Grumpycorn

Growing up is always full of challenges and children will need to learn how to cope with their feelings and emotions. Sometimes I wonder how the teenage years will be for my boys as it seriously amazes me how they react (and overreact) to certain situations.

Last week my youngest boy was showing the world his grumpy side more often than usual and funnily enough while browsing and ordering some books for myself I came across the Grumpycorn series. As soon as I saw the cover of the books I decided I had to have them for my boys.

This is the first time that we read a book by Sarah McIntyre and the first thing we noticed were her illustrations, which are amazing and unique. In the first book ‘Grumpycorn’ we meet a Unicorn who wants to be an author and to write a great story but can’t get any ideas to come to him. Then we meet his friends who are very excited and want to be in Unicorn’s story but Unicorn gets annoyed with them and he is mean and selfish which hurts their feelings.

As the story unfolds we are shown terrible social awareness by the unicorn and a lack of empathy toward his friends which I feel a lot of parents with young children can relate with. While reading the story with my children they kept on making observations and shared their thoughts about the Unicorn’s behaviour and once that we had finished it we all discussed our opinions and made comments about the story.

While this book has a simple and colourful story it definitely sends a strong message to children about social awareness and how a bad attitude could lead to you hurting other people feelings

This book is aimed to children around the ages of 4-7 years old however my oldest boy enjoyed the book and its message and I think that this was due to the characters and the magical feel that this book and it’s art projects. My 6 years old absolutely loved it. Grumpycorn was published by Scholastic Children’s books and both of my kids adored the colourful illustrations on each page with different scenes and magical places. There are lots of positive messages and small details sprinkled in the background. We have already read the next book which is called ‘Don’t call me Grumpycorn’ which has another amazing message about friendship. This second story talks about how the unicorn and his friends go and visit another planet and travel on a rocket ship which my boys both loved this concept as it wasn’t long ago that we saw the Space X launch.

I highly recommend both of these books not just because they are so colourful and pretty but because of the surprisingly mature messages that they are sending to children without being patronising. The stories let the children reach their own conclusions about the Unicorn’s behaviour.

I bought this books online from Waterstones which has been really simple with quick delivery and emails where I can track my packages. This company has been amazing and reliable with getting my orders ready and I have already ordered more books for myself and my boys.

Book delivery day is my favourite day of the week.