Paddington Marches On by Michael Bond

Paddington Marches On by Michael Bond
Buy Paddington Marches On by Michael Bond at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: Zoe Page
Summary: Seven short stories featuring the serious little bear, these are fun for sharing or starting to read alone.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 114	Date: July 2014
Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books
ISBN: 978-0006753629
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We all remember Paddington, I’m sure. The Brown family and their housekeeper, the formidable Mrs Bird, and the nice/nasty/nosy next door neighbour Mr Curry and the rest of the gang. This book of seven classic Paddington stories has everything I knew and loved about the bear, reissued for the next generation.

Paddington is a rather helpful chappy, and he really does mean well, but sometimes things don’t go quite to plan. In these stories in addition to fun trips out and what not, we have a case of mistaken identity, a bit of clumsiness and a couple of possible career options (factory worker, plumber). It’s quite a lot to pack in but then these stories are rammed full of fun and adventure and everything else.

This is a lovely book for reading aloud, and would work well at home of course but also at a grand parent’s house as the stories are independent of one another so it wouldn’t matter terribly if you read one a week or on monthly visits – they don’t have to be every night for a week bedtime stories if that doesn’t work for you (though you could also plough through the whole thing in a rainy, perhaps bank holiday, weekend).

The stories are fun rather than silly. There is a bit of a plot developed in each one and the language is accessible without being simplified: the original terminology hasn’t been updated so we have a world where 10p buys you something in the bakery, and where people accept kind offers by saying I should like that in a nice formal way. For younger readers it’s one for sharing together, but over time they’ll be able to manage it themselves quite easily, so Paddington can be a part of their life for quite a few years.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending us a copy.

There's more from Paddington in his other adventures. Read more here Michael Bond.

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