If You're Cheeky and you Know it! product reviews

Being school holidays its always a trip to the local library to get some much needed books. I had remembered reading reviews about this book on KR and so knew this was a must. Bringing it home the girls where so excited I had not even finished bringing in the groceries inside and they where both on the couch reading it. My six year old was singing away at the top of her lungs while my three year old was doing the actions just like she was told too.

My favourite part was 'If you're a hippo and you know it wriggle your rump' both girls wriggle those bums as they laugh at the top of there lungs. Unfortunately, the CD is missing so we could not hear the song but both of them make up for it as it is basically 'if your happy and you know it'.

We have had now for about 5 days and they must of read it a million times more than any of the other books we got out. I have been asked on more than one occasion can we go and buy it so they can hear the cd. I am thinking it is a good idea as it keeps them both entertained for ages and last night my husband read for there 'night time story'. When he walked into the lounge said this was not the best idea as had both of them bouncing off the walls. Today they have planned a show for the two of us featuring this book. Fun times.

The pictures are fantastic and so funny. They both love the picture of the Frog catching a fly. The frogs are all holding signs up saying 10 where as the fly is holding a sign up saying 0. Although I am not suppose to know this they have been making up a sign saying ten - no doubt something to do with the show this afternoon.

This book is wonderfully illustrated, with friendly and fun looking creatures throughout. There is a wide variety of animals too, ranging from elephants and giraffes to a waddling penguin wearing a hat. It has such a catchy and familiar tune, that children can sing along to straight away.
I work in childcare, where I have seen children sitting eagerly to listen to this book at mat time and often requesting to hear it. They love the CD element especially. It just seems so much more fun to sing along with music while enjoying this book, rather than just having somebody read it to you, and it makes it much more interactive for the children! From my experience I have found that interactive books are the most popular.
Children get to follow the instructions/ actions (pull a face, waddle around etc), which are simple and easy to understand, fun to do and it gives the children an opportunity to be a little bit silly and have a laugh.

I definitely recommend this book to anybody with children at home, or anybody who would like to entertain a group of children- this will keep them interested throughout. Even if you wanted to sing along without the CD, I think that this would still prove to be a favourite for all- children and parents alike!

I jumped at the chance to review this book - especially because I knew that it came with the bonus of a CD too. There is just something extra special about CD books that children and adults seem to love and this book isn't an exception to the rule. As soon as I received this I put the CD on at home and my 7month old looked around to see where the noise was coming from and she had big smiles before she started laughing! I read to her lots as well as play music so she is fairly used to stuff like this but she is also really good at letting me know what she likes and dislikes. Its fair to say she liked the sound of this song/book!

Next up was the biggest challenge I could put any book through - Mat time at the pre school where I teach - that's approx. 40 children aged two to four all in one place trying their best to sit still. Any book needs to be amazing to hold their attention where there is someone sitting so close to them and so many possibilities of distraction. I was actually blown away at just how still ALL the children sat when we played this CD and went through the book. Every single child was engaged, listening, some singing and trying out the actions! I had a chorus of "wow that is so awesome" "what an awesome book" "where did you get that from" from all the teachers as soon as it had finished as they too were blown away by the response of the children. Needless to say this book is still on my shelf at work and it has featured at one of our mat times every day for the last 2 weeks!

The illustrations in this book are fantastic - bright and fun - match the words/song perfectly and definitely capture children's attention. As an adult/teacher I love the different animals that are introduced throughout this book. Its not often that you get a book with a hippo, penguin and a meerkat amongst them instead of the normal boring old cats and dogs . The fact this book is set to the traditional song "if you're happy and you know it" is a real bonus as most children are familiar with this song so straight away know the tune and start to sing along. Definitely not a book you can just read - even if you try your hardest to (I did) you end up singing the song - the tune is just so catchy. It's also a perfect length book - not too short but not over the top long either. The author and illustrator definitely got things just perfect this time round with this book!

Fully recommend this book to anyone with children or as a resource if you are a teacher - I know I will be buying copies for any nieces and nephews birthdays coming up!

This very colourful book comes with a CD sung by Colin Buchanan so that went straight into the CD player on our way home. The CD is still in the car a week later and has been played non stop whenever the kids are in the car (and quite a few times when they haven't been....you other mums out there may well have had that experience singing along to a CD then realising you are actually sans children!). anyway my point being that the kids really love the CD. My Miss Seven, Miss Five and Miss Three take turns holding the book and they all sing along. The book gets carried around by Miss Three who takes it with her pretty much wherever we go. I think it is safe to say that its a bit of a hit with all three!

We haven't actually attempted to sit and read the book as it really is a sing along song type of book. The words are brilliant and a great twist on "if you're happy and you know it" (which incidentally is the tune). The actions are lots of fun to do and Miss Five and Miss Three especially get very silly with it all and usually end in a heap of giggles on the floor when singing the book at home.

We all love how colourful and funny the illustration's are. They are very bold and very humorous and each illustration goes perfectly with the words. The one complaint my Miss Seven has is that the first track of the CD is the song being sung but the second track is instrumental and lasts about five minutes. Others would view this as brilliant (the instrumental means you just sing the words yourself to the music) but Miss Seven doesn't like it....!

Because this book (and the CD) is a hit with all three of my children (and has made for some very pleasant without squabble car journey's) I have to highly recommend this book! I think it is great value for the laughter and enjoyment it provides and it is also great to have some alternative verses to the traditional "if you're happy and you know it".

I got this book to review recently. The first read through, I sat with my 14 month old toddler on my knee. I opened the book and she was instantly engaged with the bright pictures and the characters. She wanted to flip through the book really quickly, so I did my best to follow her lead. However, once I started to sing the words she sat happily enjoying the song and taking in all the pictures. Afterwards, she sat on the ground flipping through the pages and pointing to the things she liked.

The second time I read the book through, my 6 year old had joined us. Again, I sang the words as I flipped through the book. This time, my toddler danced as I sang and my 6 year old did some of the actions. I also tried to do the actions she was doing, so it was quite interactive for all three of us. I found it really hard to just read the words because the tune is so well known and the words just demand to be sung.

For my 6 year old her favourite piece of all was the Hippo. She giggled like mad as we all wriggled our rumps. My favourite was stretching my neck and trying to just sit and stare like a Meerkat. I liked the variety of animals that the kids were being introduced to as well. The only thing that could have made the book better was a CD with the song on it. But it wasn't necessary and it's lack of CD didn't detract majorly from our enjoyment.

I love the song If you're happy and you know it and quite often will sing it with my 18 month old son to have some interaction time with him and get him learning new words and actions. I knew this book would be good as it would teach us new words to sing and as the title was if you're cheeky and you know it I knew that some of the actions would be a little bit silly which my son just loves.

I wasn't wrong there are some really silly actions like wiggling your bum, and flapping your eyes which had my boy giggling so it was lots of fun today at story time. The book has quite a few different verses so I probably wouldn't read/do the whole book in one sitting as it is just too long for his attention span at the moment, but I just missed a couple of pages here and there and then made sure to do those pages the next time we looked at the book so we covered them all.

The illustrations are really bright and colourful and are all based on an animal, which my son loves at the moment so it was a good match. All in all we like this book and will use it when we are in the mood for singing.