Diggersaurs

Diggersaurs is a bright and colourful debut picture book by Michael Whaite. This text is instantly appealing to boys through the mixture of diggers and dinosaurs and would be a great hook to lure in reluctant readers. The pictures are wonderfully created and the text layout compliments them well, with the words working around the images - almost becoming part of them. A huge part of what makes this book successful is the book flow seamlessly through the use of rhyme. This element made it very enjoyable for my class of year 1 children, especially a couple of reluctant boy readers who wanted to share it again independently. I would happily use this text as part of a sequence of learning about rhyming words. As well as this, the well illustrated pictures of the Diggersaurs themselves could be incorporated into English lessons by writing character descriptions as well as using them to writer their own 'spin off' stories. Despite not mentioning their names in the actual text, the children enjoyed finding them on the vehicles. The main target audience for the book would certainly be boys but it was refreshing to see a 'girl' diggersaur included in the text. An added bonus to the book is the way the diggersaurs are numbered, photocopied and cut up; pictures of them could easily be used to help children in their ordering of numbers 1-12. The more eager eyed readers will also notice the antics of the construction workers on each page, with some of them getting into trouble. My inner child certainly enjoyed reading this book and I am looking forward to sharing it with my own son in the future. Recommended for nursery and EYFS settings.

Suggested Reading Age 3+