Book review: Elephant and the Lost Blanket
Written and illustrated by Alex Naidoo
National Deaf Children's Society, 2018
Ages: 0-10
Buy a copy!
Elephant takes her special blue blanket with her everywhere. It’s her favourite thing in the whole world. So when it goes missing in the park one day, Elephant is desperate to find it. Her friends come to the rescue and help her search, but all is not as it seems…
Following the success of our two books for children aged 4–7, Jake and Jasmine to the Rescue and Daisy & Ted’s Awesome Adventures, we’ve launched our third book and this time it’s for little ones aged 0–5. We think it’s important for deaf children to see themselves reflected in the books they read even from a young age, so we’ve created the perfect book for young children.
Reviewed by Missy-Anne, mum to Ava (2) and Mia (8 months) who are both moderately deaf.
Mia and Ava
"I think this is a really good book. I like how simple it is; there’s not too much going on in the story or on each of the pages, making it easier to read and show my daughters. Both of them are at different stages so it’s great to read the words to my older daughter who’s able to follow the story more and point to the elephant or butterfly for the younger one. I also like how it’s clear to see Elephant has hearing aids but it’s not made into a big issue. It also shows her being able to do things like other children who are hearing.
It would be good to see more sound words in the book, for example when Elephant rushes down to breakfast there’s the word ‘crunch’ but that isn’t shown anywhere else in the book. I feel it could be added to the page where Elephant is checking her boots are still good for jumping and her blanket blows away, for example under the blanket the word ‘whoosh’ or when giraffe is going down the slide ‘weee’. As a parent whose daughters go to speech therapy, these types of words are brilliant for keeping children engaged.
Throughout the book I also thought it would be good to see signs so I was pleased when I got to the end to see the top tips for reading and also the video link for bringing signs into the book to make it come to life."
Reviewed by Stuart, dad to Lois (3) who is profoundly deaf.
Lois
"Elephant and the Lost Blanket is about a young elephant who loses her favourite blanket during a trip to the park with her friends.
The book is set in a child-friendly environment with the contents of the book featuring everyday occurrences in a child’s life. The book is useful for developing language with deaf children, particularly as it includes words for objects, animals, activities and the emotions that they learn throughout their early years.
The book is handy for reading at home and nursery and is useful for prompting children to explore the sounds and noises that the characters would make. It’s vibrant, colourful, exciting and packed full of illustrations and words that can bring the story to life. It also includes some useful tips to make sure that deaf children can access and learn as much from the book as possible. It’s reassuring for deaf children to read stories where the main characters wear hearing aids/cochlear implants and this provides a valuable talking point when narrating the story. I would recommend this book for all children, but especially to parents, carers, teachers and supporting staff of deaf children as a fun way to learn and develop language."