Book Review: Charlie Cook's Favourite Book

Charlie Cook's Favorite Book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Schaffler, is a book about books. Charlie's favorite book is about a person whose also reading a book, and that person's book is about someone else reading, and so on and so on until it comes round full stop with people reading a book about Charlie. The illustrations of the book are great and it is fun to look at places where characters or details from one of the books appears in the other books. Can you find traces of all the later stories in the first page picture?

The book offers several discussion topics. With my four year old we could discuss different genres of books. How are magazines, encyclopedias and story books different? With my seven year old we could discuss the difference between books and dreams and the idea that it is easier to imagine that we are part of someone's dream than part of someone's book. What is the character of the book's experience of life?

The book reminds me of two of Dennis Lee's poems, one called "The King of Calabologie" which tells of a king coughing up animals which cough up other animals until eventually one of the animals coughs up the king of Calabologie. The second poem is called "Pollywogs in Parachutes" and deals with the question of who is dreaming who. It also reminded me of the Recursive Stories post I wrote a few weeks ago.

(This post shared on Kid Lit Blog Hop and Read Aloud Thursday.)