Would You Call Your Baby Clyde? (Sir Preschool: the Snowball - J. Armstrong)

Member Name: DavyMichelle

Product:	Sir Preschool: the Snowball - J. Armstrong
Date:	26/05/09 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, Repetitive

Disadvantages: Bit Tricky for a Total Beginner

The Snowball is a book from the Step Into Reading series at the Level 1 stage. It's aimed at pre-schoolers, and you can get it for £2.99 from Amazon if you want to buy a copy.

I think this is a nice book, but one that's perhaps aimed at not quite the right age group. There are quite complicated sentences in this books, such as "it rolled along and picked up Clyde." Clyde isn't a common kids' name, and it's not spelled phonetically either, so there's no chance of your average four year old working that one out for themselves!

The saving grace to this slightly tricky sentences is that they're frequently repeated in different places throughout the book. So after "it rolled along and picked up Clyde." there are a few pages of different text, and then "it rolled along and picked up Pat." so kids have the chance to have remembered the words they were told a few pages ago, and try them out for themselves on that next similar page.

I would say that ideally this is a first reader book for a child that's already started to get to grips with the basics. I think to get the most out of this, a child will be of nursery or reception age and have already learned a few key words and picked up the idea of phonetics too.

This would probably be a fun book to get at Christmas too as there are loads of great snowy illustrations in this, including a few snowmen.

Summary: Recommended