Mothering Mushroom

As you may know, Mushroom and I became Parragon Book Buddies earlier this year, after meeting with the lovely people from Parragon Books at BritMums Live in June. Since we became buddies, we’ve been lucky enough to receive a book every month to review and share here.

So far, we’ve read:

Spot A Lot – Animal escape

The Bully and the Shrimp

The Diggers

…three very different books that we’ve enjoyed reading and sharing. The last book we received in 2014 was a rather seasonal offering (as we thought it might be)…

A Treasury of Christmas stories and songs

A brand new collection, published just this year, it contains six classic Christmas stories and poems from the Nativity story to the Nutcracker.

Mushroom and I have been reading this throughout the month. Mushroom played the innkeeper in his first play at nursery this year so he happily ‘corrected’ the dialogue in the Nativity story and he got so carried away with the adventure that the Nutcracker took Clara on that he actually licked the page (really, see below):

At the moment, we often spend post bathtime singing (often shortened versions of, I must add!) the Christmas songs he has now learned and I have been rediscovering old favourites like the Night before Christmas and enjoying new stories (to me) like the beautiful Letter to Santa. The first time I read this one Mushroom fell asleep quickly but I continued to read it!

We’ve really enjoyed reading this beautiful Christmas gift (six stories in one and 12 songs!) and no doubt will continue to dip into it well beyond the season. Even if it ends up gathering dust on the bookshelf once the Christmas tree comes down and the new book novelty wears off, I will definitely be getting it out again next Christmas.

Disclosure: Mushroom and I are Parragon Book Buddies and receive a new book to read and review each month. All views are our own. Read my full PR and disclosure policy here.

Last month’s Book Buddies book from the lovely people at Parragon Books was from author Margaret Wise Brown, who many of you may recognise as the creator of the wonderful bedtime story Goodnight Moon.

The book was rather a different story on a subject very close to Mushroom’s heart:

The Diggers

Margaret’s words are brought to life by French illustrator Antoine Corbineau, whose vibrant illustrations show the various textures and colours revealed by the energetic diggers as they deeper and deeper into the earth.

I personally love the rhythm of this book and really enjoyed reading it. Here’s a sample of one of my favourite rhymes:

Click to enlarge

Mushroom, though, despite being very excited when the book arrived and he realised it was all about diggers, was less interested in the words as this one was all about the illustrations for him. At one point he even shushed me and took the book from me to stop me from reading it! However, I have since seen him pick it up to look at himself even though he tends to turn it down when we read together. Perhaps there is just too much going on for him with this one to cope with the pictures and the words at once but that’s ok, sometimes it’s nice just to look at the pictures… and there is plenty to see.

Disclosure: Mushroom and I are Parragon Book Buddies and receive a new book to read and review each month. All views are our own. Read my full PR and disclosure policy here.