Book Review: The Shape game

I took a visit to Borders over the weekend and well we all know that you simpy can't step inside a bookstore like that without buying something.

This story is The Shape Game by Anthony Browne.

It is the story of a little boy that takes a visit to an Art Gallery with his family, for his mother's birthday. The wander the gallery, looking at all of the works of art, his brother is bored and so his is dad until finally they find some pieces that are engaging, funny and bring about memories for the family.

At the end of the visit they stop by the gallery gift shop and purchase two pens and a sketchbook. On the train journey home their mums shows them a game that her dad used to play with her. She draws a shape on the page, nothing in particular just a random shape. The next person then has to change that shape and make it into something. The proceed to play the shape game for their entire journey home.

We enjoyed this story, it was a little slow in the beginning and did have you guessing where they were going. This was a really good exercise though in looking at and thinking about the illustrations.Tthe first reponse from my kids was they were at a museum, so we kept reading just to find out exactly where they were.

The illustrations are well thought out and they use actual gallery paintings to compare, mixed with the story these opened the flood gates to many conversations between us. Of course once we got to the end of the story everyone wanted to play the shape game.

B loved this, it does take a little while to warm up and to be able to see things differently through the shapes but it was a lot of fun and lots of learning (and they weren't even aware of it happening because they were too busy laughing)


K did really well, she struggled at first and whined and said she couldn't do it but once I whispered one idea into her ear for a shape she was off and running.

This is super idea for train rides, waiting rooms, rainy days!