We LOVE Keep Out! Bears About! by Sally Grindley and Peter Utton. It’s a brilliant concept which involves the children directly in the story – the narrator speaking are they sure they want to carry on? Are they brave enough to go through that dark wood, even if there might be bears? And all the children I have read it with relish the interaction.
Shhh! came first, first published in 1991, but we are very late to the party and have only recently discovered it.
SHHH! You are about to enter a giant’s castle. Will you get through without waking the giant? Do you dare try?
Based on the familiar story of Jack and the Beanstalk, the narrator leads the reader through the castle, creeping past the characters from the story and peeping back to the previous page to check that they haven’t been disturbed.
I love the illustrations, with tons of detail and magical things for children to spot. But the true joy of this book is the way it reinvents the way children respond to and interact with a book. It invites them in, right in to the story and the setting. It asks them to get involved and encourages them to play.
Repeated phrases, beautiful interaction and building of tension that leads to a squeal-worthy ending. What’s not to love?
Source- kindly sent for review by Hodder Children’s Books.
Rhino Reads 
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