Mia is afraid of the dark. This all changes when her mom helps her discover that she has powers of imagination that can fight the shadows and bring colour to her world.
Through a series of colourful dream adventures based around the days of the week, Mia is empowered to fight the shadows and overcome her fear!
Genre: Children’s books
Age appropriate: 3-8 years’ old
Number of Pages: 21 pages
Date of Publication: 2020
Author/Illustrator/Publisher:
Written by Eleni Andreou Avgousti who has three children, is an English teacher and now also a children’s book author.
Illustrated by Efi Ioakim who has been a primary teacher and illustrator for the last 26 years. This book was published by Theopress Ltd.
Rating: 4/5
Review:
This is a children’s book which explores the fear of darkness that many young children often experience.
The story centres on Mia who is a young girl and is very scared of sleeping in the dark. Her brother always makes fun of her because of this fear. With the help of her mum and some magic words she tries to overcome her fear.
There are a few messages in this book such as how to overcome fears and the importance of asking for help which sometimes can be a bit tricky for children. This book encourages using your imagination and creativity. The relationship between Mia and her mum is really nicely written and encourages children to confide in their parents with any worries and frustrations.
There are several educational topics in this book like the days of the week, the names of the planets, the colours of the rainbow, names of animals in the jungle, some names of fish and sea creatures, and the names of flowers and fruits. Although all this is amazing for some children others might feel a bit overwhelmed with so much information.
The illustrations in this book are rendered in watercolour and mixed media which gives it a nice look. I felt that the illustrations could have been a little more polished to make them more attractive to children as they are quite chaotic. The illustrations were designed to look like children’s drawings which is understandable as an idea but some of the elements such as the planets on one page and fish on another were hard to identify for a small child.
The language used in the story is nice and simple for younger readers and smaller children will definitely benefit hearing the story. There is a lot of repetition of her bedtime routine and waking up which is good for minimising the number of unique words and gives the story structure. The first part of the book reads like a story then becomes more of a traditional fairy tale style with the repetition of the routine. For some reason I can’t really explain the final third of the book begins to rhyme which caused me to reread the first half to check I hadn’t failed to notice it rhyming from the beginning.
Overall a nice story which children would be able to relate to. The strong family relationship shown between the girls and her mum and brother is really good. As I previously said the illustrations are nice I just wish they were a little simplified.
Availability: The book is available on Amazon as an E-book and paperback.
Note: Eleni Andreou has free colouring pages and printables in her website about the book.
Thank you so much Eleni Andreou for my e-book copy.
Shelf Life 
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