Hello Twigs, Surprise by Andrew McDonald and Ben Woods

Title: Hello Twigs, Surprise

Author: Andrew McDonald and Ben Woods

Genre: Humour

Publisher: Hardie Grant

Published: 2^nd August 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 48

Price: $10.99

Synopsis: From the bestselling creators of Real Pigeons comes a joyous early graphic novel series that you can read aloud.

Red is a WILD TWIG who loves giving surprises.

So when he jumps out and yells ‘SURPRISE’ at his friends, he expects them to laugh – but instead they are shocked and scared. Oh dear!

Can Red stay wild AND find a better way to surprise his friends? We hope so!

Go, Red, go!

The first four Hello Twigs books are available in August 2023 – with more to come. Perfect for fans of Narwhal and Jelly, School of Monsters and Elephant and Piggie.

~*~

Red is one of four wild twigs – and he loves to surprise his twiggy friends. Except they don’t always like his surprises – when he wants them to laugh, they get scared. Red thinks he is being funny and nice – but his friends – Noodle, Stump, and Ziggy aren’t surprised. They’re scared. And they want Red to give them a nice surprise. So can Red give them a nice surprise and still be wild? Red will try hard to give his friends good surprises because he doesn’t want to be left out.

The Hello Twigs series is a new early reader graphic novel series to help children learn to read and build their reading confidence. They’re a bit like school readers, but they are really engaging. Using themes and ideas that children will connect with and anthropomorphised twigs and nature, Andrew has created an engaging story that instantly pulls the reader in and lets us know who the characters are immediately. The book is also full of colour, which makes the stories engaging and fun to read.

The key feature of these books, aside from the easy-to-read language, is the power of friendship and working together. It shows that being friends means accepting people as they are but also helping them find a way to learn new things, because there it means you can grow as a person and a twig. I liked that Red got to learn that scary surprises weren’t always fun for everyone. I liked the way the images were easy to track in this book – I often have trouble with multiple panels on a page in a graphic novel, because my eyes don’t always go to the right panel – so this for someone like me or someone new to graphic novels but is unsure of how reading a graphic novel works, it can help to understand the layout, and how to track the panels. It might be a simple story for these readers, but I think when it comes to starting a new format for a book, sometimes starting with something shorter in terms of length is good practise to get used to the format or see if it works for you. The engaging story is what interested me, and I loved the inventiveness of giving sticks and twigs human-like qualities. A great introduction to a fabulous new series.