Read at Home: Silly Races - Oxford Reading Tree > Reviews (1)

There are numerous series within the Oxford Reading Tree range one of these series follow three children Biff, Chip and Kipper along with their dog Floppy, their parents and some of their friends. When I was at school we were taught to read using books containing these characters and as my daughter is due to start the same school in September we decided to get some of the books to give her a bit of a head start.

This series of books come in 6 different levels and each level has an extra three levels within it, the books range from ages 4 to 7 years and are colour coded for what stage they are. The Purple books are the very first stage and along with the green books these are for ages 4-5, blue, pink And yellow books are for ages 5-6 and finally the orange stage is for ages 6-7. Having looked at the website it states that there are 12 books in each colour group apart from the orange which only contains 6 books however I have only managed to find 6 different titles to buy in the purple range so not sure where to get the rest.

These books can be bought from good bookshops such as WHSmiths and from a lot of book websites such as book people, you can buy good sets from book people such as 10 books for £6.99 or 48 books for £15 which considering they sell at £3.99 each these are really good offers the only problem of course is that you may end up with duplicate books as you don't have a choice of what is in the sets. I personally picked my four books up from Ebay for £4.07 so I think I got good value.

The Silly races book has a purple stripe across the top of the book signifying it is a level one book it also has a 1b in the corner with a picture of Floppy which signifies it is one of the middle books in the set, from the books I have found you seem to get 2 x 1a, 2 x 1b and 2 x 1c in the set. This book is written by Roderick Hunt and illustrated by Alex Brychta, the front cover of the book shows the youngest child Kipper running in an egg and spoon race. Inside the book there are a list of pointers for parents to help their children to enjoy reading and there is a little task for the child which in this book is to find a small bird on every page.

The book begins with the three children running in an egg and spoon race although I would say the eggs look more like potatoes so it's possibly a potato and spoon race, Kipper wins the race and is given a banana. The next race of the book is a sack race which Mum and Dad compete in, Mum wins this race and she is given an apple. The third race in the book is a three legged race which Biff and Chip run against Mum and Dad, Biff And Chip win the race and they get an orange. Throughout the book there is a paddling pool with a duck floating on it in the background of every picture, the book ends with dad running one way and Floppy running directly at him, needless to say dad ends up in the paddling pool with his prize being the duck.

These books always have a silly ending to them which my daughter loves and it is great to see her laughing at the end of the stories, these books are very simple and only have a maximum or 4 or 5 words to a page.

At the end of each book there are a few questions to ask your child about the book such as "which race was the funniest?" There is also a game at the back of each book, this one has a spot the difference and then there's a list of words which have been repeated throughout the book. Inside the back cover there is a list of some of the other books in some of the other colour levels and my daughter likes to point out which ones she wants to read next.

My daughter really enjoys these books, the books involve the child in more than just reading and really encourage them to want to read which is great for our little girl who was a slow starter as far as books were concerned.