Bizzy Bear: Pirate Adventure! Nosy Crow & Benji Davies

Pirates are a constant theme in our house at the moment, my bigger boy can’t get enough of them. Consequently, we’re reading a lot of pirate books.

We’ve had Bizzy Bear: Pirate Adventure since he was quite small but he still enjoys reading it and has just started to share it with his baby brother too.

Part of the Bizzy Bear board book series, written and published by Nosy Crow and illustrated by Benji Davies, the book follows Bizzy Bear and his pirate crew on a voyage to find treasure. It’s a rhyming story, with every page starting with the line “Bizzy Bear, Bizzy Bear”. The text has a lovely rhythm to it with the repetitive first line helping to create and sustain the pace. My bigger boy learnt the words to this story when he was quite young, I remember him spontaneously reciting a line from it one day and being really surprised that he knew it so well. It just goes to show the power of reading and re-reading.

The illustrations are gorgeous, the happiest and cutest bunch of pirates I’ve ever seen! Every page is bright and so colourful with wonderful attention to small details. We have spent hours together looking at and talking about the different things on each page.

A lovely feature of this book is the interactive element of movable tabs and sliders. They enhance the story perfectly and reveal hidden illustrations. The great thing about the tabs are how each one uses a different movement. Some are easier to move than others while some require more complex fine motor skills. This book has truly grown with my bigger boy as he has developed the dexterity to be able to control each of the tabs independently. One page has the ship’s steering wheel that moves from left to right. I remember sitting with my boy while he tried to make it go both ways (he could push it one way but not the other) I showed him how to do it until one day he was able to manage it.

This is a lovely and fun book to share with your little ones. There are more books in the Bizzy Bear series, I will definitely be getting some for baby boy too. You can view them on the Nosy Crow website here:

http://nosycrow.com/series/bizzy-bear/

There are also some Bizzy Bear apps available. Unfortunately, I don’t have an iPhone or iPad so I haven’t been able to use them. But, the details and video look great, they are more than just the story in an electronic format and extend into developing computing skills as well as reading. It looks like they have a lovely sound effect feature too. If they are developed for Android at some point then I’ll definitely download them. You can view the apps here:

http://nosycrow.com/?s=bizzy+bear&post_type=apps

I love the work of Benji Davies, an author as well as an illustrator, you can read more about him and his work here:

http://www.benjidavies.com/blog/

And you can read our review of his book Grandad’s Island here:

 Grandad’s Island

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