Monday 18 August 2014

3rd Picture Book Blog for Simone Da Costa's Emily-Rose's Day at the Farm


AMAZON LINK                                       We are back!! Story time in the Holyoake homestead has resumed. The kids have been pestering when I will be doing another one of these so they were very excited when I came home armed with the next book to read.

This week we have read Simone da Costas Emily-Rose's Day at the Farm. This story is about a little girl called Emily-Rose who has gone on a day trip to her grandmothers farm. She had always wanted to feed the animals but Grammy always did this herself. Well this time Emily-Rose has a go and let’s just say….. Grammy knows best!

The instant thing that hit all of us was the colourful book cover, it certainly did the job of enticing us all in. We were all eager to see what was on the next page. Again I went with the option of reading this out three times as you get more constructive feedback out of the little people then.


So first up we had my 7 year old daughter Felicity aka Flic, Fifi, little miss chatterbox. After being told off yet again for reading too quickly she gave me her thoughts. After reading it slowly and clearly she immediately said that she loved the pictures and said that they showed exactly what was happening in the story. She also liked some of the terminology that isn't so familiar with us Brits, like cracked corn, she mentioned that a lot! She thoroughly enjoy the story and her little face lit up when she saw a word search at the end, a very clever idea I might add. Oh and the mentioning of falling on her bottom raised a few giggles.
Next up my son Dylan aka Dil who is 10. 
I could tell he was enjoying the story as there were no interruptions and he was giggling throughout. He liked the term rambunctious that kept popping up, saying it sounded like an old fashioned word and he was keen himself to find out what it meant .He really enjoyed the pickles the animals were being and each time I turned the page he was keen to see what they did next to poor Emily-Rose, trying to guess what they would do. He thought it was quite silly of Emily-Rose running away with the cracked corn and being chased by ducks. I told him that I did exactly the same thing with a baby elephant, I kid you not! I too went to give a baby elephant a bit of my sandwich only to then decide that I was too scared to do it. Off course I started running and so did the elephant. My mum shouting “drop it, drop it”, I did eventually……never again he he

And our third recruit Phoebe our next door neighbour who is 9. Phoebe's comment made me laugh at the end. Her exact words were " I hate to admit it but the grown up's are always right" She enjoyed the story saying that it was a lovely picture book for the younger reader and that it teaches you not to rush into things and to listen to what your grown ups tell you. She enjoyed the pictures saying that the illustrations were very bright and colourful and matched the story well. The addition of a quiz and a word search was a very clever idea and went down well with all 3 of the children

Last but not least, my thoughts......Well I have to applaud Simone and the illustrator on creating a very visually appealing book. You can see so much thought has been put into the layout of the book and the illustrations really draw you into the story. From an illustrators point of view I have to say that the pictures really compliment the story beautifully. The story itself is a delightful read, keeping you enticed the whole way through. An excellent piece of story telling and a lovely tribute to the relationship between grandmother and grand daughter. It was lovely to read out as well, with lots of different expressions to play with. I think any child would enjoy this and grown ups will love reading it to their children. A great read for the whole family to enjoy together.

You can follow Simone and her work via her blog, facebook and twitter. Links are as follows:





From all at the Holyoake Homestead, it’s over and out for now. Be sure to pop by again for the next installment.

Sweet dreams xx







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