Children’s Hour: The Jungle Run

Children’s Hour is the weekly feature where I look at picture books I have encountered during my work at nursery. My reviews contain children’s opinions which are usually from the children in toddler room (so they are all 2). Sometimes I also have books which my niece and nephew are enjoying too.

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

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

The Jungle Run is similar in a lot of ways to Giraffes Can’t Dance (it’s even illustrated by the same person). This time it’s a run instead of a dance and a lion cub rather than a giraffe, but you get the idea. The cub is jeered at because he’s too small to race, he could never win.  I had expected a sort of hare and tortoise story (i.e. the other animals get cocky so the cub wins). I wasn’t quite right, it was more that what the other animals had seen as barriers for cub to win the race ended up helping him.

It’s a good book. It has a nice rhythm, some load noises to make, and a nice message. However it doesn’t quite meet up to Giraffes Can’t Dance, and the kids didn’t stay quite as interested, although once the noises came their attention was drawn back.

Buy from amazon:

Paperback (£5.99)

Hardback (£3.28)