Hugo Makes a Change by Scott Emmons & Mauro Gatti

Hugo Makes a Change by Scott Emmons and Mauro Gatti, published by Flying Eye Books is a wonderful picture book all about one of our favourite topics, food!

Hugo is a little vampire who just loves to eat. Every night when he wakes up eating is all he thinks about and his food of choice is always big portions of juicy meat.

However, he starts to notice that his stomach is bloated and he’s too sluggish to do anything. Grumpy and tired he decides he is fed up of the same old meat filled meals and sets off to explore new foods.

At first he is not impressed with the vegetables he finds but a sweet, red apple soon changes his mind. And all of a sudden, Hugo is enjoying a healthy and varied diet. He soon notices the changes in himself and is much happier for it. Although he very wisely steers clear of any garlic.

The rhyming text makes for an entertaining and accessible story with fun and engaging illustrations. My boys like to look at all the different foods and talk about which ones they will eat and we love that Hugo switches between being a vampire and a bat.

An excellent and unique take on healthy eating for young children. This is not simply a story which dictates which foods are healthy and which aren’t but rather cleverly shows the reader what it means to have a balanced diet and clearly shows the outcomes behind food choices.

As the parent of small children I am always looking for different ways to gently encourage trying new foods. This book provided a great starting point for us to have some fun with fruit and try new flavours.

All we needed was some fruit and biscuit cutters. As we did this activity after reading this story we used bat and star cutters.

Both my boys had a go at cutting the shapes out of the different fruits and it started an interesting conversation with my four-year-old about which fruits worked well and which were trickier. We decided that melon was ok but a bit tough to cut, bananas were a little too soft but apples were just right. Perfect really as they were the food that turned Hugo’s tastebuds.

We had great fun cutting out the fruit and it even tempted them to try fruits they don’t normally choose. Once we’d cut the shapes out we wanted to put them in a night time scene so used a piece of black card before they all got nibbled.

At the end of the story we learn that the little holes you spot in fruit are actually marks to show that a vampire has had a little nibble. When we went to our fruit bowl for some apples to cut up, well, see for yourself….

Buy the book from Waterstones.

Many thanks to Flying Eye Books for sending a copy of this book for review.

Follow @Acornbooks

This post contains affiliate links that won’t change the way you shop but might make us a little bit of money… that we will probably spend on more books.

“>