Tuesday, September 4, 2018

My Review of - Times Tables Fun with Naughty Katie

1 Star for writing and publishing
1 Star for cover
1 Star for formatting interior
½ Star for preview
1 Star for book as a whole 

First, I have to give a huge thank you to Lorraine. For not only being the first author to send me a physical book but also the first person to send me any correspondence from another country. So thank you Lorraine, my children and I looked forward to your package coming from the UK. It gave me a reason to teach them about other countries and where the UK is.

Seeing that this was an educational book for small children probably around 3rd grade, I decided to read a little of the book a day to my kids. My kids are going into 3rd, 1st, and Pre-K this year. I also based most of this review on their responses from the book.

As always I gave one star for simply writing and publishing a book. At first I was going to give a half star for the cover, because I didn’t understand the concept of the bubbles and how it relates to the book. Then on the second and third day of reading, my daughter going into 1st grade kept talking about the bubbles and then into parts of the stories she liked when describing it to her mother. It was then I realized that the bubbles on the cover were not for me but for the target audience. It was well done at capturing her attention so I gave one star for the cover. The book has been obviously professionally prepared and I could not find any errors on the interior formatting, so I gave 1 star for that. I’m sorry to say that I could only give a ½ star for the preview or intro of the book. It was interesting but not attention grabbing and a little dry. Finally I gave the book 1 star for the book as a whole. It kept my children entertained, interested and looking forward to me reading the next part. In fact, one day I forgot about us reading because we were busy. One of my daughters reminded me and asked for me to read the next part. As we did my other daughter joyfully joined us. Even my son, who is going into his second year of Pre-k, sat down for one of the readings and listened intently. If you knew my son you would be very impressed with that.

4 ½ out of 5 stars total


I would recommend this book to anyone with small children, children about to learn their times tables, and especially to parents that have a child having trouble with memorizing them. The idea of combining story time with poetry, while reinforcing times tables, was inspiring. It’s too soon to tell if any of the information stuck but what was clear was that my kids enjoyed the book. That means I can always go back and reread the book to help them in the future with their times tables, or just to enjoy the stories again. I would also add that I have recommended this book to my local school district to see if they would like to use in our schools here. I really hope they will consider it because anything that can help kids learn is worth having.

Below are the links to check out this book or to follow Lorraine on social media.

Lorraine's website is www.lorrainereed.com

Lorraine's email is Lorraine.Reed@live.co.uk

As Always, Happy Reading and Writing Everyone
G. D. Talbot

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