Colin the Cart Horse by Gavin Puckett and Tor Freeman
| Colin the Cart Horse by Gavin Puckett and Tor Freeman | |
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| Category: Children's Rhymes and Verse | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A superlative rhyme allows the author to get us right up close to a farting horse – with all the benefits and problems that suggests. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 80 | Date: September 2016 |
| Publisher: Faber and Faber | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9780571315437 | |
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Meet Colin. He's a perfectly regular cart horse, carrying the crops, tools and children around the farm. He's happy with a life of labour, resting after his shift is done about three every afternoon, and a life of hay – that is, however, until he wonders what his fellow farm animals are eating. What could be the consequence of him trying out every other farm food on the market?
I guess, in all honesty, I wouldn't give such a simple book five stars if it weren't done in rhyme. This book is about a horse that gets bad wind, and causes a certain problem to trump all problems (pun intended). And that's it. There is a moral, yes, but on the whole the book is just about the build-up to when a certain bodily build-up lets rip – and nothing else.
The very essence of the book, however, and the reason it's so loveable, is the verse – rhyming couplets that do here and there slip up on the beat (especially when it comes to dropping in biohazard stickers) but generally makes for a perfect read-aloud volume. I can easily imagine the parent sharing this jape with their young friend, pointing to the detail in the lovely illustrations, and taking their time over it – for me, my reading aloud of the whole thing left me with a bouncing, almost rapping rhythm. Whatever speed and whatever approach you take, however, I can only see this book creating broad smiles, if not more.
So yes, the jape there is a singular one, but it's a good one. I could forgive the script for going into such detail about one bodily function, when it did it in couplets – any other form and it would seem gratuitous. The fact the book was just about a bottom burp, when the first I met in this series had a much richer world and story, was the slightest of problems, due to the qualities of the writing. To repeat, the pictures are just as good – it's odd to see a pastel blue horse, but in the scheme of things here, which are either blue or orange and nothing else, it works, and Colin – all bug-eyed innocence – has so much character from the most simple of lines. That's the pleasure, for once, of this book – its simplicity. It doesn't aim for any further heights than the bottom, but it hits every target you'd want. For the under-sevens this is lovely company, and I quite envy them it.
I must thank the publisher for my review copy.
More bouncy wordplay can be had for this audience with the likes of Oh, the Places You'll Go by Dr Seuss.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Colin the Cart Horse by Gavin Puckett and Tor Freeman 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 Colin the Cart Horse by Gavin Puckett and Tor Freeman at Amazon.com.
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