The Flying Bath by Julia Donalson, illustrated by David Roberts: a book review

Miss T has been a very lucky girl lately. The lovely people at Panmacmillian recently sent her some fabulous picture books. Two of them were by the very talented Julia Donaldson. We've already reviewed 'What the Jackdaw Saw' and you can find our review for that here.

Today we are reading 'The Flying Bath'. In typical Julia Donaldson style this is a rhyming story book. The difference is that this book is written through speech bubbles with the characters speaking. 

On my first read through I was struggling to work out quite how it rhymed. I was focussing on what each character said rather than reading the whole book smoothly and letting it flow. As such, some of it felt 'forced', like it had been an effort to make it rhyme and somehow it didn't quite work. 

Second read through, reading all the speech bubbles straight after one another as you would read a regular storybook and oh my what a difference. It suddenly worked. It sounded like a Julia Donaldson book and rhymed brilliantly.

This amazing flying bath and it's occupants travel off on adventures to save the day helping other animals like a kangaroo and a bee along the way.

It's an easy, fun read. If you want it to rhyme smoothly, read it as if you would read a regular book rather than pausing after each speech bubble and it works brilliantly. Having said that, Miss T enjoyed it at my original slower pace as we chatted through the pictures and talked about what was happening. The illustrations really look good in this book and are definitely as much part of the story as the words. A truly great picture book.

This book can be purchased as a book and CD pack from Panmacmillan here. Thanks Panmacmillan for sending us this fun book to read!