Quack and Field - Book Review

A week ago I received two copies of a new series of books called Quack and Field. These books are designed for children aged 3-7 years and aim to get them interested in sports.

These books are authored by Rob Foster and the artwork is by Jon Wotton. You can find the Quack and Field website here

When my son Joseph (5 years old) first saw these books, he said, "Wow! Who are those for?" 

"Me, obviously", I replied. 

"But I got sent them for us to read together and you can keep them as a special present once we have read them"

"Aw, cool dad"

Yes, yes I am.

The two books were a lot thicker than I was expecting and the bright colours attract you to them straight away. They also have a nice glossy cover. The premise of these books is to follow a "team" of animals as they complete sporting tasks that are covered in the Olympics and Paralympics. 

Quack is the duck who is your commentator throughout the books. I asked Joseph what he thought Quack would be like and he said "awesome". That's a good sign considering we hadn't turned from the front cover yet. 

Throughout each book (we received trampolining and swimming) the animals complete against each other for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place just like in the Olympics, unlike the Olympics though there are some very questionable talents competing, for example, we have Crystal the cow competing in the trampolining event who happens to have missed a few slimming world meetings and as a result has an accident (I won't ruin it for you by telling you what happens).

In the Swimming book, Harriet the Hippo jumps into the swimming pool and, as she is a hippo and, as you might expect, quite large, she empties the pool of water. Much like I do when I jump in the pool apparently.

Thanks for that Joseph.

The books are engaging as they ask the reader questions, which I asked my son, this got him thinking more about it, at which point we had a further conversation on how he enjoys swimming and jumping up and down. 

Each book introduces the characters before we get to the race, Joseph was concerned about Duke the dog in the swimming book as "dogs don't like water" apparently. 

Don't worry, Duke was fine.

The books are well designed with lots of colourful pictures to keep children entertained, and if your children can't read yet they will still be able to tell you what is happening from the pictures. this lets them use their imagination. Joseph is good at reading, we took it in turns reading a page of the swimming book and the only word he really struggled with was"commentator".

After we had finished reading the books Joseph asked me if we could go swimming. I think this shows that the authors aim had worked. It got my son talking about swimming and wanting to go. Unfortunately, I couldn't take him swimming due to it being 7 pm and it being his bedtime, which he was most displeased about. 

Joseph loved the books and I enjoyed reading them with him. I think it's always a good idea for children to get into a sport and any physical activity for kids is great. These books will certainly get the ball rolling in the sense that a child will start talking about different sports.

I can't wait to read the next few books in the series.

Thanks for reading.

Rich

I was sent these two books for free in exchange for this review. All opinions are mine and Josephs.

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