Changes

I really like the style of Chris Judge's artwork. His character, Tom, has a little bit of the feel of a contemporary Tintin I felt, and right from the front cover you're ready for an adventurous story with Tom striding up a snowy peak, pick in hand, whales behind, a hot air balloon in the sky alongside of a rescue helicopter! Although some pages have the simplistic feel of a toddler's picture book the language is actually quite mature, and the mixture of the large page spreads along with smaller panel illustrations mixes things up making it feel like both a picture book for little ones and an early graphic novel for those starting to read for themselves.

I read the book with my five year old daughter and she really enjoyed it and has asked for repeat readings since that first time. One particularly popular page is an image of Tom setting off on his journey with his backpack and a list, with pictures, of everything he's taking with him. You can spend quite some time itemising everything and talking about what flares are for! Tom's voyage goes from a boat to a hot air balloon to a parachute to a rather dangerous slide down the mountain. We see him facing creatures such as a walrus and a polar bear. He jumps across broken ice, builds himself an igloo, fishes through a hole in the ice, before finally finding his father who had broken his foot. It's lucky he packed the flares since one is spotted by a rescue helicopter and so Tom and his father get home safely.

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