The Pet Pawlympics product reviews

My daughter loves animals and the Palace Pets so she was super excited that I received this book to review. The cover immediately caught my daughters attention, its bright and colourful and features several of the main Palace Pet characters Petite the Pony, Ms Featherbon, Barnaby Pickles and Pumpkin the Puppy. This book by Tennant Redback is about a group of the Palace Pets competing in the Pet Pawlympics and the adventures that happen along the way.

This book is 59 pages long consisting of 6 chapters. The pictures are really engaging to keep the kids attention which is a help as there is a lot more text than pictures so for those who are being read too, they can get abit distracted if there's not pictures to keep them up with what's happening in the story. My daughter who is 5yrs old is abit young to read this herself, I would suggest 8yrs plus or confident younger readers could read this but kids of all ages would enjoyed this being read to them.

This book is really good quality and being a Scholastic book you know you are getting value for money. I'm not sure of the price but I have seen these books in the Lucky book clubs my kids bring home so you could grab yourself a bargain.

My daughter has been obsessed with Palace Pets ever since she received a "Pumpkin" pet, so when I saw this up for review I just knew we had to have it. As soon as she saw the book she grabbed it and happily proclaimed that the book was hers and begged me to read it with her. She started school this term and she has been waiting for the day when she could read a big girls book and as we sat down I was really surprised that it was not a simple read nor was it for her age group and quickly found it is better for seven year olds who have been reading for a while. I assumed it was going to have about ten words per page and the rest would be a picture, where as there are pictures in the book it is actually a chapter book with quite a few words per page.

Her heart sunk when she realised she could not read alone and instead constructed her own story by just going by the pictures. Miss seven volunteered to read the 'real' story and sadly after about the third page my five year old daughter walked off and lost complete interest in the book.

Even my seven year old had trouble with a couple of the words but we read the first three chapters. As she was sick today we cuddled up in my bed and read the rest of the book. After finishing it I asked her what she thought of the book and she said 'it is a book about friendship and also when racing it does not matter whether you come first or last it is how you conducted yourself throughout' (got to admit I was rather blown away by that answer!!).

The font is rather large and there are only six chapters and they range in page size. Pictures are spread throughout the book and they are stunning. They are on that shiny paper so they seem to sparkle. All of the animals just look so happy and they are really uplifting. It is the sort of pictures you could happily stick up on your walls as they are just beautiful. It is a nice little compact story but some of the creatures names can be quite a twister and it is a lot of 'Berry said this' said this or 'Berry done that' so you are constantly having to read there names. My daughter had great joy in pulling up as I kept saying Ms Featherbon incorrectly - really they should of called her Featherbone.

I think I will tuck this book away for another year or two so when Miss five is a competent reader, like her sister she will be able to enjoy it. Its just unfortunate it did not hold her attention at this stage.