I’m sure you’re all well familiar with Tracey Corderoy and her brilliant Shifty McGifty books. In this new release, she uses well-known and well-loved fairy tale characters in a brand new way.

Bob and his dog, Rex, live on the house on the hill. Very, very poor, they come up with a money making plan.

“That’s it! I’ll look after pets! Easy!”

The advert is posted and the pair wait. Young readers could be inspired to make adverts of their own. What would make them perfect pet sitters? A good opportunity to use question and exclamation sentences. What kind, helpful sitters we are!

The first familiar visitors are Goldilocks and baby bear. Goldilocks is true to character, as is baby bear, the ‘little poppet’. This is brilliant for predicting and linking to young readers’ prior knowledge. The illustrations are wonderful. There’s so much to see on every page. The facial expressions in particular – so many clues about character feelings. I like the style of fonts used. They really add to the story, emphasising dialogue.

As Goldilocks whizzes off, baby bear is very tricky to handle. Then, another pet arrives. In comes Jack and his goose, paying with magic beans. I wonder what will happen with those?

Children will begin to predict now very naturally. So, what does the goose do? Of course, it lays eggs – big, heavy, golden eggs! But don’t forget baby bear is still here. Oh what fun as they interact together! There are loads of gorgeous verb choices as all the chaos descends, with a bit of onomatopoeia thrown in too, with those lovely font distinctions.

In comes a rather hairy-looking lady and three goats, which take poor Bob to the end of his tether!

“That’s it! No more pets!”

When, who should arrive? A ‘puppy’ with three little pigs. What could possibly go wrong?

Another perfect pause point to predict what the ‘puppy’ might do. Of course, he blew the house down! But don’t forget those beans from Jack earlier on. What could possibly happen when one falls from Bob’s pocket?

An ending with new possibilities and masses of writing potential, too!

What an enjoyable read. The familiarity of the characters with this brand new situation is fun and exciting. This book would be perfect inspiration for KS1 writing. You could introduce other familiar fairy tale characters and their pets to the situation. How would they behave? How would they interact with other fairy tale pets? So many opportunities. You really could get so much from this fabulous book.

Fairy Tale Pets is published on 13th July 2017.