Charlie Cook's Favourite Book by Julia Donaldson

9/10

This story begins as a young boy, Charlie Cook, sits down to read his ‘favourite book’ which is ‘about a leaky pirate ship which very nearly sank..’, the story then jumps into this story about the pirate – he is also reading a book ‘About a girl called Goldilocks and three indignant bears’ it then jumps into this story, and so it goes on. The book follows each character reading a book which is featured in a double page. Each is a mini adventure for a child as there are more stories and characters to discover with every turn of the page. Finally the story ends up back with Charlie Cook and his favourite book with each of the characters from the other tales stood reading with him. This unique approach really works (honest!) and children seem to get in tune with it quickly.

As the story dips in and out of different tales Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book captivates little minds with snippets from every story - each of which a child would undoubtedly love to read in its entirety. This spellbinding formula has kids hanging on your every word as they do have to concentrate to follow the flow of the book.

The trademark rhythmical writing style Julia Donaldson adopts works brilliantly and once the child is familiar with the book they love to recite it back to you as you’re reading.

You will find children scrutinising each of the pages for more information about each book – some of which Julia Donaldson does with additional reading aside from the main text and the detail of the illustrations is spot on. Axel Scheffler does not fail to deliver great images to go with every individual story, and each time you read both you and the child discover something new.

This is essentially about the love of books and any child who loves books will love that Charlie Cook does too. You can’t dispute this unique approach makes it a fascinating read for adults and children.