Zoe and Beans - A Review
We love sharing books as a family and Bud has a great collection of books already. It can be difficult to find books to engage both children as Bud gets a little bored by the brightly coloured board books that Little Miss loves and she can't quite concentrate on a full-length picture book that Bud loves.The Zoe and Beans series of books may have given us the answer though. Written by father and daughter team, Chloe and Mick Inkpen there are both picture books and board books available using the same characters.
Zoe and Beans are a small girl (Zoe) and her friend Beans, a rather large dog. The books tell of their adventures with their friend Oscar and his rather large collection of animals.
'Hello Oscar', the picture book details Zoe and Beans' first meeting with Oscar and is a large book with bright, distinctive illustrations. The characters are engaging and definitely up to date, Zoe rushes in to 'Google it' when she has a question about one of the animals she meets. Bud has taken to this book and it has been a popular bedtime choice over the last few weeks. He loves the repetition of 'Hello Oscar' throughout the story and enjoys saying it before I have the chance to read the words.
He loves to 'read' the book on his own too, which mainly consists of him looking at the book, naming all the different animals and saying 'Hello Oscar' a lot but I love to see it.
The other two books we were sent are board books, so perfect to add to Little Miss' increasing collection of 'her' books. It helps us to differentiate between the two as Bud tends to take over otherwise and regards them all as 'his'. We received 'Zoe & Beans: Look at Me' and 'Zoe & Beans: How Many Pets?' They are both lovely books with clear illustrations and snippets of text on each page, perfect for older babies and young toddlers. The board books are really excellent quality too so I have no concerns when my girl makes a grab for it.
We're loving sharing books with our daughter, as well as Bud, of course. We try to ensure she has her own bedtime story and these books have slotted into the bedtime routine really well. She gets quite excited when we sit her on our laps to read to her now, I'm hoping that means we have another little bookworm on our hands.
The Zoe and Beans books are published by Macmillan Kids UK and are available from all usual stockists.
