The Blue Early Reader books from Orion Books are a great start for children on their journey from picture books to chapter books.  They are aimed primarily at the over 5’s, who are just starting to read.  As Monkey and I enjoying reading all sorts of books together, we’ve enjoyed an early introduction to this series.  Chocolate Porridge has become a firm favourite here already.

The lovely tale of Chocolate Porridge is written by Margaret Mahy, and illustrated by Terry Milne.  When we first looked at this book, we thought, uum, a story about a little boy in the kitchen putting chocolate in his porridge.  How wrong could Monkey and I be!

This is the story of Timothy, he loves to cook, but his older sisters tell him cooking is only for girls and that he is too small.  Monkey pipes up – Mummy, I cook and I’m a boy and I’m little!

So off Timothy goes to the garden.  He’ll cook up something there instead.  He spies something that would make a great mixing bowl.  The fun begins.  Making chocolate porridge in the sunshine.  Add some dirt AKA grated chocolate.  Monkey started giggling, he would definitely be friends with Timothy.

We loved the idea that a mud pie could actually be something a bit different.  Chocolate porridge, what a wonderful idea.  The little boy adds all sorts of ingredients into his mixture.

It’s a lovely story, Timothy’s Dad is thrilled with his chocolate porridge and knows just what would love to eat it.  An Apple Tree! We’ve got an apple tree growing in our garden that we planted in the autumn.  Monkey helped Daddy P to plant it with his own version of chocolate porridge.

This story led on to lots of discussions here, talking about textures and cooking all sorts of things.  Talking about mud and remembering our adventures at Forest School last year.

I love books that we can relate to, that fire Monkey’s imagination.  This has certainly achieved that goal.

disclaimer:  we received this book in exchange for an honest review.