Water - My First Discoveries Children's Book Review (age 4+)

Water is one of life's essentials, but it's also pretty amazing and has some unique properties. This book might not touch on all of those, but it's a great introduction to something we all take for granted. Suitable for young independent readers, but best for reading together, Water - My First Discoveries by Pierre-Marie Valat is not only full of information, it has a really interesting format...

The My First Discoveries books are a hardback spiral bound series, with around 24 stiff card pages and 6 transparent acetates. Designed for children aged around 4-8, Water is a more intelligent and 'grown up' board book.

The language used is quite simplistic, and the text is limited, but the concepts and topics are huge, so this is a great book for reading together and asking questions. The water cycle and water content of humans for example are clearly shown, and proved a lot of discussion with my 6 and 7 year old boys.

The acetates are a really nice touch, and the two different images produced are interesting to compare. My boys found them really intriguing, but it made them keen to get past pages which didn't have the magic page.

This isn't a book you will re-read a lot, it's an eye-opener and really interesting to the children, but the text is not in-depth, and there are very few words on each page, so a second read through tends to be quite swift.

This is an excellent book for a reluctant reader as the content is all in the images and the text is easy enough for my 6 year old to read independently and confidently. It isn't daunting at all. A great book for a school or other situation where children will have 5 minutes to browse.

My children both enjoyed Water - My First Discoveries very much, and we had lots of discussion while we went through it. Particularly lovely for me was that my 7 year old had a basic understanding of the water cycle, and was able to use the illustration in the book to explain it to his brother.

My First Discoveries: Water is written and illustrated by Pierre-Marie Valat, has 24(+6) pages and is published by Moonlight Publishing. Best suited to children aged 4-8 and available to buy now rrp £8.99, currently £6.99 on Boolino.

We were sent our copy of Water - My First Discoveries for review.