Book Review: "Mate and Rix Escape Boredom" by Jolie Curran

Kindle:
Paperback:

⭐⭐ out of 5

If you've read any of my other book reviews, you'll already know that I start 'em all off by saying that each book starts off with the full 5 stars and that I'm always hopeful that they will still be stuck firmly in place when I close the back cover.

I'm intrigued to read this book 'cos maths has never been my strong point, so I'm hoping that this book will explain things clearly and that the knowledge will stay firmly lodged in my noggin' for future reference.  It's aimed at 5-9 year olds, so it should be pretty simple maths for a middle-ager, right?  It's only 29 pages long too, so hopefully I'll be able to put the sums to good use this afternoon after our groceries have been delivered.

Let's get started.

The first few pages are incredibly confusing 'cos they are all just a jumble of letters... I don't think they are even a proper language, just random letters with spaces... I'm hoping they are just a woopsie by the publisher 'cos I'm 64% of the way through and haven't read a single word of the story yet!

Such a young age group would barely know that those numbers ("Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty") existed as words and they certainly wouldn't be able to read them, so that's the first star coming off, unfortunately.

More text as opposed to numbers so a five year old would have given up, picked their nose in frustration and never walked off... even a 9 year old might struggle with seeing "lining up twenty-nine" and "lining up eighteen more" and they certainly wouldn't be able to do the maths, so that's another star coming off, unfortunately.

Ah-ha!  Now we're at the maths, but the tens are being added up first which isn't how UK children are taught, so the 8 and 9 year olds would be frustrated and confused so would maybe storm off in a huff at this point.  It might be how it's taught in America, but it's really not a good book for UK children unfortunately.

At 91% of the way through, there's a major problem with the illustration 'cos it shows 47+3=40 then +10=50 when it should be *37* instead of 47 - big woops to make there!  Definitely a third star coming off very rapidly!

It's good that the author has explained their maths right at the end, but this book will hinder rather than help young children with their maths, unfortunately.  It may be suitable for youngsters in other countries, just not the UK unfortunately.