Title: The Adventure of Mr. Icket: The Kindhearted Cricket
Author: Martha Abrams Marrow
Illustrated by: Stephen Adams
Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 978-1-64803-758-0
Pages: 30
Genre: Children’s Fiction
Reviewed by: Nicole Olson
Pacific Book Review
A fun adventure! Follow along colorful illustrations and beautiful story telling in The Adventure of Mr. Icket: The Kindhearted Cricket by author Martha Abrams Morrow. This book is perfect for any age and great for telling at the end of a long day full of playing and learning. Not only does Mr. Icket teach readers about kindness – there are many vocabulary words and rhymes to learn.
Rhyming is a great concept for children to learn and understand vocabulary as well as spelling. While at first glance “The Adventure of Mr. Icket” is a lighthearted story, it is actually a wonderful treasure full of learning opportunities for readers of all levels. Rhyming not only makes it fun and easy to read – students take away a new concept on every page. With rhymes students can learn and solidify spelling, as well as recognize synonyms and other literary devices. This book is full of learning opportunities for just about any reader at any age level.
This book is also loads of fun to listen to! An easy choice for a classroom to read for story time either led by an instructor or by students. The rhyming just makes this book so entertaining – an entire classroom will definitely be brought to laughter. So many times, when we think about school and education, we forget that kids need it to be fun and light hearted too. This book helps break up a monotonous day and is perfect to tackle after a hard morning full of math or science.
I loved reading this book in 2–3-page chunks to my two-year-old son. This is the first time he ever learned what a cricket is! He also learned a variety of sight words. Books written in this fashion are incredible tools that can be used in teaching literacy and recognizing sight words. He is very small and a little too young to be reading on his own this challenging book pushed him to learn more every time I read to him. The vibrant pictures enhance the story and allow for plenty of interesting conversations to occur.
As a parent I am always on the hunt for new ways to teach my son. The simplest and easiest way to introduce new vocabulary and foster a love of learning is simply by reading books! Not all books are created equally – though they all tell important and entertaining stories, not every book we read teaches literary concepts or useful learning tools such as rhymes and sight words. Whenever I come across a book that does aide in this manner I am thoroughly overjoyed as I can see my son learning before my very eyes. Mr. Icket’s adventure is not only entertaining and fun, but extremely educational at any level.
