Oh, What a Tangle! by Anita Pouroulis and Monika Filipina Trzpil
| Oh, What a Tangle! by Anita Pouroulis and Monika Filipina Trzpil | |
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| Category: For Sharing | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: A cautionary tale about what happens if you don't look after your hair. It's gently, wonderfully funny. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 36 | Date: November 2012 |
| Publisher: Digital Leaf | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0957308749 | |
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I would like to introduce you to Kiki. She's a gorgeous young girl - or certainly is at the start of our story - and she has what her mother refers to as a crowning glory. Her hair is long and soft, just like a waterfall of chocolate milk. Oh, can't you just imagine it? It did, though, require a daily brush and well, when you're young and have important things to do, boring jobs like brushing your hair tend to get done in something of a hurry. As every young girl will tell you it's essential that they spend time on drawing pictures on each right shoe, painting their toenails different colours, or building towers of toppling pans. I mean, which young girl in her right mind is going to waste time on brushing her hair? Eh?
Well, Kiki certainly didn't - to her mother's increasing fury - and her hair grew into an increasingly messy tangle. It did have its uses though. Kiki could use it as a pillow. She'd tuck things into it rather than use a rucksack for school. It was absolutely watertight so that she didn't need an umbrella or raincoat. Herbs took root and... Well, actually I'm not going to tell you what happened to drive Kiki's Mum to take action, but she did and it was drastic. It might even have merited the headline Thousands Made Homeless.
It's a cautionary tale but it's beautifully done and you can't help but giggle as you read and as Kiki's hair gets more and more extraordinary. It's all done in rhyme. Just occasionally it's a little clunky - fine to read, but you might lose the rhythm if you were reading aloud - but that's me being very picky. I doubt that it's going to worry the target age group in the slightest. It's aimed at the older pre-schooler and those in the early years of school. It's entirely suitable for the emerging reader too, with just enough text on each page and plenty of pictures to give hints about longer words.
The pictures are great fun too. You wonder, as you turn each page, whether or not the hair can become more extreme - and it always can! There are bonus pages at the end, with the opportunity to create your own hairstyle for Kiki, a 'spot the difference' puzzle and a 'find the hairbrush' challenge. At 36 pages it's bigger than the usual picture book and there's a lot more in the way of content. There's also lots more to discover at the Digital Leaf website.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
For more about the problems of tangled hair we can recommend The Tangle Fairy by Seema Barker.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Oh, What a Tangle! by Anita Pouroulis and Monika Filipina Trzpil 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 Oh, What a Tangle! by Anita Pouroulis and Monika Filipina Trzpil at Amazon.com.
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