Rainbowsaurus

What a beautiful celebration of families and adventure for very young children.  Reminiscent of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Rainbowsaurus sees a family going to hunt for the Rainbowsaurus and on the way, they celebrate their togetherness and their quest with a range of other animals - a red cow that moos, an orange snake that hisses, and a yellow frog that goes 'ribbit', for example - until the family has an entire entourage of animals following in the hunt for the Rainbowsaurus.

The repeated verse, "We're following a rainbow. Come along and join us. We're following a rainbow to find the Rainbowsaurus," is one that the children will delight in repeating.  But what makes this book such fun is that children are encouraged to make all the noises of the animals as their quest continues on each page - the sounds of this as a shared read will make for much laughter and probably much confusion, too! Get ready for a tumultuous collection of growls, quacks, hee-haws and oinks!

The rainbow-themed pages and multi-coloured animals, together with the family with two dads at the centre of this story, celebrate differences by bringing everything together in a riot of colour and energy.

This is such a lovely book to read aloud and one that children will love to share again, and again! Highly recommended.

Picture book / Reviewed by Elen Green

Suggested Reading Age 0+

Rainbowsaurus is another triumph by the incredible Steve Anthony. He never fails to succeed in turning the simplest ideas into magical stories. Using repetitive phrases, animal noises and colourful images, young children will come back to this picture book time and time again.

For anyone who loves We're Going on a Bear Hunt and the Brown Bear series, this is the perfect book for you.  I look forward to seeing the smiles on children’s faces when I share this with them.

Rainbowsaurus can be used to help to expand children's colour vocabulary, using words such as indigo and violet alongside more common colours like yellow, orange, pink and green. Discussions about animals will be stimulated by the choice of creative colours for them. What colour should the pig be? What could have made it turn green?  The joy-filled illustrations could be used to develop synonyms for happy and to discuss why each character might be feeling this way when they are hunting for something that they can't find! 

A must-have for nursery and EYFS classes as well as school libraries.

Picture book / Reviewed by Amanda Shipton, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 3+