Children’s picture books are lots of fun and perfect for young readers to enjoy as the simple text and lots of pictures make them easy to read. They are always colourful, vivid and bright. More importantly, they are also excellent for helping young readers learn how to read and understand the context of the story. Picture books are also extremely good at getting positive messages across and teaching valuable lessons. And when they use rhyming text it makes them easier to grasp and helps improve vocabulary.
Rainbow Cat and the Big Tidy, written by Julia Stebbing and illustrated by Nivya Kuriakose, is a fun picture book aimed at children aged 3-7 years old. It is a delightful story told in rhyming verse about a multi-coloured cat that also contains serious messages around littering and looking after our environment.
When the very colourful Rainbow Cat and a dog with one shoe go for a walk in the countryside they come across a very inconsiderate blot on the landscape – some lazy picnickers have left all their rubbish behind in a field. It’s more than something just blowing out of a bin but a deliberate act of littering – the biggest mess that Rainbow Cat has ever seen! But what can they do about it? The mess needs to be tidied up, there is rubbish blighting the landscape and dangerous broken glass sparkling in the grass – a danger to anyone that comes along. But how will they clean it all up and get rid of it and who will help them?
Overall, Rainbow Cat and the Big Tidy is a very charming rhyming tale that is very engaging and delivers some very important messages littering, teamwork, friendship and keeping the environment clean and safe.
It delivers its important message about littering and how if we work together we can keep things neat and tidy, and teaches that that you should never litter and always clean up after yourself – if you always use a bin or take your rubbish away, you will be protecting your environment, keeping it safe and looking nice plus Rainbow Cat, the dog with one shoe and their friends will have more time to play, and in a nice clean and safe environment.
The illustrations, by Nivya Kuriakose, are excellent – bright, colourful and vivid and are great for helping young readers visualise what is happening within the story and to understand what they are reading (or listening to).
An excellent short story about caring for the environment and what teamwork can achieve, told in a fun way with a very colourful cat, a dog that only wears one shoe and a team of other animals. The rhyming is good and gets the message across in nice short, sharp bursts. Littering and not clearing up after yourself is a big problem, it not only causes your environment to look terrible, but it can cause diseases and even injuries to animals – and there is no excuse for it. For me, it is good to see a book tackling the issue in an engaging way and teaching young children the importance of it.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £6.99 (Paperback) / £1.99 (Kindle)
For more information, visit www.stickybunpublishing.com. Available to buy from Amazon here.
