Review – Clickety Books & Pabobo Fairy Lights

As you all know we are “avid” readers here at Red Ted HQ, well my two children, almost don’t get a choice, with the heaps of books that get piled on them. So whenever I see something “new” produced by an individual, I cannot help but get a copy… so we bought

Jacqueline the Black Alpaca, by Craig Green. Red Ted always gets excited about a new book and they are brilliant for our “quiet time” (he no longer naps, aaargh), as we read it together and then he wanders off and studies all the pictures by himself. These books come with an audio CD, which are part of the charm and purpose of the books as these are book design to help speech development:

We create speech and literacy resources for children with speech awareness difficulties and speech delay.  These can range from very minor speech and literacy delays to severe problems with the child’s ability to speak or comprehend literature.”

We are reading for “fun” and fun they are. Jacqueline is not your normal “lady”, and get’s into all sorts of messy and situations. She also likes to fart (tsk tsk). Each page is followed by a chorus: Black Alpaca Black Alpaca, ack ack ack. Black Alpaca Black Alpaca ACK ACK ACK. Which is a bit of a tongue twister, but obviously design to help develop speech. Red Ted LOVES the chorus and already shouts “ACK ACK ACK”, before I have even turned the page. The CD is excellent – there is a little bell at the end of each verse that signifies turning the page and Red Ted LOVES listening at for it – he then looks at me and says “now mummy?” with shining eyes. After only a couple of “listens” he actually started to repeat the chorus in line with the CD. The book & CD are fun and helpful. Brilliant.

Craig very kindly also sent us Corky the Squawky Hawk as a gift (after we established a Twitter friendship and talked about my failed Alphabet book, which I now want to revive again) – I think Red Ted enjoys this ever so slightly more.

The book costs £10 – which is a little dear: BUT – remember, you get a well thought through learning tool, design to help speech development, as well as an audio CD. AND this is produced independently and not through one of the big publishing houses. Oh. And Red Ted (almost 3) loves it 🙂 Also:

  • The Postage and Packing is always free, regardless of order size
  • The CDs are narrated by Rik Mayall and are hilarious
  • There are free games on the website to accompany the books and these will be added to every month

So go on. Visit Clickety Books and get a copy – or buy the gift set and give a couple away as presents!

Pabobo Fairy Lights

About 3 months ago, Red Ted started getting a little scared of the dark. So I started the journey of looking at different night lights and found the Pabobo Barbapapa. I toyed to and fro as I wasn’t sure whether it is good to have a night light in bed with you, friend suggested fairy lights, which I thought sounded lovely, but I was worried about how safe they were (electrical fire hazard) and then happened to find a little froggy night light in my side draw, that we had been given and used that instead.

By sheer coincidence Pabobo contacted me and asked whether we would like to review any of their products. They mentioned that they also had a Barbapapa Light Chain. Ah well, I wasn’t going to say “no”, especially since we LOVE Barbapapa. And as the Fairy Lights are eco friendly, we went for them!

They arrived and Red Ted was given them at “Secret Santa at Playgroup”. The fascination was great (after I managed to open the very secure packaging). All the girls in particularly grouped round once I plugged them in.At home, Pip Squeak (1) ADORED them and ended up looking like a Christmas Tree all wrapped up as we decided where to put them (I wish I had a photo for you!!!).

Sooooo…. what do we think of them???

Well, we like them. The children adore them. They are fun, bright, environmentally friendly (very important to me). But, sadly, not suitable as night light: they are very bright and distracting. I think this was “our mistake” for expecting to use them as a night light, which they are not designed for. So we then placed them on the mantle piece near the Christmas Tree (which Red Ted LOVED) and afterwards, Red Ted insisted on putting them around Granny’s bed (i.e. in the Guest Room – no idea why…). I think we will use them for decoration at birthdays and Christmas and once the children are older in their bedrooms for when they have friends over!

Oh… and in the meantime, the Froggy Light is fine!! 😉