and short, leaving it quite easy to show sounds and letters. The story itself is not the most exciting, and I felt maybe a little more could have been done with it to make it more interesting to the child. Perhaps there aren't enough words on each page. It certainly seemed as if I was halting the reading a little at bedtime because of the page turning. There are 29 pages in total.

Alborough's illustrations are colourful. Some kids' books are too bland for the kids to be excited about them, whereas the colours here are vibrant enough to attract from the bookshelf. The book is available from amazon.co.uk for £4.54, as are the other books in the Duck series from Alborough.

Summary: Decent kids' book