BooksforTopics Reading for Pleasure Recommendations

Book Title: The Tickle Test (available here)

Author: Kathryn White

Illustrator: Adrian Reynolds

Publisher: Anderson Press

Publication Date: May 2018

Most Suitable For: EYFS & KS1

Reviewed by: Caroline Relf (@relfcar)

Will you pass the tickle test? This is a bright, gorgeous and funny picture book for very young readers that will also be one that adults will enjoy reading again and again.

The Tickle Test is being conducted by the Tickle Squad; mice who are testing how different animals react to being tickled and what the best way of tickling them is. During their ‘research’ they meet various animals, each of whom have their own tickling preferences and reactions. The vocabulary in the book is delightful and it is a pleasure to read aloud. The blurb promises this is a ‘singsong story’ and it certainly delivers. The opportunities to talk about what is on each page are numerous; not only about the different animals but also about what the mice are doing plus the different places the animals are being tickled. The illustrations make the pages bright and appealing.

Young children will enjoy identifying the animals as well as looking at the mice on each page. It strikes me as being one of those books that children will read to each other in their own way and enjoy the telling of it as much as the listening.

This is the sort of book that children want to read over and over. Anticipation of the last page is something that some children will enjoy more each time the book is read to them. I have no doubt this will be a firm favourite in many homes and schools. If this book is not already being regularly enjoyed in all reception classes up and down the country, then it should be!

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You can order The Tickle Test 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 Caroline for reviewing it.