Monday 4 November 2013

Away we go Media - TOS Review


We have been reviewing some books from the 'If you were me...' series from Away We Go Media by Carol Roman. These books are specially designed for young children as a way of introducing them to life and culture in other countries. 




Carol Roman is a former teacher and an award winning author specialising in writing for younger children. Her work includes a fiction series (tackling issues like dyslexia, compromise and leadership) a fun, non fiction yoga book for kids and the 'If you were me and lived in ...' series.


We received four books from the 'If you were me...' series, along with some flag pencils, bouncy ball, passport and stickers. The books were
If you were me and lived in Mexico
If you were me and lived in France
If you were me and lived in South Korea
If you were me and lived in Norway

These books are approx 25 pages and each page consists of a few lines of text (the font is large enough for young readers) and a vibrant illustration. 


They start by covering where the country is located and its capital city, typical names for boys and girls,what the currency is, words for father and mother, a tourist site, typical foods, sport and toys, a special holiday, the name for school and more.

At the end of each book there is a pronunciation guide  - very useful for learning how to correctly pronounce the words used in the book. 


At the bottom of each text page and found just above the page number is a small drawing depicting something typical for the country. At first I thought these were a little flicker drawings but they are the same on each page.


I used these books as part of our read aloud time and both Tulip and Rose really enjoyed them. It was really nice to see them trying to locate the countries on a globe. I even caught them pouring over the pictures and 'reading' them to each other : ) 


These books are a fantastic addition to our continent boxes and have provided an enjoyable way to introduce different cultures as they add life and personality to our geography studies. I really hope the series continues.

I loved the illustrations, they are amazing and really appeal to children. I would love to see the little drawings above the page numbers turned into flicker drawings. 

The only other point of note is they are written for US market so a number of US terms do pop up in the writing (like mommy).

The books are designed for children 4 - 8 and are available for $8.99 for the paperback or $.99 for the Kindle edition. 

You can see what my crew mates thought of these over at the TOS Blog



1 comment:

Carole P. Roman said...

Thank you for the lovely review. I think the idea of continent boxes are terrific. Please watch for Kenya, Turkey, and Australia so you can fill up more of those boxes.

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