May Focus Title

Colours, Colours Everywhere by Julia Donaldson

A stunning book to encourage creativity, bursting with colourful landscapes to
stimulate the imagination.

Follow a little girl in Colours, Colours Everywhere as she paints her own adventure with her bright blue tree frog companion. With luscious green trees to climb and red hot air balloons to sail away in, young children will delight in the rhyming story and vibrant artwork while learning about different colours.

*Description and image taken from waterstones.com - no copyright intended.*

I chose this one from the display at work - Julia Donaldson is a firm favourite in our house, with the likes of The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom and Tabby McTat being regular picks from the bookshelf, along with her lift-the-flap series, Tales from Acorn Wood, which they have at Nannie's house. So, when I saw this, I couldn't resist!

I set it up in our story basket with their coloured play silks, of which, for full disclosure, never made it out of that basket all month! Meh, you win some, you lose some... At least they loved the book!

With a lovely story, beautiful illustrations, and flaps to lift on every page, this one was a hit with both boys and has been picked up by them both on numerous occasions to be read. I've even found Bear sitting looking through it a couple of times on his own.

The Cub is starting to show an interest in more and more every day, so I chose this one to include a topic that he could take part in, and many of his toy rotations over the course of the month have been colour-related, including sorting activities, single colour sensory tubs and toys designed for this purpose. Bear already knows his colours, but loved the exploration of what you could paint, so we cracked out the watercolours one afternoon in the garden and both boys enjoyed exploring the colours in that way.

Bear and I had another go with the paints the following week where I encouraged him to think about what he was painting with the colours like the little girl in the story did, which went great for the first few colours, and then he made a mistake and used the wrong colour and all was lost from there. He started another painting, but didn't want to do it as a story, which was fine. He loves painting and I really need to get them out more - maybe the garden is my way forward; less mess to worry about!

When it came to writing his book review for Colours, Colours Everywhere, he gave it four stars, because, "I liked it a very lot, just not five stars!" And I couldn't argue with that!

Moving forward, the Waterstones store where I work has started doing a picture book of the month, so unless there is one that I don't particularly like, or I don't think I can plan activities around, I will be using this in the future, however, June's book is Colours, Colours Everywhere, so I have chosen something else as we have only just done that one!

All the Things We Carry by Helen Docherty is due out on the 4th of July and can be pre-ordered via this link - however, one of the perks of being a bookseller is that we can get copies of books pre-publication, and I happen to have this one, which is a lovely story with an important message about the love that we carry for one another in our hearts.

Have you read any Julia Donaldson books? Which is your favourite?

Mama Bear x