The awesome sisters, Melanie Slack and Katie Green asked me to write a review of their special illustrated Christmas book for kids.
The Adventures of Frank and Diesel: Frank’s First Christmas is the most recent book of the series published by the sisters.
The other books in this series include:
The Adventures of Frank and Diesel are actually inspired by their own very cute doggies!
Meet Frank: The 1 year old Pug
Meet Diesel: The 5 year old Saint Bernard
What is it about?
Frank’s First Christmas is a Christmas book for kids which is all about the Christmas holiday – leading up to the big day itself! I love how Melanie and Katie managed to fit so much detail into a kids book, without making it seem like “too much”.
The doggies have lots of fun getting ready for Christmas by decorating the house and the tree, getting the food ready and listening to carollers.
Once all the fun work is done, it’s Christmas eve!
…Guess who Frank and Diesel meet?
Thats right, Santa Clause and Rudolph!
Santa tells Frank that he know’s he has been a good doggy. You know what this means…PRESENTS!
Frank and Diesel wake up on Christmas morning to their presents that Santa had put under the tree for them.
They went to sleep happily that night after a wonderful day, full of fun and happiness.
Why I love this book
Age appropriate
I read this book with my daughter, who will be 2-years old just after Christmas. As the book is aimed at children aged slightly older, I was not sure if my Squidge would take to it.
…She did!
She sat through the entire book – twice in a row!
Squidge was able to recognise “doggy”, “Santa”, “tree” and “horsey” (she doesn’t yet know reindeer!) and was excited to get to the next page.
The illustrations are very well drawn and enticing to little people’s eyes, with fantastic, bright colours throughout the book.
My absolute favourite part of the book is when Frank balanced the star on top of his head!
If your child is anything like my Squidge, they will have a “thing” about balancing things on their (or your) head! Squidge automatically got up to run to one of her shapes (from her shape sorting toy) and stuck it on my head.
And started to giggle!
The language and method of writing
The language of writing in this book is very well-articulated and perfect for a Christmas book for kids.
As an educator of children for over 10 years, one thing that sprung to mind was how good this could also be for children with Special Educational Needs.
If your child has a shorter attention span, you can make it an exciting bed-time read where you read a few pages before bed.
This gives your kiddo something fun to look forward to before bed.
…It might even get them to bed quicker! 😉
The simplicity and ease of reading is excellent and each page rhymes with the next.
Children learn through rhymes, so I love the way the author has used this in the book.
Book Layout
With 46 pages, it might seem like the story might be too long.
However.
The simple way in which the story is written makes it so interesting that even YOU (the adult) will want to know what happens next!
To keep the child interested and add some diversity to the layout, the pages actually alternate in their design. One page is coloured with just writing on it, and the next page has an illustration with writing on it.
This theme continues throughout the book and is a fabulous unique selling point.
My Rating?
5*
As my first book review of a children’s book, I was not sure what I would write at first and I must admit that I was worried in case it wasn’t any good.
Thankfully, this was NOT a problem – at all!
As soon as we had finished reading the book (for the second time), I found that I had so much to say about it that I would not be lost for words!
For the target age range being pre-school (originally aimed at 2-4 year olds), this book is perfect. As a parent of a (soon-to-be) 2-year old, I try to get my child reading books that are just slightly above her age range.
This book brings some higher-level words, but with gorgeous illustrations for the younger toddlers to match to the words (like my daughter did).
I would definitely recommend this book to parents of toddlers (especially those with doggies!) as a brilliant Christmas book for kids to read every year.
I would also recommend reading the rest of the series too…we all know us parents love having “sets of books”!
Happy Reading for Christmas!
** Get YOUR copy **
The Adventures of Frank and Diesel: Frank’s First Christmas
