Hil Gibb
This book was provided to me for free by Free and Fast Reviews in exchange for an honest review.
As you can imagine, I‘m normally not really into kids’ books *lol*. But since you’ve got to do a lot of story reading as an aunt of several nieces and nephews, I’m always happy for some new books I haven’t come across yet. So, I decided to read and review this one when I was asked.
First of all, it has to be said that Ruby and Alfie is a series. But since I’d never heard about it before, it was the first book I read but I think I gonna read some more in the future when my smaller nieces or nephews are over.
Ruby and Alfie are twins who seemingly don’t understand the word ‘don’t’ quite well. So you experience a day in the life of those two kids where they do a lot of stuff they shouldn’t do and are always told not to do it. Like ‘Alfie don’t push the button’ or ‘Ruby don’t speak with your mouth full’. And of course, all the kids really understand is: ‘push the button’ or ‘speak with your mouth full’. It’s like in real life – a ‘don’t’ easily turns into a ‘do’ in a kid’s mind. So, at the end of the day everyone is mad with Ruby and Alfie and they are sent to bed early. Of course, they don’t understand why because they don’t know what they have done wrong. But luckily there is the family’s dog who can perform some magic and so he turns back time and lets the whole family live through the day again. This time the kids aren’t told what they shouldn’t do but what they should do and why. For example: “Leave the button alone, Alfie. It’s a very important button that…”. And this time the kids follow the instructions and they get through the day without any trouble.
At the end of the story there are some tips and explanations for parents. In this book they explain why you shouldn’t tell your kids what they shouldn’t do but instead tell your kids what you want them to do.
All in all, the story was quite cute, but I think it was a bit too long. In my opinion the book is suited for kids between the age of 4 to 7. And I think kids will need some explaining or at least talking about the story after you’ve read it to them the first time if you want them to learn something out of it. So, kids should be able to sit through all of that.