Rustle Up a Rhythm product reviews

From first glance through Rustle up a Rhythm I was sold, the bright colourful pictures by Sarah Nelisiwe Anderson matches the story told by Rosalind Malam perfectly. It reminded me lots of another one of my favourite stories which explores lots of sounds.

There is so many plays on sounds it's a wonderful book to introduce to children of all ages. In younger children it encourages language. For older children it's great for sparking their imagination and is a great tool for encouraging them to take note and describe all the sounds around them.

I work with children so I was keen to take the book along and see how they responded to it. I first read it with a group of 1-2 year olds, often we get through a few pages and they lose interest but they were fixated on it. There was lots of jumping up and pointing to different things in the pictures and moving around to get closer to the book, we reread it later in the day and by the second time through many of the children were mimicking the sounds as I read them out.

I then introduced the book to a group of 4-5 year olds once again it was well received it also promoted lots of language but this time in a different way. There was lots of discussions on if they thought different objects sounded they way they did in the book. I loved that the book set the discussions in motion without me putting the idea too them or having to question what they thought. After reading the story we then spent time listening to all the sounds around us they had a great time pointing out the different things they could hear.

I recommend the book to anyone with young children - its such a delightful read and one you won't mind having to read over and over again!

Rustle up a Rhythm is written by New Zealand writer Rosalind Malam who was commissioned by Scholastic New Zealand to write this very charming and entertaining book. The illustration's in this book are perfect for the story which takes us through a day in a family's life as they get ready for the children to go out with dad for the day and then come home and relate their day to mum. The story is told through sounds which is a great way to get children thinking about what we hear every day around us.

My three girls love this book and found trying to read it using onomatopoeia hilarious. We had lots of laughs reading this and the girls really enjoyed reading it.

It gave us an opportunity to think about all the sounds we hear and how to say those sounds and also for my elder daughter it was a chance to think about different ways of describing when writing a narrative.

I absolutely love the illustrations and how perfect they are with the story. My four year old loved tracing the path of the bee with her finger which was great for her eye tracking. Also getting her to pronounce the words was really helpful for her pronunciation. This is one of the best children's books I have read in a while and I think it is great to get your children pronouncing clearly and thinking about their descriptive words when telling a story.