| Product: |
Maisy's Rainbow Dream - Lucy Cousins |
| Date: |
03/04/07 (85 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Great for learning colours and large, bright illustrations.
Disadvantages: No lift-the-flap opportunities.
~ Who is Maisy? ~
Maisy is a lovable, cute little white mouse, with a pink tail, nose, ears and paws.
Maisy isn't a regular sort of mouse.......she wears clothes, sleeps in a bed and brushes her teeth amongst other things. She does everything that young children do, except she's a mouse!!
That's her appeal to young children as they can relate to most things that Maisy does in the large number of books that Lucy Cousins has written about her.
~ Maisy's Rainbow Dream ~
It begins with Maisy going to sleep when 'suddenly a dream begins inside her head.'
In her dream, her friends go with her and she dreams about the following:
* a red ladybird
* an orange fish
* a yellow bee
* a green leaf
* a blue clock
* a indigo spots (on what I think is a dog with big floppy ears!)
* a violet butterfly
Until finally her dream takes her to Rainbowland where it is very beautiful!
Maisy wakes up from her dream to a beautiful day.
~ Style, Format, Content & Educational Value ~
As you can see this is a very simple text all about colours. Children are introduced to some more unusual colours like indigo and violet which is great.
The text is extremely simple with the majority of the pages only having one sentence.
The text size is very large, an added bonus for young children and emergent readers.
The text is on the left hand page with a picture of Maisy in her bed along with the background colour that is being talked about. On the opposite page there are pictures of her friends alongwith the thing she is dreaming about.
This book is great for any child from approx 12 months upwards as it's never too young to begin to learn about colours.
~ Illustrations ~
I love Lucy Cousins illustrations and her technique which really appeals to young children.
They are bright, large, simple and bold. The outlines of each character or object is in thick black pen and the rest is coloured in, in rich vibrant colours.
There is lots to talk about in each picture and an element of humour, e.g. the duck / goose walking along with a hat and stripy socks on, the crocodile flying with a spotty red umbrella and the elephant on a skateboard.
This can't fail to appeal to any young child.
~ Maisy Products ~
Maisy is hugely popular and a range of movies / films on VHS are available:
* Play with Maisy
* Count with Maisy
* Maisy's Bedtime
* Maisy's colours and shapes
There are also educational resources available:
* Domino game
* Memory game
* Colour game
* Counting game
~ Other Maisy Books ~
* Maisy's Colour Collection
* Maisy takes a bath
* Maisy at the farm
* Where is Maisy going?
* Maisy goes to bed
~ Price ~
My paperback ISBN: 1084428-685-1 was £5.99 but it's worth checking out amazon where used and new ones are available from just 24p and hardcovers start from £1.37 as opposed to the RRP of 10.99.
~ Conclusion ~
I am pleased to see that Lucy Cousins has included more of a range of colours than what is in 'Maisy's Colour Collection.'
My only minor criticism is that it would have been made even more appealing to children if she had included some lift the flap opportunities which she so often does in other Maisy books so as to develop fine motor skills.
Despite this, this really is a must-have book for anyone with very young children who want to learn about colours and the enjoyment of books.
Summary: Another great book in this series by Lucy Cousins.
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