A Squash and A Squeeze Julia Donaldson

First off, all Julia Donaldson's books are fun and well written. Wonderful kids story on contentment and changing negative outlooks on life.

This book arrived in good shape for a used book. The story is fun and art work is so good! My grandkids loved it.

As far as enjoyable goes it gets really old and repeatative about half way through. But the overall lesson was well made.

This is a great book - hilarious morality tale which children can understand, wonderful rhymes and beautifully illustrated too. In this an old woman is complaining about how crowded her house is, it is in fact "A squash and a squeeze". She goes to an old man, who gives her some 'good advice' about taking in her farm animals until at last she throws them all out - and now she feels like she has more space than she could ever possibly need. Well, bear in mind it is a lot funnier when Julia Donaldson writes it! This is a great book for pre-schoolers to act out - we read it out and the children get to be the various animals and be squashing and squeezing. You under 6's will really enjoy this one! But also get Room on the Broom and the Gruffalo by the same authors - glorious children's books all round.

I bought this book after I saw it read and acted out on Playschool (TV show in Australia). It's a great little rythmic book to read aloud and has endearing illustrations. A little old lady decides her house is much too small for her - a wise old man helps her to solve her problem by suggesting she move all her animals in to live with her (one by one). Of course, by the end of the story, the house is very squashy so she moves all the animals out and realises that her house is not that small after all! Good little tale for teaching children to appreciate what they have. Nothing too deep and meaningful, just a sweet little story. Not a must have but worth buying for your library if you have spare cash and already own some of the really special books out there.

I bought this a couple of weeks ago for my 19-month old daughter and she loved it right away. She chimes in now with the key phrases that are repeated throughout the book like "a curious plan" and "my house is a squash and a squeeze"! (She obviously understands the latter phrase more than the former! I give her 'squash' and 'squeeze' hugs when we get to those phrases.) The rhymes are great and there's certainly a song-like rhythm. You don't need great story-telling skills for this one. It sounds great just being read aloud. Not one that a child or adult reading to the child will tire of easily I think.