Writing Motivation #2

Keep at it and you will achieve it

Writing Motivation

It’s been a while but I am back and ready for more reviews and writing updates. Get motivated with the below!

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Review: Supertato Veggies Assemble

Today I shall be reviewing Supertato Veggies Assemble by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet

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This is a story about an evil pea wreaking havoc in the supermarket late one night. He sends an army of peas out of the freezer to destroy everyone else. Can Supertato and his friends help save the day?

One thing that draws you to this book is how colourful it is. Each page is jam packed (pun intended), with lots of action and little quirks you wouldn’t normally find in a children’s story. I particularly like the baked beans tins!

As a writer, trying to write my own novel about an animated piece of ham, Supertato gives me hope that talking food as protagonists DOES work, its actually inspired me to go back to my ham story and figure it all out.

I love how the name of the story is based on a very popular cinema franchise, it works very well and it should hook in superhero fans no matter the age.

What I find fascinating are the illustrations, I enjoy how the broccoli and fish fingers are drawn, using bubbles as inspiration.

The narration, to me, is very Batman the TV series – esque, it’s all I hear in my head when reading it out loud to my children, now that I’ve told you this you will probably feel the same way. For those not familiar with the style just imagine a narrator describing a situation and then questioning the outcome, it’s effective and gets you thinking ahead to what may happen. With it being a children’s story it is light hearted and very fun to read.

Another thing I enjoy is the superhero team, one of which is a tomato. We find out something interesting about tomatoes in this book, something which children may not know so I like how it’s approached.

If you are looking for a quick book to read to your child this is definitely the book for you. It isn’t wordy at all, yet it still works out well as the illustrations tell the story just as effectively as the narrative.

Comments from my son

“I like the fish fingers looking at the evil pea”

If you like this book try Supertato Run, Veggies Run! By Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet

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DID YOU LIKE THIS REVIEW?

As any reviewer will tell you, do your homework, and the results will pay off, so homework is what I did. If you feel I’ve missed something, please let me know. I’ve got notes upon notes of what to put in and leave out. Likewise, if it’s too long or too short do let me know. I’m refining this skill little by little every day.

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Review: The Bean Machine

The next review is The Bean Machine by Adam Bestwick.

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My Rating: 6 out of 10

My Son’s Rating: 10 out of 10

It’s about a bean obsessed boy, who loves to eat beans all day every day. A problem arises when he eats so much that even mum and dad don’t know what to do with all the empty tins. Can Jack find a way to deal with the tin crisis?

I enjoy rhyming stories and this ticks all the boxes with rhythm, pattern and readability, it’s easy to read, though at first, it does seem very wordy, it soon picks up pace. The text goes well with the imagery and I feel Adam achieved his goal of telling a story and also teaching his readers some good life skills.

I would say it’s aimed at around 7 year old’s, but younger children would benefit from this story too.

What children will love about this is that the story goes in depth about what he eats beans with, some combinations that children would love and adults would squirm at.

The illustrations are engaging, fun and they work very well. Adam uses both drawn images and real-life images with winning effects.

There isn’t much character development, but the story isn’t about that, it’s about the outside world ideas and inspirations.

I can’t fault the story but there is a lot of emphasis on all the food combinations, I wonder if just putting in a few suggestions would have created the same effect?

This book is aimed at all beans addicts and those who love to see something good come from something so bad.

Comments from my son:
“I liked the end page the best”

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DID YOU LIKE THIS REVIEW?

As any reviewer will tell you, do your homework, and the results will pay off, so homework is what I did. If you feel I’ve missed something, please let me know. I’ve got notes upon notes of what to put in and leave out. Likewise, if it’s too long or too short do let me know. I’m refining this skill little by little every day.

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How to Self Motivate

Hope this helps!

Writing Fertility

So, now I have daughters I am gifting them something that I hope they will find very useful and one of the best books they will ever read. It’s a fertility book written by myself, the aim is simple – to learn their own bodies, be confident about their cycles and then ultimately be comfortable enough to seek help from the GP if something isn’t right.

So far I’ve written the introduction, which includes my own experiences and advice but I am wondering whether to go down the self publishing route and make my work available to more young girls. What do you think?

I needed help, serious help in my teens, and never got it, I don’t want my girls to go down that same path hence why I call this book their best ever gift. What are your thoughts?

Blog Update

Hello everyone! I haven’t posted in a long time, a lot of little things have unfortunately been high priority, most importantly the birth of my twin daughters.

I don’t like leaving things unfinished and I don’t like that I left a short story incomplete, I need to get back into the swing of things. I hope in the upcoming weeks to get this blog nice and readable, enjoyable and back to business, as it were.

Thanks for reading!

Easter Haiku

I’m not religious.

Eating choc eggs – just because.

Bonus bank hol too.

Birth Haiku

My daughters are born

Family life is complete

No more pregnancies.

Short Story: The Chair and the Tortoise

Jemma was a curious little tortoise. She often looked at the clouds, high in the sky, and wondered what it would be like to fly on them. In the winter she wondered what it would be like to sleep in an igloo and in the summer, she wondered how much ice cream it would take to make an ice cream house. Questions and ideas flooded her mind all day, every day, she just wanted to know how the world worked. Being a tortoise limited her physically sometimes, but it never hindered her ever growing, enormous imagination.

Being a tortoise means you only really see the world from the floor, not like a giraffe where they get to see treetops and other tall giraffes. Even elephants get a much better view of the Serengeti than most of the animals there; they get to watch sunsets for hours on end. Tortoises see mostly feet, swishing tails and other tortoises. Jemma wanted something more than this. She wanted to see the tops of the tallest things, and so she had a good long think about how to do just that.

While she was plodding along through some grass, she came across an abandoned chair. It had been tipped upside down, so the feet were up in the air, Jemma laughed to herself “I look like that first thing in the morning”. She realised that chairs and tortoises have a lot in common – both have four legs and they have strong backs, though she wondered what it must be like to be a chair. Sat there all day, waiting to be sat on, getting pushed in and out of tables, “it mustn’t be fun” she concluded, and it was here that she realised she felt sorry for this poor chair.

Just then, Dean, the Snake slithered along, he saw Jemma and spoke: “want me to turn it over?” Jemma nodded excitedly “Oh yes please if you don’t mind” Dean didn’t mind at all, and by slithering up the back and entwining himself around the legs, he gave it a hard tug, and it flipped the right way up. “There you go” he finished, pleased with himself. Jemma stood and stared at the chair for a few minutes and then looked at Dean, saying “I want to climb it!”

 

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Will Jemma be able to climb it? how will she go about it? What will she see and will she be happy with what she finds?

Thank you for reading, if you have any suggestions or criticism please let me know.

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You can find more of my work here.