Children should read a good variety of books to broaden their horizons and make reading much more interesting. Developing a love for reading at a young age can give you a lot of enjoyment, from the day you read your first book until you put down your last book, and not only that, but you can also learn lots of new things on all sorts of subjects.
To get children off to a good reading start, we read picture books to them and then once they become more confident readers, they read them to us. A good source of children’s picture books (as well as early readers, junior fiction and middle grade fiction) is Maverick Books, we have been fans for years. They have a good selection of books from various authors and for this review we have been reading Stone Underpants, written by Rebecca Lisle and illustrated by Richard Watson.
Stone Underpants is the first book in the Stone Age series by Rebecca Lisle and introduces us to Pod, a Stone Age boy who loves to invent things. The Stone Age is a cold place, and they don’t wear a lot of clothes, Pod only wears leaves to protect his modesty (so you can imagine how cold he must get). This results in Pod always having a very cold bottom, so he needs to do something to keep it warmer. His dad suggests making something to solve the problem and Pod comes up with the idea for underpants, but his choice of available materials just isn’t the best.
He sets out chiselling a pair of underpants out of stone, but they are hard and heavy and not really practical. Pod isn’t one to be deterred so heads straight back to the drawing board.
Wood is lighter than stone, so he creates a new wooden pair. But ow, the splinters!
He works his way through lots of other materials including shells, spider webs, mud and feathers until a warm and hairy woolly mammoth catches his eye and gives him an inspired idea that might just work!
Overall, Stone Underpants is a great little fun story. A story of problem solving and perseverance. It is a fantastic way of getting across the message that there is always more than one way to solve a problem and with a bit of persistence, dedication and experimentation you can achieve your goal with the desired outcome – never give up.
We found the book very funny, Pod’s exploits are amusing, who wants splinters in their underpants or even muddy ones? We also loved that the illustrations were hilarious and really portrayed Pod’s problem and his attempts at solving it. The illustrations were bright, colourful and really well drawn.
It also has plenty of discussion points, as you can talk about what other material Pod could use and why each one would be good or bad.
Stone Underpants is a fun and entertaining story that is easy to read and will have its readers giggling and laughing to the end. It is the perfect length for a bedtime story with its 32 pages (about a 10-minute read).
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £6.99 (paperback)
For more information, visit maverickbooks.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
