Order! Order! by Nigel Tetley

Order! Order! by Nigel Tetley
Buy Order! Order! by Nigel Tetley at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: For Sharing
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: It's either three good stories and a rhyme or an introduction to sequences - ordinal and cardinal numbers and days of the week. Well, actually - it's both.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 54	Date: January 2018
Publisher: Matador
ISBN: 978-1788039574
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There are two ways of reading Nigel Tetley's Order! Order! To begin with you can enjoy sharing three stories and a rhyme with your child. The Great Penguin Race tells the tale of what happens to ten penguins as they enter a race: it's funny and well supported by the illustrations. There's a gentle moral to the story: running a straight race pays off in the end, but it's delivered with a very light touch. In Animal Antics seven assorted animals do some silly things on each day of the week, purely for our enjoyment. Little Lucy Ladybird tells us the story of what happened to Lucy's spots when she was flying home in strong winds. The rhyme - Handy Fingers is always going to be great fun as you've got to do all the actions, including poking, which you've probably been told not to do, ever...

That's all good fun but if you add an educator's hat then you can see that there's a lot more to Order! Order! and the clue is in the title. It's about sequences. The first story about the penguins deals with ordinal numbers as we work our way through what happens to the first, second and right up to the tenth penguin. Animal Antics gives us the days of the week and Lucy the Ladybird gives us the first five cardinal numbers (although some sharp-eyed children are going to point out that we can distinctly see six spots blowing away from Lucy, but we only hear about five...). The final rhyme reinforces the cardinal numbers. There's quite a lot been learned there, without anyone realising that's what's happened.

There's another bonus, too. The font is clear and words are well spaced. There are no clever tricks with how it's laid out on the page. The vocabulary is generally simple with the occasional word which might need a little explaining, (if the illustrations don't give all the help that's required) and there's never so much on the page that it's daunting to look at. The text isn't justified, so there's not much chance of losing your place on the page. The longest story only has ten pages with text on them, so it's not too far to the end of any of the chapters. It's a lovely book for the emerging reader.

I began by thinking that there was rather a lot in this picture book, but ended up by realising that it was splendid value, great fun and gently educational. I can't recollect another picture book which gave both cardinal and ordinal numbers and I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag.

If you'd like another sequence - the alphabet - we can recommend Alison Jay's ABC.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Order! Order! by Nigel Tetley at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Order! Order! by Nigel Tetley at Amazon.com.

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