From My Reading Chair…
Pop-Up Peekaboo! Pumpkin is Halloween machinery awaiting a tiny operator!
There are flaps to lift and creatures to find, and we cannot proceed until somebody gets their little fingers involved. Each friend we discover sends us looking for the next, until we find our way back to the black cat all the way from the beginning. I love a closed circuit! (Especially one that leads us into a re-read!)
The artwork has a photographic, mixed-media feel, with characters and objects set against bold, brightly coloured Halloween scenery. There’s something a bit tantalising about these little scenes, knowing that part of the picture is waiting to spring out at us, like an intro to tension and jump scares 101?!
The large typography gives the words enough room to be seen and shared while we stay busy searching, guessing, getting ready to lift… because POP! another spooky surprise springs into the reading space! I love that the page physically changes when the child becomes involved. What was tucked away is suddenly THERE, popping out towards us. I adore the built-in immersive agency for our tiny hands.
Its pleasures are immediate, mechanical and shared: noticing clues, reaching for flaps, meeting friendly Halloween creatures and enjoying the same surprise for the seventeenth time because apparently it remains excellent.
For under-fives, that repetition is not a limitation. It is the spell. For small goblins, the seventeenth lift of the same flap is another chance to practise remembering and anticipating. I can almost imagine those little neural pathways becoming candy-coated with every successful PEEKABOO! It is mastery, anticipation and the giddy power to make Halloween leap on command.
Creep on Reading, Pumpkins!