Nick and Sue!! (Faster, Faster, Nice and Slow - Nick Sharratt)

Member Name: dougal868

Product:	Faster, Faster, Nice and Slow - Nick Sharratt
Date:	04/12/08 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great book - very engaging

Disadvantages: None!

'Faster, Faster! Nice and Slow' is a children's picture book by Nick Sharratt and Sue Heap. The book is large - slightly bigger than A4 in size and is very bright and colourful so appeals to young children and even to older babies too. The book isn't really a story as such, it's more a series of opposites. Although the object of the book is no doubt to teach a little of how opposites work, 'Faster, Faster! Nice and Slow!' is told in a very rhythmical, rhyming way and is therefore very fun and entertaining to read, as well as being educational.

The book is based around two characters - Nick and Sue who are basically childlike versions of the authors. They introduce themselves on the first page with a picture of each of them and 'We're Nick and Sue, Hello, Hello!' written alongside. They both apparently like and do different things so the book takes you through each of those things. You usually find that there is one set of opposites per two pages so you have things like 'I'm near to you' with 'I'm far away' and 'I'm getting wet' with 'I'm warm and dry'. The text rhymes a lot and you can hear yourself reading at a rhythm as you turn the pages. This makes the book fun to read but also memorable so it seems to help children to remember which opposite goes with which.

The illustrations are bright and engaging with lots of different patterns and wonderful animals. The pictures are done in two different styles as it seems that each of the authors has taken on half of the illustrations. The pictures by Nick Sharratt are quite bold and cartoon like whereas Sue Heap's are still cartoony but much softer. Although different, they go well together and have a sort of childishness to them which goes really well with the text.

We really love this book! We bought it for our eldest daughter when she was around 12 months - she really seemed to enjoy it even then (the bright colours seemed to catch her attention as well as the wonderful text) and she still loves it now at 3 years old and our younger daughter (15 months) is now a big fan too!

'Faster, Faster! Nice and Slow!' is published by Puffin and the RRP is £5.99. It is part of a series of similar 'Nick and Sue' books which are all very similar but cover different topics. We have them all and love them all! The other titles are...

* Red Rockets and Rainbow Jelly - colours
* One to Ten and Back Again - numbers
* Alphabet Ice Cream - alphabet

A great book in a great series - a must for babies and toddlers!

Summary: A wonderful book for babies and toddlers