BooksforTopics Reading for Pleasure Recommendations
Book Title: How Far Can A Kangaroo Jump? (available here)
Author/Illustrator: Alison Limentani
Publisher: Boxer Books
Publication Date: July 2019
Most Suitable For: EYFS/KS1
Reviewed by: Nathan Wilcox, Primary School Teacher
How Far Can a Kangaroo Jump? is a vibrant and visual book that explores the animal world by comparing the lengths of their jumps, leaps, hops and bounces.
Without a doubt, the most vivid elements of How Far Can a Kangaroo Jump?’are the beautiful animal print images that make this book such a pleasure to read. Each and every animal stands out against a striking, colourful background and you can easily spend time looking at the intricacies of each print and the sheer levels of detail within them. Author and illustrator, Alison Limentani, is a former zookeeper with a passion for animals and this comes through in the lively images she creates; they remind me of the type of dynamic images Jackie Morris created for The Lost Words.
What I like is that this book is easily accessible for younger children yet encourages them to begin to think about some mathematical themes that can be quite complicated to understand. Areas such as decimals and numerical comparisons are prevalent in the book and are accompanied visually by the animal prints. Readers are able to compare familiar jumps of animals such as frogs and rabbits to animals that are perhaps a little less familiar such as coyotes or cassowaries! There is certainly a lot to be learnt from this book and much to discover and even to explore further.
Something else that stood out is how enjoyable this book would be to read aloud to children. As a teacher, a book’s read-aloud-ability is something that matters and this book passes the test well. Each page has some clever repetition through the subtle verb changes for ‘jump’. It lends itself to audience participation through counting and joining in with the sequential patterns.
How Far Can a Kangaroo Jump is certainly a book that children with an interest in animals would love with such accessible information for younger readers to comprehend. The mathematical undercurrent is an excellent way to introduce children to these concepts and all of this is done in such a visually striking way.
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You can order How Far Can a Kangaroo Jump online or from your local bookshop or library.
Many thanks to the publisher for sending us a review copy of this book and to Review Panel member Nathan for reviewing it.
