We're Going to a Party! by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross

We're Going to a Party! by Jeanne Willis illustrated by Tony Ross
Buy We're Going to a Party! by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: For Sharing
Reviewer: Ruth Ng
Summary: Who doesn't enjoy a good fancy dress party? Fun lift the flap book with a pop-up surprise at the end!
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 16	Date: October 2011
Publisher: Andersen
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-1849391221
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The animals are going to a fancy dress party! But what is everyone going to dress up as? Can you guess who's inside each costume? This lift the flap book allows you to take a peek beneath the costume to see exactly who's inside!

This book is full of fun. It's a lovely idea for a lift the flap book, to discover who is hiding beneath the costume, and it's never quite the animal you expect! There's someone dressed as a banana, another as a pretty princess, a spaceman and many more. The costumes are a good mix of the silly (like the banana!) and the typical costume requests that small children tend to request for such parties (like a pirate!) The flaps seem reasonably sturdy and easy to use. I wouldn't let an unattended baby loose on it, but it should withstand some solo toddler reading.

The text is told in rhyme, nice and simple, and with the end of the rhyme on the underside of the flaps. It's a lovely book for reading aloud since it allows little ones to guess and shout out who is in disguise on each page and of course as soon as they see the image beneath they'll be yelling out the various different animals they can see!

The illustrations, as you'd expect with Tony Ross, are lively and funny. I think my favourite is the one showing who is behind the pretty princess (a cheeky looking crocodile!) They're lovely and colourful and they've been drawn very cleverly to work with the animal behind each costume, for example on the pirate picture it looks initially like the pirate has a hook on the end of one arm, and when you lift the flap you see that it's actually the cat's tail curling around. I also really like the tiger page which has the big round eyes cut out of the flap to show the real animal's eyes beneath.

The final pop-up surprise is someone who is dressed in a monster costume which, the animals declare, will never win a prize since it's so rubbish...you can probably guess that this time it isn't a costume, it actually is a monster! The monster is green with rather nice rainbow horns, and he pops up nicely - not too big to be scary but with enough 'pop' to have an effect. A nice book to share with toddlers one to one, or to read aloud in a playgroup or nursery setting.

Further reading suggestion: One of my very favourite pop-up books is the delightful Chick by Ed Vere. If you haven't tried it yet then you really should!

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