M and M and the Mummy Mess

Many of these overtly 'early reader' books come from the Untied States and this makes them that bit less easily accessible to young children still relying on familiarity of language structure to support their reading. This particular series also looks cheap and nasty being printed on very inferior paper. So much for first impressions and raw prejudice! What of the stories? M and M and the Bad News Babies, the first tale of the two girls (M and M) had gone down well as a read-aloud to middle and top infants and so we had hopes of this one. The plot is fairly complex and requires an understanding of what Egyptian mummies are, how museums work and how they put on displays. It is also quite long and dense with only black and white line drawings to entice the reader. It worked quite well as a read-aloud with middle infants, who were able to enjoy the joke of the girls' attempt to disguise their illicit presence in a museum by wrapping themselves up in bandages and trying to pass as exhibits, as long as an adult could interpret the hard bits. It needs a fairly sophisticated seven-year-old to tackle this independently, however it's more of a mini novel. Several fluent readers enjoyed it and there was only one really adverse reaction: 'you think it's going to be all spooky...but nothing scary happens at all really!