Children’s Hour: Peely Wally

Children’s Hour is a feature posted every Thursday here at Lucybird’s Book Blog. Children’s Hour is my time for reviewing children’s picture books. In my job in a nursery I encounter lots of children’s books, and these are the books I use for Children’s Hour.

You can find links to past Children’s Hour posts here.

I’d love to hear everybody’s experiences of the books I review too, and feel free to post me a link to your own reviews, I’d love to make this a bit interactive.

The image (if you were wondering) is taken from Shirley’s Hughes’ Alfie and Annie-Rose books which I loved as a child.

Peely Wally turned up in pre-school with the same group of books which included Something Beginning With Blue. I almost wish it had been given to toddlers because I can see them enjoying it. It’s fairly simple, and has lots of animals which our kids seem to be very into recently. Unfortunately it’s already been ripped, which will make it difficult to read to them (and I know the manager will be annoyed, seeing as we have been asking for new books for months).

Anyway there was one particular child in pre-school who loved Peely Wally, so that’s how I encountered it. It’s the story of a bird who lays an egg, but gets so excited that she knocks it off the branch, and it travels over a lot of different animals before it gets back to her, and hatches.

It’s funny, and has a lot of scope for dramatics, so it’s a good one to read. The pictures are bright, but simple, and some of them even look like the kids could easily be copied by the kids (Peely Wally herself is a scribble with beak, eyes and legs).

Ok so a personified scribble does make me think of Dr Who (and a clip I can’t find in decent quality), but this one is much cuter!

Buy Peely Wally:

Paperback (£5.99)

Kindle (£3.99)