Zebra Goes Camping! (Zigby Camps Out - Brian Paterson)

Member Name: sewbizzie

Product:	Zigby Camps Out - Brian Paterson
Date:	14/01/09 (217 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun book for children

Disadvantages: None

Zigby camps out is a lovely bright paperback book which I bought for my boys. The cover of the book is very appealing, it is bright yellow with green and orange leaves around the edge and it has a picture of Zigby with 2 friends. The title is in big black letting at the top. The back cover of the book is also bright yellow and again has a small picture of Zigby and a short paragraph telling us about the book.

The first page in the book introduces us to Zigby, he is a zebra who loves being outdoors and getting up to mischief with his friends. He loves going exploring but some times this leads him into trouble.

Bertie Bird is an African Guinea foul and he is Zigby's friend. He gets very scared very easily and he thinks his friends are too naughty. He hates missing out on the fun but he does not like getting his feathers dirty.

McMeer is the meerkat who is Zigby's other friend. He likes showing off and playing tricks. His jokes sometimes cause lots of problems but he always knows how to have fun.

The story then starts with Zigby in his tree house above Mudwater Creek, he receives a funny shaped parcel from his Aunt. He opened the parcel and was please with what was inside as it was something he had always wanted so he went off to show it to his friends. He showed his new tent to his friends and told them that now they could go camping. McMeer was excited as he had never been camping before and Bertie just hoped it wasn't too dangerous. Zigby packed a swishing stick and they went off on their adventure.

Zigby said that they would go camping in the deepest darkest jungle.

Would Zigby, Bertie and McMeer get to the deepest darkest jungle and have their camping adventure or would other things get in their way and would they be able to stay out of trouble?

This really is a fun little book. The first page was good as we got to meet and know a little about the characters in the story. The book is written in nice simple words which makes this a good book for new readers to read on their own.

Each page has nice bright colourful pictures which do help to tell the story and helps my 4 year old stay interested in the book. The text is on the coloured parts of the pages in black ink and on most of the pages it is easy to see but there are one or two pages where you have to look hard to read the words as the colour behind the ink is quite dark. I think it would have been more helpful to either put the text on plain white sections of the pages or change the text colour to make it more visible.

The book takes me about 10 minutes to read but longer if we stop to talk a lot about what we can see in the pictures. My eldest son manages to read this independently but he only reads a few pages in bed each night.

The book was written by Brian Peterson and was published by Collins. The retail price on the back cover of the book is £4.99 but I got this for the bargain price of £1 in Asda so get down there and see if you too can pick it up for this great price.

If you would like to know more about this book or just about Zigby then please visit www.zigby.co.uk

Summary: Zigby the Zebra and friends get a tent and go camping