Hoglets’ Birthday Surprise - Lynette Creswell

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Author: Lynette Creswell

Genre: Children's Fiction
Rating: 4 stars.

A sweet story about two hoglets who help a witch make new friends and celebrate her birthday in a special way.

We first met Primrose and Prickles, the little hoglet siblings in the first book of this series, Hoglets' Christmas Magic. In this second standalone story, as Prickles and Primrose walk in the woods, they encounter a strange new house made of desserts such as candy canes and heart-shaped biscuits. When they discover that it belongs to a witch, they almost bolt away in fear. To their surprise, the witch isn't just friendly but also lonely. Aside from making a mess of her attempts to reach out in friendship, she also has no one to celebrate her birthday with. Hoglet duo to the rescue!

As in the first book, this story too covers some wonderful themes, the most important being how we should not jump to conclusions based on appearance. This is such a relevant lesson especially in today’s world, where passing judgements based on first look is de rigeur. The book teaches kids that things aren’t necessarily as they appear and that they should use their common sense even more than their eyes or ears.

Willow the witch is an unusual character and kids will surely enjoy interacting with a friendly and clumsy witch who is fabulous at magic.

The book is written in a simple storybook format, with there being an illustration on one side of the book and full-page text on the other side. The book is text-intensive and younger readers might need adult guidance in reading it. The language level of the book is quite simple though, so it ought to be manageable for readers aged six onwards.

In an early readers’ book, plot and pictures both hold equal importance, so having cute illustrations that match the page content is a relevant but under-rated factor. The illustrations are much better in this volume of the hoglets’ series. I appreciate how the author accepted my feedback on the graphics for the first book and made sure that those issues weren’t repeated.

Overall, a short and sweet story with adorable characters and a worthy moral.

My thanks to author Lynette Creswell for a complimentary copy of “Hoglets’ Birthday Surprise”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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