Nicola Slater Books

This is a wonderfully zany tongue-twister of a book that children will love. It is based on counting and a story of two (or is it three?) mixed-up queues of animals, and yet the whole premise is so wonderfully absurd I found myself chuckling out loud.

The reader knows what they are queueing for if you look and listen carefully at the beginning, and the moose and the geese are wonderfully portrayed; a huge amount of the story is also told in the pictures (just as amusing as the words).

It is essentially a story of that most British of things – queuing!   Simon, the goose who appears to be in charge, gets more and more irate and confused as everyone swaps lines and each of the characters who mess him about also has strong characteristics, as well as being fun to follow what they do on each page.  One goose even very sensibly brings a fold-up chair with him to sit and wait!

This is also a counting book, and the counting is part of the fun. I read it to a group of EYFS children, who loved it, particularly when I got my words muddled and said goose instead of moose and vice versa. This one will be asked for again and again and each time the children will get something new from it.