Book Review - CUDDLE THE CUTEST KITTEN: SCHOOL OF SPELLS

Cuddle the Cutest Kitten: School of Spells by Hayley Daze

I'm Cuddle, the cutest kitten. Do you agree?

Cuddle the Cutest Kitten is a series of books about a magical talking kitten’s adventures with her two human friends, Grace and Olivia. The series is a cross between the Harry Potter series and Enid Blyton’s books, describing how Cuddle and the girls get entangled in various adventures and how they help the characters they meet during these adventures, with a dash of magic.

In School of Spells, Cuddles and the girls are transported to a school of magic, Miss Rosamund’s School for Magical Creatures (hence the Harry Potter reference). This school is meant for fairies, elves, gnomes and other magical creatures.

In the school, the trio comes across a painfully shy unicorn, Cosmo. The unicorn, being so shy, has no friends and is very sad and lonely. To make matters worse, he is always getting picked on by a mean troll, Mossfly. Cosmo ends up skipping classes most of the time because he feels he is not good enough to learn.

As the story advances, we see how Cuddle and the girls draw Cosmo out of his shell, encourage him to attend school and help him to find his own special kind of magic – making people laugh. In the end, Cosmo becomes more confident and happier. As a result of Cosmo’s magic, walls are broken down and everyone becomes good friends in the school of magic.

This is a very simple book meant for young children aged five to seven. Hence the themes that the book deals with are also presented in a very simple manner – kindness, the difficulty of attending school (an issue very relevant to five-year-olds who are attending structured school for the first time) and friendship.

The language used in the book is also suitable for young children. It is simple enough for a five-year-old to understand but at the same time, slightly more challenging than the picture books that the child is usually exposed to so that her reading ability can be stretched. The black-and-white illustrations are also cute and attractive. In fact, if you own a copy of the book, you could very well get your child to colour the illustrations when you need some time off, giving you a win-win situation. You get some free time to yourself or to attend to some errand and your child gets a pleasurable afternoon occupying herself and developing her artistic sense as well.

I suspect this book would appeal more to little girls than boys in general. In fact, the book is packaged to specifically attract little girls: cutesy animals like kittens and unicorns, a lavender book cover (and other books in the series have pink, baby-blue and peach covers - see below) and the openly affectionate tones of Cuddles and the girls.

Hey, who says only girls like to read us?

However, when you open the book and read the story, it is gender-neutral because the themes that the story deals with are universal and apply to both boys and girls.

One other big plus for the book and other books in the series is that it is printed by a British company and as such, the language is undoubtedly British English. This is a big bonus as far as I’m concerned. Although the practice in the PSLE these days is that both British and American versions of English are acceptable, the child needs to be consistent in his usage. That means if the child spells ‘colour’ as ‘color’, then he needs to spell it that way throughout the same paper.

However, the market is flooded with both English and American books and most children are confused because they come across two versions of the same language. Call me old-fashioned but having been brought up in an era when only British English was accepted, I prefer to stick to the Queen’s English, thank you. And that is why I encourage my pupils to stick to British English.

I would definitely recommend this book for beginner readers. It is not a great book but it is a suitable stepping stone for young readers who are just beginning to read independently before they move on to more complex and difficult books.

Rating: 3/5

Recommended for children aged 5-7

By TCC