Please: A First Book of Manners by Patricia Hegarty and Fhiona Galloway
| Please: A First Book of Manners by Patricia Hegarty and Fhiona Galloway | |
|
| |
| Category: For Sharing | |
| |
Reviewer: Ruth Ng
 | |
| Summary: Sweet and sturdy, this delivers the manners message in a lovely way! | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 10 | Date: April 2015 |
| Publisher: Little Tiger Kids | |
| ISBN: 9781848690554 | |
|
Share on: | |
|
| |
Ah, that age old battle of how to teach your children to be polite. I had a teacher who had magic hands, and she would only release what she was holding if you remembered to say please and thank you to her! This board book introduces the word please in a lovely way, right from a very early age!
Written in rhyme, this is a story about Bear who has lots of demands but is scandalising everyone by forgetting to say please! He wants some cheese, he wants a toy train, will he ever remember to say please? Well, I’m sure you can guess because it wouldn’t be a terribly instructive book if he never got round to being polite! Yes, at the end, he not only remembers to say please, he also apologises for his earlier behaviour (which is perhaps my favourite part of the whole book!) The repetition around the word please works very well, and on each page we’re asked what has he forgotten? so the prompt is there for children, as they get older, to join in with a nice loud shout of please!
The book itself is a board book, nice and sturdy, with a hole in the middle running all the way through to the back where there is a finger puppet bear who you can poke through each page to enact Bear’s part in the story! I must admit, this is where I’ve knocked off half a star, because although the bear is very cute, and it’s a very sweet idea, you can’t get your finger right inside his head, just up to his neck, and so the movement of his head is a bit wobbly. If he’d been a true finger puppet it would have allowed for more expression, I feel, but of course my two year old son cares not a job for such nitpicking and he has happily played at being Bear with no head issues whatsoever!
The drawings are bright and simple, and I like that you could read this with a small baby and delight them with the bear popping out yet it still works with toddlers too, who enjoy doing the bear for themselves. I even caught my eight year old daughter having a go with this one, so it’s been fun all round! A lovely book, with a worthy message. Very enjoyable!
You might also like to try these puppet board books too: Are We Nearly There Yet? by Katherine Lodge and Hugless Douglas Finds A Hug by David Melling
Please share on: 
Facebook, 
Twitter and
Instagram
You can read more book reviews or buy Please: A First Book of Manners by Patricia Hegarty and Fhiona Galloway 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 Please: A First Book of Manners by Patricia Hegarty and Fhiona Galloway at Amazon.com.
Comments
Like to comment on this review?
Just send us an email and we'll put the best up on the site.
