My son and I are massive fans of Sue Wickstead’s books and when the opportunity arose to read and review her children’s book A Spooky Tale I readily agreed, especially with Autumn being the season I associate with spooky goings on! Many thanks to Sue and Rachel for allowing me to take part in another fabulous blog tour.
About The Book
When the teacher decided to take the class out on a walk the children did not want to go …But…What could possibly go wrong? Why did the class not feel well? Read the book to find out…
Review
The children in the class don’t want to go for a walk with their teacher, they don’t feel well! However , this is no ordinary walk as they encounter danger at every turn which does nothing to help them ‘feel better’!
This is another fun-filled, imaginative book from Sue Wickstead that is a joy to share. We follow a class and their teacher embarking on a walk that the children have no interest in and therefore make the excuse of ‘not feeling well’. We follow their walk using the detailed map at the front of the book as the children’s imaginations run wild creating creatures and danger at every stop along the way. What’s particularly lovely about this book is that Sue has drawn on her own experience as a teacher using her class of ’95 as inspiration.
The illustrations are colourful, funny and engaging and are the perfect accompaniment to the story helping to bring it to life for little minds. Whilst named A Spooky Tale there isn’t anything frightening or scary making this book ideal to enjoy with children of all ages. There is a map at the front which really adds to the story, allowing readers to follow the characters journey all the way back to the safety of school. Leo loves maps of any kind so this proved a huge hit.
The language throughout is simple with some repetition on each page which children always enjoy. The book has reasonably large font making this book ideal for early readers to enjoy alone or reading aloud to an adult. We thoroughly enjoyed reading this book together and it is a fantastic addition to our bookshelf which I’m sure will be read time and again.
About The Author
I am a teacher and an author and have currently written six children’s picture books with a bus theme.
For over 20 years, alongside my teaching career, I worked with a Children’s Charity, The Bewbush Playbus Association, which led me to write a photographic history book about it.I soon found that many children had never been on a bus before, let alone a ‘Playbus’ and they wanted to know more. I decided to write a fictional tale about the bus, his number plate JJK261 gave him his name.
‘Jay-Jay the Supersonic Bus,’ came out in print in 2014. It is the story behind the original bus and is his journey from a scrap-yard to being changed into a playbus for children to play in. From Fact to fiction the bus journey continued. This story has now been followed by five more picture books.
Sue also undertake events and author bookings and loves to share the story. There are also a few more stories in the writing process, with links to real events and buses. The story has been read in many schools in the south-East of England, where I teach as a cover teacher, it is always well received and certainly different.
Author Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Bewbush Playbus | Teacher In The Cupboard
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A Spooky Tale is available to purchase now from Amazon*
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**We were gifted a copy of this book in return for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are our own.
Fraser’s Fun House 
Thank you for joining in the blog tour for A Spooky Tale, I am glad you enjoyed my book as well as my bus stories.
Indeed there was nothing scary on our walk but we did explore our imagination and had a lot of fun… apart form this teacher feeling a bit poorly at the time.
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Thank you, this lovely review appeared again today, how Spooky.
28th October this half term I will be reading the special Spooky edition for an EYFS Home day.
With activities and news on my next book.
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