I feel like I need to review both of these books together as they are so similar. That isn’t a criticism as it means that they do feel like the beginnings of a nice little series for little ones. These are certainly pitched at a very young audience as a nice way to introduce reading as early as possible.

The text throughout is pitched in a way that means the adult reading is forced to ask a lot of questions to engage the child they are reading with. As a teacher it feels like a lot of the questions are the sort we might ask anyway to ensure engagement of the child but these books might be useful for new parents to give their children a good start with reading.

What I like about both the titles here is that they manage to tell a little story while staying focused on vocabulary that would be useful for children to have before starting school. There is a lot of language of comparison, colours, shapes and sizes which is all very helpful for children to have firmly in place before they start formal education.

The only real criticism I have of these titles, and this is a very personal thing, is that I really struggled to look past these being a bit like ‘South Park’ in illustration style. Detective Goat looks he could be a South Park character and it makes the experience a little odd. This wouldn’t put me off using these to read with pre-school age children, if anything it would just make me want to giggle a little, but it’s just a little odd note.