The Scared Book

The Scared Book is, as its title suggests, about a frightened book that's been infiltrated by a variety of monsters on its pages and begs for help from the reader to scare them away. Debra Tidball keeps the instructions simple enough for pre-schoolers to join in the action: 'There's a tingle in my spine/can you scratch it for me?', 'Giant butterflies are tickling my insides! Please blow them away' and 'Argh monsters!/Quick, flick them away!'. The range of action words in the book-which also include 'blow', 'shake', 'trace', 'fan' and 'rub'-are good for vocabulary-building and the ending offers readers a sense of achievement, having chased all the monsters away. This is a book that will be read over and over once the little ones understand what they have to do. The monsters themselves are brightly coloured with stripes and spots and many eyes, but Kim Siew's illustrations are more weird than genuinely scary. There's often a large expanse of white space around the pictures and text, so despite all the marauding creatures the book doesn't feel too cluttered. Reminiscent of Herve Tullet's Press Here, this interactive book is a fun reading experience that even reluctant readers won't be able to resist. - Books and Publishing

ave you ever considered how your book feels about telling you a story? Did it ever occur to you that it might be shaking with fear, crying streams of tears or shaking with laughter? Well wonder no more - The scared book by Debra Tidball is all about a book that is too scared to tell its story - and it needs you - the reader, to help it overcome it's fears! The Scared Book by Debra Tidball and illustrated by Kim Siew is a delightfully funny read that not only entertains young readers, it also teaches them about feelings and how those feelings are very normal. Through interaction, children learn that there are easy ways to make those uncomfortable feelings go away if you look at the fun and positive side of life. Tingles up and down spines, butterflies in tummies and goosebumps all over it's skin are just a few sensations this scared book is feeling. But thankfully the book is being read and the reader is asked to help blow the butterflies away, rub the goosebumps and scratch the tingles off. Children love books that they can interact with and on every page of this book readers can move their fingers on the page and even shake the book to ensure the book doesn't remain scared - because we really all just want to hear the story! Deb Siew's illustrations are vibrant and full of energy, and despite the book being scared of the monsters, the children I read the story too thought they looked a little bit crazy - which is much nicer than scary! But despite the craziness of these monsters, we still wanted to shoo them away (do you really want to hang out with a three eyed monster?) The way the story takes the readers shows us how scared feelings can be overcome. We can mentally scratch the tingles, rub the goosebumps and blow the butterflies. Allowing children to learn how to recognise these feelings is really important and it's even more important that they learn how to help themselves to feel better. The Scared Book is a fun read and a great book that allows you to spend some close time with your young readers. So what else can you do?  Write different feelings on separate pieces of paper. Start with simple ones such as happy, sad, scared and brave. On each sheet write how your body might feel. Compare the different feelings. After this, using a different colour, explore how we can make these bad feelings go away. Explore when you have felt scared - why were you scared? How did you feel? Did someone need to help you feel better? What did you do? Discuss the idea of talking to others when you feel scared and how talking about these feelings is very important. Look at how Kim Siew has given movement and colour to the monsters and feelings in the book, can you write a word that looks like it sounds (Look at the please page) Could you create a page like the 'trample them' page? Look at your own book collection - do you think you have any other books that are scared? Worried? Happy? In love? Try to group these books according to feelings - a great way to rearrange the shelves!