It can't have escaped your notice that the bairns and I live in Scotland! And there are some great bookish experiences that being Sco...

My First Scottish Books

Monday, October 30, 2017 BookBairn 8 Comments


It can't have escaped your notice that the bairns and I live in Scotland! And there are some great bookish experiences that being Scottish affords us. Firstly, the Bookbug scheme - all children in Scotland receive four bags of books before the end of their first year at school and each bag contains at least three books along with other goodies like drawing materials and simple toys. Bookbug also runs sessions in our libraries (and other venues) where children can join in with songs and rhymes as well as storytime. Also, Scotland is the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie - the father of libraries and therefore a hero of booklovers! We also have a great history of writers and poets and some brilliant Scottish rhymes and songs to share with our bairns.

So our littlest in the family enjoys a Scottish tune - Ally Bally Bee is his favourite; and his big sister now insists on singing the Skye Boat Song as her bedtime lullaby. And now we have a great selection of 'My First Scottish' Books by Kate McLelland to enjoy too!

These are perfect first word primers for Scottish bairns packed full of lovely Scottish characters, scenes and creatures. Just to be clear these books are not written in Scots (apart from the inclusion of the word 'bairns') and are in proper English. There are six books in this fabulous series: Animals, Numbers, Colours, Things That Go, Weather and Opposites (we haven't seen the latter two other than a quick flick through in the bookshop).

The illustrative style is just perfect for a first word primer - very clear and deceptively simple - with big spaces surrounding the object, colour or creature allowing little ones to really centre on the word that the page is focussed on. Using a limited colour palette of primarily bold colours, Kate has created adorable creatures from puffins to highland cows to Scottie dogs and depicted elements of daily Scottish life in a genuine way trams on Princes Street in Edinburgh (overlooked by the castle) or yellow wellies splashing in puddles. My favourite has to be the seals beneath the freezing North Sea (if you know about Scottish folklore you will understand that I wonder if they are selkies). The illustrations would make fantastic prints for a nursery or playroom too!

Such bonnie books for a bouncin' bairns!
Mummy and The Wee Page Turner xx


*DISCLAIMER: We own 'Animals' and 'Colours' and have borrowed 'Things that Go' and 'Numbers' from the library.


8 comments:

  1. It's nice to Scottish book which aren't overdone for the tourist market x

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  2. It’s nice to know that all the kids in Scotland including BookBairn and the Wee Page Turner will benefit from the Bookbug scheme.

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    1. We have a brilliant scheme! Such lucky bairns!

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  3. Aaa that sounds like a fantastic scheme! Always great to see ways of encouraging a love of books. Thank you for sharing with #readwithme

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  4. These look lovely. We had lots of Hairy Maclary books and a pop-up Nessie book #readwithme

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  5. I hadn't seen these books before but they look canny good. : ) Filza #ReadWithMe

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  6. I accidentally borrowed a Scots book from the library, my brother who lived in Glasgow for a while read it to the kids for me, a lot of fun! I was clueless! Joking aside the scheme sounds amazing (like the Book Trust scheme in England) and the books look so lovely! #readwithme

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