Good Night, Alice and Other Stories - Tessa Copland and (illustrator) Lyn Kriegler

Published by Little Mammoth/Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd: Auckland, 1993.

One of two books on this list that we found at a friend's bach and read to Ezekiel while staying there (the other being First Flight) this book actually contains three short stories, the titular story of which was by far our favourite.

Briefly, the other two stories tell of a meal where Alice - a small child - exclaims "Yuck" to a lot of foods that are offered to her (not something we really wanted to inspire Ezekiel to do) and then an 'imagination game' story where Alice pretends to be a number of different characters, and gets her family to join in (more fun over all, but just ok).

The titular story is the strongest, and goes through a typical bed-time routine, with Alice being read to, sung to, having some milk, saying good night to her family... all good 'wind-down' activities. There is a moment where Alice tries to stay up rather than settling down, and her mother cautions her that this sort of behaviour might make mummy 'cross'. Then Alice chooses to settle down and sleep.

We have found that 'wind-down' stories are quite effective for Ezekiel, and he enjoyed this one a lot. We wouldn't usually use the 'cross' word with him (or haven't so far) but its probably an okay concept for him to learn. The layout of the book includes setting up a question on one page that gets answered on the next, 
and Ezekiel also began anticipating the answer, so the book is good for a bit of interaction, too.

Decent, particularly Story Three.


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