By the Book

Ollie's Book Reviews

Books have always been one of my favourite things. Every night before bed I need at least two books read to me, and every weekend morning I sit with Daddy in bed and get him to read as many books as I can before he tries to get up and do something else.

I've got quite a good collection of books in my little bookshelf (I used to have more but now they've been given to William), and Daddy is always getting me more out of the library. With reading so many, the books I love most can change a bit sometimes. But I've given it some thought, and these are some super-short reviews of some of my absolute favourite books of all time (so far).

Digger and Skip - I like this one because it has lots of cool building site vehicles

Hairy Maclary - I especially like the ones with Scarface Claw, and get all mock-scared when we're about to turn the page to show him there.

Bedtime Bear - this one has lots of flaps to lift up and reveal hidden things, plus it's a good "finding book" where Daddy gets me to search for things in the pictures.

The Little Yellow Digger - I like this one because it has lots of diggers in it, and some I've never seen before; I also like the "constructions".

 

The Last Tiger - this book is one I've had for a while, but I like the tiger and the beautiful garden at the end of the story.

Anything by Richard Scarry - I've recently discovered all these books about Busytown, and love reading the stories and finding things hidden in the pictures. Luckily the library has lots of these books, so it looks like I'll be keeping Dad pretty busy with trips to get me more out to read.

A Holiday That Stinks

Roadtrip to Rotorua

Exciting news: we're off on another family holiday! Hurrah, it feels like ages since we had the last one. Somewhere new to explore, somewhere new to stay with new toys to play with... But hang on - we're going on holiday to a place that smells of farts? Is this some sort of joke? I can get that smell at home without leaving the house.

Anyway, we packed up the car and headed off on what turned out to be a very, very long car ride. We hadn't even left Auckland behind before I asked if we were nearly there for the first time. But it certainly wouldn't be the last time I asked that favourite roadtrip question...

This holiday would be a bit different though as we were going with family friends and their little girl, all staying together in a big house.

Hours later when we arrived we went out to look at some boiling mud pools in Kuirau Park. It was actually a bit hard to even see the boiling mud through all the big clouds of hot, smelly smoke that came out of each pool. After the first couple of sniffs I decided the smell was "gross"and took to holding my nose to keep the stink out.

Paradise Valley was a cool place we visited where we could walk around some tracks looking at animals, birds and fishes, all surrounded by huge trees and a river. We even saw some lions and got to hear them doing a fearsome roar.

The water comes up out of the ground from natural springs, and I was able to drink some of the water by kneeling beside the pool and scooping up water in my hand. All the pools were so clear you could see the bottom and any fishes swimming around so clearly.

We'd bought a small bag of animal food, so when we got to the wallabies I gave them some food to eat from my hand. I wasn't so keen on feeding these big horn-headed goats when we came to them later though.

One thing you can tell from the photos is that it rained almost the entire time we were in Rotorua, so everywhere we went we needed to wear these plastic ponchos. They covered me from the neck all the way well past my toes, so I may as well have stayed in my cosy pajamas.

In fact, the only time it didn't rain was part of one afternoon when we all stayed indoors while Mummy and her friend went to sit in some thermal spa pools. They chose the one time it wasn't actually wet to go and sit somewhere wet!

This holiday was the first time I shared a bedroom with William; I had a bunk bed and he had his portacot. Luckily neither of us made any big noises or woke up wondering where we were, so we both had great sleeps.

By the end of the holiday we hadn't seen as many thermal places as planned because of the rain, which was fine by me because of the gross smell. But even before we had left Daddy was threatening to take us back again another time; I'll need to be prepared and plug my nose up with something next time.