All Aboard The Ninky Nonk! by Andrew Davenport (In The Night Garden)

8/10

All Aboard the Ninky Nonk is book one in a series of six books aimed at the 0-2 years market that are based on episodes of the children's television series In The Night Garden also written by Andrew Davenport.

This book centres around one of the fantastical and almost sentient modes of transport in the fantasy land that is The Night Garden, the Ninky Nonk. Although the book's cover features one of the series main characters, Iggle Piggle, there are several characters involved in the story and all take their turn to board and ride the Ninky Nonk.

The book introduces a different character per page, with bright and colourful pictures to match in very simple board book format that allows easy page turning for little fingers. Each book in the series ends with the same phrase, giving the book a familiarity that children love and find comforting and can also join in with when they being speaking. The language in the book is very simple for children to follow and involves repetition of the main theme, in this case the Ninky Nonk, allowing the children to recognise and interact with the storyline.

Additional interaction comes from the fact that the ride on the Ninky Nonk is indeed a very bouncy ride and reading this book whilst your child perches on your very bouncy knee should illicit squeals of delight!

This book should delight younger readers who will love to gaze at the bright pictures and see their favourite characters whilst later joining in the actual story with phrases memorised from endless reads. The bold picture on the cover also ensures that your child will recognises story contained inside and allow them to select, if you have more than one of the series, which one they would like me to read or indeed which they would like to sit and look through by themselves as the pictures inside are indeed a literal illustration of the story giving children the opportunity to use it as a picture book.

The story is simple, fun and whilst some may argue that this is simply a cheap way of making more money because of the series tie-in I feel that there is much thought given to the content and development of language in the age group it is aimed at.

This may yet become a children's classic!