Customer Reviews

One Woolly Wombat

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

one woolly wombat sunning by the sea two cuddly koalas sipping gumnut tea

and so on to fourteen A now-classic Australian counting book, featuring native animals and other features of the Australian landscape and lifestyle (bush, lamingtons, and some flora)

A good choice for a counting book (also going beyond the traditional 10) for Aussie and non-Aussie kids alike.

This book has been a favourite of my cousins. It is witty, colourful and incorporates Australian animals, which children always love. Lots of pictures, and easily read or sung.

One Woolly Wombat certainly has no complicated storyline or even a basic one for that matter. Similar in style to say the 12 days of Christmas song but in numerical order the reader visits one woolly wombat sunning by the sea along with increasing numbers of other Australian wildlife with every even numbered group doing something that rhymes with the activity the odd number before it was doing.

The friends the reader will meet to help them count along with a wombat are, koalas, magpies, kangaroos, platypuses, possums, emus, echidnas. goannas, kookaburras, dingos, cockatoos, hopping mice and seals. Illustrations of these animals (with the exception of the wombat) are very realistic looking as well.

If more of an actual story you were after other great Australian wildlife fiction picture book classics that kids all over the world will love are out there. The best are Possum Magic and Hunwick's Egg by Mem Fox. Sebastian Lives in a Hat by Thelma Catterwell, Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan, the entire Steve Parish story book collection by Rebecca Johnson such as The Cranky Crocodile are also great reads. Olga the Brolga and Edward the Emu although not the best stories have some greatest drawn colourful illustrations of Australian wildlife you will ever see.

The story is wonderful and I was so excited to purchase my own copy to share with my class, HOWEVER this is the second time now that I've bought a used book and received an edition I did not expect. The first was a toddler board book, but the seller's listing mentioned nothing other than hardback edition. A toddler book is very hard to share with 25 children at circle. And now my copy of One Woolly Wombat was received yesterday and it's a minature version at 5"x6" and not the full size 9"x12". Again, hard to share something so tiny with the masses. These issues may seem trivial, but please be forwarned that what you expect may not be what you receive. I will certainly be asking questions before I make another purchase.

My 2 year 8 month old daughter loves this book now. Even though she has only basic reading skills she can read out all 14 lines because she has asked me to read them so many times!

The rhythm and patterns of the writing, and the pictures all make it a great book for counting and reading. And having mastered numerals already, she loves learning the word forms (the book always uses "one", "two" etc, not 1, 2).

Learning to count has never been this fun (or colorful!) My niece couldn't stop talking about wombats and magpies and koalas. The illustrations are vibrant, sometimes silly. You just can't go wrong with nine hungry goannas (look like alligators) in aprons and chefs hats.