Saturday 1 December 2012

336. Alfie Small: Pirates and Dragons by Alfie Small

Alfie Small: Pirates and Dragon by Alfie Small
Published November 2012 David Fickling Books

From the publisher:
Alfie Small is a famous explorer like his older cousin, Charlie. When he goes to the bottom of his garden, he finds himself transported to another world (via speed boat, hot air balloon, submarine or crocodile!). He has extraordinary adventures and always ends up the hero. Unlike Charlie, Alfie always comes back home safely in time for tea!

The surname Small may be familiar to you.  Alfie Small is the younger cousin of the very popular character Charlie Small (of the Charlie Small series of books).  This is the sort of book that will fly off the shelves.  Not only is the story good, it’s full of colour illustrations, it doesn’t have too much text, and there are chapters which really appeal to early readers.




One of the reasons children will like this book because it sounds like a story a child would make up, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.  The story starts with Alfie (with explorer pack) heading to the end of the garden to his boat, ready for adventure, and then the boat floats into a dragon shaped cave, and then something bumps his boat, it's a real dragon, but it;s OK because this dragon is friendly.  It’s one of those stories where just when you think the hero is in trouble, he finds a way out, but before he’s all in the clear another threat will appear, but Alfie always manages to stay one step ahead of danger.
 
The illustrations in this book are great too, with Alfie's own drawings (like in the pic above), notes, speech bubbles, labels and photographs of things he collected (like the pipe in the pic to the right). Alfie is smart and funny, and I think he will become a firm favourite. 


Who will like this book: Boys age 6+
Read it if you like: I Can Read Series

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