Review: Hunwick's Egg, Uno's Garden and Hairy Maclary's Bone

Yesterday I mentioned that The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Mail will be offering eight iconic Kids' Mini Books to collect.

Here is my review of three books included in the collection:

Hunwick's Egg
Hunwick's Egg is another wonderful collaboration between Mem Fox and Pamela Lofts, who previously worked together to create Koala Lou. Hunwick's Egg is a heart warming tale of an old bilby called Hunwick and his unusual friendship with an egg.

A storm breaks over the desert, where Hunwick lives. After the storm clears, Hunwick discovers an unusual egg near his burrow. No-one claims the egg as their own, so Hunwick takes it upon himself to take care of the egg until it hatches. Hunwick dutifully cares for the egg and would tell it stories and share his troubles with it. But the egg does not hatch right away and his friends become worried for Hunwick.  Hunwick wasn't worried, though, because he knows the egg's secret and the egg is his friend.

And he continued to love it with all his heart. It was his egg. It was his secret. And it remained his friend forever.

Lofts illustrations are stunning and beautifully portray our Australian native flora and fauna. She certainly brings the story to life and I adore the illustration of the egg covered with sticks, including a stick insect!

Uno's Garden
Graeme Base's Uno's Garden is visual delight!  It has a strong environmental message as well as a numeracy lesson. It's a numbers game that aims to achieve environmental balance!

Uno arrives in the forest, and he loves it so much that he decides to live there. The forest is home to some extraordinary fantastical animals and plant life and soon others join Uno to live in the forest. More and more buildings rise and soon the animals and plants begin to disappear. It is not long before the forest is replaced by a busy city, with no plants, no animals and resulting in the extinction of one species. Slowly Uno's descendants begin to care for the plant and animal life and finally learn to achieve a perfect balance.

The animals go by one by one
A hundred plants, then there were none
And all the while the buildings double...
This numbers game adds up to trouble.

Uno's Garden is a magical story that can be appreciated on a variety of levels. The complex hide and seek style artwork is fascinating with mythical creatures that include familiar physical features.  It includes basic numeracy activities of counting to ten as well as adding and subtraction. It also incorporates slightly more complex mathematics for the older readers including squares, doubling and prime numbers. Then there is the environmental message about population growth and the impact it has on the environment. A simply stunning story.

Hairy Maclary's Bone
Lynley Dodd's scruffy little black dog, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy has another adventure with his friends in Hairy Maclary's Bone.

Samuel Stone from the butcher's shop gives Hairy Maclary a juicy bone. Hairy scurries off with his bone towards the Dairy, but it's not long before his friends discover he has a bone and start chasing him, 'hungrily sniffing and licking their chops'.  Hairy is a clever little dog, however, and the path he takes home proves to be too challenging for his friends and one by one they become stuck and can no long follow him. It's not long before Hairy Maclary is at last on his own with his bone.

Dodd's illustrations are delightful and her rollicking rhymes certainly make this book fun to read aloud. Hairy Maclary is definitely a favourite character in our house.

The Kids' Mini Books are a wonderful quality and include a fabulous range of classic children's books. The first Mini Book, Animalia, is available Free via The Sunday Mail on 3 Feb. You can find out more information here.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a sample of the Kids Mini Book Collection for review purposes by the Promoter. I was not paid for this post and, as always, my opinions are my own.