Mummies are Lovely product reviews

I really wanted to review this book because we recently got a little kitten and I wanted some help to explain to my young kids (2 and 5 years old) that they need to be calm and gentle around him and to show them what a mummy cat is like with her babies.

I'm a big fan of hard cover books because with small children the cover can withstand most things kids throw at it (sometimes literally). The cover of this book had a soft pink background with a beautiful drawing of a cat and her baby together. Every page in the book has a different type of cat and kitten with a simple sentence or two all about mummy cats and what they do for their babies. I love that the pages arent too crowded and the main focus is on the cats and how they reflect what the words say. This is important for my daughter, who is learning to read, as she looks at the first sounds of the word and then the pictures to get a clue as to what the words actually say. We've read it 4 times now and she's almost able to read it all to herself. Last night I even caught her in bed reading it to her little brother, he was sitting still and attentive - something that doesn't happen very often.

My son loves the pictures of all the different types of cats and kittens and even found one that looked like our kitten and even more surprisingly, his uncle's cats. The illustrations in this book are wonderfully done and you can tell they were drawn by someone who knows cats and the different postures they take when they are happy/scared/defensive.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a sweet book that's easy to read and keeps kids attentions. My children love it and have even learnt to not go running up to our kitten now, my youngest knows that when the kitty arches his back, he needs to back off and give him some space.

The cover of this book is a lovely shade of pink, the picture on the cover a mother cat licking her baby, the whole book is a picture of tenderness. I leafed through the pages and like any mother found that the pictures are very endearing. Every page has a double page spread of different breeds of cats. The images are works of art, and are of a big enough size you could comfortably read it with your child on your lap or even at a preschool group time. I can see that children would 'read' this book to themselves, spending time gazing at the beautiful images, and the pictures are clear enough that a child could 'read' without an adults help, a skill that is essential for children to learn to read, they 'decode' the pictures when they are learning to read.

This book would make a great gift for teachers as we always love books that we can read in a group, and we always look for books that teach empathy and appreciation for the special people in our lives. It can also be a conversation starter about how people care for us, and even though this book is about Mummies, some of us have daddies, Nanas, Oma's who do that too. Using the range of 'cats' sends the message that Mummies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but they all love their children.

The text itself is light and rhyming "Mummies are thoughtful, they know when your sad, they give you a cuddle when your feeling bad." The catchy and rhyming writing, will have littlies joining in with story time. The book itself is hardcover, which adds to the durability that children need to really engage with a book. The size of the book is perfect little hands, not to large, but big enough that the children can see lots of detail in the picture. I think this is a book that will be treasured by children and adults alike.