As a parent:
Illustrations are fab! Each double spread page has so much oral language going for it. We keep seeing new things each time we read it! The 3 year old kept spotting new things and this made her feel connected when we were reading it. Like mini stories within the story…we had a full chat about what the red octopus might be doing on one page! Her brother is senior infants so he was spotting plenty of high frequency words from school but she loved the repetition of ‘Best Day Ever’ phrase as she could join in with that.
The children recognised some of the places from our pre-Covid trips around Ireland and it was lovely to root out some photos and look at them alongside each destination.
There were some lovely discussion points within the story where we chatted about whether Scout should have stolen the sausages or gone off into the sea so far by himself. Lots of lessons to be learned! My 3 year old Ava-Rose was able to read some of the facial expressions of the cat and announced that he is ‘Not Impressed because he’s left behind’ so we had lots of chats about why cat may have been left.
In my opinion you could easily do one destination per night for story time and get so much out of it.
From a teacher and education point of view it links in with many subjects including, of course Geography, and the addition of the map and red dot showing where they were visiting would be a great talking point within a classroom. I would have no problem using this with children in class up to 1st or maybe even 2nd class as it provides so much scope for oral language development. The illustrations are amazing and even the inclusion of a postcard would be a great starting point for writing in junior classes even up until 2nd class. I could see teachers using it to expand the idea of where might Scout visit next…or if he visits us what would he see?
This is a truly great book to be used at home or in the classroom and it is timeless with its illustrations and snippets of Ireland! Bord Fáilte should be promoting this book!!
Alex age 6 says, ‘I love it. It’s all the places we go!’ ‘The pictures are amazing!’ ‘Not just the Best day ever…the best book ever!’
Ava-Rose age 3 says, ‘ It’s lovely and the dog is lovely and goes on his holidays’. ‘I like the pictures and the story’.
Thanks for sharing the book with us.
By Gráinne Nugent, 6th class teacher St Brigids Primary School, Kildare, mum to Emily 11yo, Alex 6yo and Ava-Rose 3yo
“Scout’s Best Day Ever” by Jennifer Farley, published by O’Brien Press, is now on sale for €12.99 (H/B)
Disclaimer: This book was provided by the publisher, O’Brien Press, free of charge to Seomra Ranga for the purposes of this review
