Hector and Hummingbird product reviews

Hector and Hummingbird is a delightful book that young children are sure to love, my 3 year old certainly enjoyed the story of Hector and his friend Hummingbird. He especially liked it when I did the character voices for Hummingbird as he found this hillarious and there were plenty of occasions for character voices in this story as Hummingbird sure likes to talk to her friend Hector.

This book shows how two people in this instance Hector and Hummingbird can really value each others friendship. It shows how although someone can annoy you at times the world would be a pretty dull place without them as Hector learns when he goes off on his own to have a break from all Hummingbirds talking!! I think this is a valuable lesson and is portrayed so well in this story with a happy ending of how the two will learn to get along in a much more quiet way.

I likened it not only to the relationship you have with your friends but also to a sibling relationship. Reminded me so much of my little chatterbox 3 year old and how he annoys his sister when he is being loud in her favourite shows. I know my daughter loves her brother to pieces and he is slowly learning like Hummingbird to sometimes give his sister a bit of peace and quiet when she is doing something. A hard lesson for a 3 year old who loves to talk to learn but like Hummingbird he does so mostly!!

One thing I loved about the book is all the illustrations are done in the same colors, so every page is made up mostly of blue, green, pink, black and brown so that all the illustrations look very similar I thought this was quite cleverly done. There are other animals that appear (although not mentioned) throughout the book so you can spot them as you are reading the story and even they appear in the same base colours as the rest of the illustrations.

It was quite good finding these and we went back through after reading the story through to find them all. At the back of the book is a picture index of all the animals that appeared in the story so we used this to go back and find them all and talked about what they are called. Sometimes this was tricky as all being the same colour some of them look very similar but we got them all in the end!!

Hector and Hummingbird is a book that reinforces the rule that you can't judge a book by its cover. The cover and the illustrations certainly didn't draw me to this book. I selected it from a pile of books available for review purely because it featured a hummingbird and my five year old daughter has a fascination with hummingbirds.

Much of this story is written in speech bubbles. This made it ideal to read with my reluctant reader as she would read one character and I read the other. On the next reading we swapped characters and she took on a high pitched hummingbird voice. It was a lot of fun for both of us and it was great for her reading confidence. A book that gets kids hooked on reading gets top marks from me.

While I was reading this book to my girls Miss 7 reminded me that she has a boy called Hector in her class. It was then that I started reflecting on how it was a good thing that the hummingbird, who is a tad annoying, is called Hummingbird rather than the name of a child that might read it. I will never know if the author did this on purpose but if he did it was a very clever idea. Tomorrow Miss 7 is taking this book to school so her teacher can read it to Hector and the rest of the class.

Although the illustrations were a retro style that didn't appeal to me my 5 year old loved them because there were animals hidden in them. We didn't realise this until we got to the last page where they were all listed so we had to go back and find the all. For subsequent readings she would spot the animals each time we turned a new page. This also gave her big sister a chance to skim the text before reading it.

The other thing that I really liked about this book was friendship. Hector and Hummingbird didn't realise how much their friendship meant to them until they were apart. It also made my girls reflect on the relationship they have with each other and the importance of giving their sister space and time to be alone while always being their to support each other. Now if one of them is pestering her sister she will be told (either by her sister or me) that she is being a hummingbird and will back off.

We have all enjoyed this book and I am pleased we now have it on our bookshelf. I would recommend it others for both the fun and education that Hector and Hummingbird brings.