Home > Categories > Books > Kids - General > A Pet for Fly Guy review
In the first zany, hilarious Fly Guy picture book, Buzz tries to help Fly Guy find the right pet. It seems that everyone else at the park has a pet, so Fly Guy wants one, too. A dog licked Fly Guy. A frog chased Fly Guy. A cricket was too jumpy. Who will be the best pet for Fly Guy.
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The title of this book made me very inquisitive. I was keen to find out what this book was really about (I like titles that don't give the storyline away). Tedd Arnold has done an awesome job on the illustrations. They are bold and colourful. Fly Guy and Buzz show expressions in each picture which are a great talking point. There are also other characters and background with things to talk about.
He as also captured the attention of the readers by the repeated ZZZ in his spelling throughout the book. This became a great discussion with my 3 year old son, as he thought it was funny that the fly talked that way, so we looked at the print together and he could work out what parts were being spoken by the fly.
I loved the descriptive language that Tedd has used throughout the book. It is books with this type of language which makes the understanding of words so much clearer for children. Once again another discussion point.
I found this book to be a very well priced hardcover book at only $12.00. It provided my son and I with a lot of in depth discussion/learning and also provided us with a few laughs. This would not normally be a book that I would choose to buy but after reading this and realising the learning potential in these types of books I will now look at them differently.
We have read a few Fly Guy books in the past. At one point we were doing Fly Guy readers from the local library because they were some of the only books my daughter seemed to like. She usually likes non-fiction to read, and anything animal related. So when we sat down with this book the other night I was pretty sure I had a winner.
This book has got some fairly simple language, and short sentences. For this reason, I decided to get her to do some reading of the book as well. She was a little reluctant, because she hadn't seen or heard the text before, but the words she attempted she did well with. The font seemed to be okay, though the cover font did throw her a little.
The story for this one is quite sweet. Fly Guy and Buzz go to a park and notice that everyone has a pet. Fly Guy feels left out and they go on a search for a perfect pet for a fly. Buzz tells Fly Guy about all the things that he will need to do. I thought it was a nice and simple covering of the responsibilities of pet ownership. We agreed that it was a good list here as well.
The twosome look at a wide range of animals as pets. Two of them, I felt were pretty scary, since they eat flies. Even my daughter gasped at those ones, and the fact that they were chasing our hero. But thankfully there were no awkward endings here. It might be a little scary for sensitive children though, I'm sure most kids would find the pets laughable.
The ending is very satisfying. It made us laugh, and it was really the only good option which worked well. For the price, $12 is very very reasonable for a hardcover picture book. There's not a lot of wordage, but there's plenty of talking points. The pictures are standard for the Fly Guy series, simple but effective cartoon images. This would be an excellent book to new readers, or as a Christmas stocking stuffer.
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